It may not be a surprise to find that some of today's most innovative projection design occurs in a part of world where darkness outweighs daylight significantly in winter. Founded in Fredrikstad, Norway in July 2001 by Jorn Eriksen-a technology veteran who began his career as an electronics designer at projection systems manufacturer, ASK-projectiondesign develops high-end, compact projectors for the professional and consumer markets. Currently, all of the company's products are based on single-chip DLP technology, which, Eriksen argues, enable his team to build projectors that deliver images of the highest quality.
"We saw an area in the market that had not been served when it came to high-performance, single-chip projectors," Eriksen explained. He and his colleagues saw the opportunity to use their experience to "make a professional, high-performance, compact system," he elaborated. "That was the foundation of the company and our design of the F1 Series."
In 2002, projectiondesign introduced its first line of projectors, the F1 Series. Within this line is the F1+, which boasts 2500 ANSI lumens. Intended for use on almost a 24/7 basis, the F1+ enables users to match several projected images in multi-screen applications, including color balance, white points, contrast and brightness. Users have the option of incorporating different color wheels and lenses.
The recently introduced F3 incorporates many of the same features as the F1, but is much brighter. At 5500 ANSI lumens, the F3 enables users to adjust the contrast as high as 7500:1. Six replaceable lenses, equipped with motorized zoom, focus control and horizontal and vertical shift, cover throw ratios from 0.8:1 to 7.0:1. The unit's DuArch, dual architecture illumination technology-which uses two lamps, two color wheels, dual light formatters and dual illumination control-prevents against untimely failures. The F3 may be monitored remotely via ethernet.
"The F3 is even more high-performance because it features a much higher brightness over the F1," Eriksen said. "It is a little bit larger, but it has even more functionality in terms of interchangeable optics, shiftable optics, etc. Overall, it is much richer."
All of projectiondesign's technology is designed and manufactured at the company's facilities in Norway. "We manufacture the entire product in-house, to the extent that we have our own electronics board manufacturing in-house," Eriksen said. "We design the optics, electronics, software, mechanics, industrial design and thermal design."
With 65 professionals on staff, Eriksen believes that his company's size-and the way that employees are managed-allows for the quick, nimble adaptation to new technological trends. "The basic values of equality apply to people working together in a team-oriented, flat organization under equal terms," he said. "Of course, they are well managed, but they are strong team players with good coaching, as opposed to a hierarchical organization where you report up and command down."
We still see a lot of uncovered ground. We see a lot of potential for improvement in projection technology and, for us, using DLP technology."
