When we arrived at the event, the doors were opened and we walked into the room through a fog screen – that made it a grand entrance – then you were in projector heaven. I counted over 21 models on display (not all of those were powered up).
There was the flagship “compact” PT-DZ21K 3-chip DLP WUXGA with an amazing 20,000 lumens — it is claimed to be the smallest, lightest 20,000 lumen model on the market so far. This 20K projector weighs in at an average weight of 43kg (94.8lbs), I thought the image was amazing, very sharp and vibrant.
I was also impressed with the two PT-DZ110XE 10,600 lumen projectors, which were image-blended and projected onto a large curved screen. After staring at it for a while I could not find fault, great picture – and they assured me it is easy to set up.
Also there were some boardroom models that included lens shift & 10W Speaker (ex-Sanyo models — now with the Panasonic badge and new model numbers). Some of these projectors connect wirelessly to iPhones and iPads.
I was impressed overall as I’d not had a lot of exposure to (formerly) Sanyo models in the past and I was very tempted to pick up the remote and have a play – could you just imagine me bringing up the menu, stuffing up the show? I wouldn’t have been very popular. I’ll have to get my sales rep to bring a couple over so that we can “kick the tyres so to speak,” and then I would be able to see what they are really capable of.
I really enjoyed meeting other people that have similar businesses to mine and comparing how we operate. I also enjoyed speaking to distributors and people from the audio visual departments at some of the universities. It was a great opportunity to chat with the product managers at Panasonic — made easier over beer and wine. I spent quite a bit of time explaining Twitter and social media tools to one of the Panasonic marketing guys. I really found it amazing how many people in the industry knew very little about social media.
So overall Panasonic put on a very good display of their newly combined models making it clear that they wanted to be a force in business projectors in Australia – let’s hope that they follow through with what they promised.