Kodak Zi8 Pocket Camcorder

At my high school, I took a long time to decide when and how we would move away from mini-DV camcorders for student use. (We had previously standardized on Canon ZR-series mini-DV camcorders.)

I had been under pressure for some time to consider Flip cameras, but a few of their shortcomings kept nagging me. Finally, with the release of Kodak's Zi8 pocket camcorder (I call it a "Flip-style camcorder"), I felt comfortable taking the plunge.

According to this Kodak Zi8 review from Wired.com: "...Kodak's line of pocket handicams now officially blows Pure Digital's wildly popular Flip series out of the water" and I completely agree.

There are plenty of reviews scattered around the web for both the Kodak and Flip series cameras, so I won't go into a full review, but in my mind, the Zi8 currently has 3 distinct advantages over the Flip camera:

1. External storage. The Flip series cameras currently only have internal storage, so if you are sharing the cameras among multiple students or classes, students may have access to other students' projects if you aren't able to download the video to hard drive right away. With external storage, each student or group can be assigned their own memory card. Note that there is NO internal storage, and the camera does not come with a card, so you must buy at least one card right away.

2. Image stabilization. Flip cameras currently have none. When you pan the camera around, the image is very disjointed. The image stabilization in the Kodak is not quite as good as what I've seen in more expensive cameras, but it's a good start. Using a good tripod will also help in creating more professional-looking projects.

3. Microphone jack. Truth be told, I haven't tried mine yet. But it's nice to know we can send folks out with a separate microphone for better sound quality. Since this camera does not have any optical zoom (not unlike most other pocket camcorders including the Flip series), you'll want to stay closer to your subject than you perhaps did with handheld camcorders with wide-ranging optical zooms, so the sound will perhaps be clearer anyway.

What's missing:

• No lens cap (though it doesn't appear that the Flip cameras have this either)
• No optical zoom (again, I don't think any pocket camcorders have this - it's missing on purpose so they can make the camera so small)
• No headphone jack. Probably not needed in most educational settings, but the Flip series cameras do have headphone jacks.

The Kodak Zi8 can currently be found for under $150, but of course you'll need to stock up on accessories, including memory cards.

It comes with:

• AC adapter
• HDMI cable
• Mono composite AV cable

Extras you'll need:

• SD-HC memory cards (we picked up 4GB cards for about $15)

Extras you'll want to consider:

• Tripod
• Spare batteries (like many devices, the batteries are specialized. I'm waiting until Ultralast makes compatible batteries)
• Silicon sleeve for extra protection, about $17
• Carry case (I just reused the cases from all the old Sony Mavicas that I finally recycled)

It comes with PC-based editing software. I'll save my software experience for another article.

I do not receive compensation from review sites, retailers, or manufacturers for mentioning any products in this article.

$8900 Speaker Wire

Does expensive audio cable make a difference in sound quality? I have never had the spare cash laying around to pick up a set of Monster cables, so I've always avoided them. Turns out, there's a good reason. As far as I can see, there has never been a double-blind listening test that has determined a marked preference between 2 cables of equal gauge.

Here's a great site that goes into speaker wire in depth: Speaker Wire: A History by Roger Russell. It's been around for a while, it looks a little quaint, but well worth the read.

Among the highlights:

• A great table detailing the maximum wire lengths for two-conductor copper wire
• Gordon Gow's Speaker Wire Listening Test
• and this gem: a 6-foot pair of $8900 speaker wires from Audioquest.

Performing a quick web search on Audioquest Everest produces a number of great articles ridiculing the company. In Audioquest's defense, that pricing is from a few years ago. I tried looking up current pricing, but their PDF of MSRP's is horribly broken.

However, not as many articles seem to question Monster brand cables. In my opinion, you're wasting your money either way. One good one I did manage to find: Do Coat Hangers Sound As Good Monster Cables? 

Keep track of your video projector lamp hours

If you're like me, you work at a school that dipped its toes in the pool of video projectors over 10 years ago when they were 500 lumens each and cost $4000-$5000. Over the years, more and more departments found the money to purchase projectors, mounts, and cabling. Projectors slowly increased in resolution and brightness, all the while decreasing in price to the point where I can now pick up a 2700-lumen XGA projector for under $650.

Many teachers jumped on the bandwagon and used their projectors often, while other projectors were rarely used. I could go an entire school year without having to purchase a projector lamp.

However, as we go into the 2010-2011 school year, nearly every classroom in my school of 3300 students has a video projector. And with it, many teachers are using their projectors all periods of the day. Most of the projectors eventually lose brightness to the point where they are no longer usable, but a seemingly suprising amount of lamps are actually popping in the middle of usage. (Maybe 5 or more a year?)

In order to properly plan for how many projector lamps we'll need to purchase (beg for funds) each year, my department started carefully tracking the lamp hours of every projector in circulation. For the past 18 months, we periodically visited every projector on the same day, cleaned the filter, and took note of the lamp hours.

We started during Spring Break 2009. Using data from Spring Break to Summer Break 2009, we tallied 13,778 lamp hours over 52 school days. Extrapolating this to a 176-day school year, we were on pace to total 46,633 annual lamp hours. I initially divided the annual hours by 2000 hours, the average expected life of most projector lamps. This means we needed to purchase at least 23 lamps each year.

We tallied lamp hours again during Winter Break 2009 and Summer Break 2010. Now that we have over a year's worth of data, we can concentrate on just Summer Break 2009 and Summer Break 2010, and no longer have to extrapolate. We totalled 50,766 hours, so we are on pace to need to stock over 25 lamps per year. We installed a few more projectors this summer, so I expect that number to continue to rise.

So, for the near future, we can bank on needing at least 25 lamps per year. At an average of $300 per lamp, this works out to $7500 per year. However, for budgeting reasons, I know these numbers will be skewed by a couple of factors:

1. Since we neglected to plan for lamps for so many years, we let many projectors go past the 2000 hour mark, and many more are approaching the 2000 hour mark. I'm calling this the Projector Lamp Baby Boom phenomenon. We figure for the next year or two we may need more than the average number of lamps per year.
2. In some cases it makes sense to purchase a new projector because the old projector may be too dim even with a new lamp, or has too low of resolution, or replacement lamps are too expensive.
3. Most of the new projectors I purchase have an expected lamp life of 3000 hours, so I'll eventually need to refine my calculations.

I used a simple spreadsheet (currently in Google Docs) to keep track of the lamp hours. You'll need to create a new column each time you take a lamp hour measurement. You'll also need to be careful of how you keep track of projectors whose lamps you replace. For example, for my Summer 2010 measurements, I actually have 2 columns. I put the same data in both columns, unless I wind up changing a lamp over the summer. This way my previous and future lamp usages will be more accurate.

Happy tallying!

Customize the Splash Screen on your Hitachi Video Projector

Hitachi video projectors have a nifty feature called MyScreen. This is an advanced feature which intrigued me in the past, but I had put off using in practice. This summer, however, I am loading up all of my MyScreen-enabled projectors with the same image.

The MyScreen feature lets you create a splash screen to replace the default HITACHI blue screen that is normally displayed upon power-up or when there is no signal.

Uploading the image to the projector is a snap.  I created my image using PowerPoint, although any image editing program will do. Then, turn your video projector on and tune it to the appropriate RGB input to display the computer image. Find the MyScreen menu selection, and within a few clicks, the projector will start capturing your image to its permanent memory.

There is a catch: the image captured by the projector is only 640 by 480 pixels. The Hitachi manual does not really specify this constraint. If you are running a higher resolution, you will be given a 640 by 480 block to move around the screen to pick the final image. Since I wanted the whole screen to be captured, I set my PowerPoint presentation to display in 640 by 480 resolution.

There are several options involved with the MyScreen feature. For example, you can choose whether to display the MyScreen image during power-up or lost signal, and whether to display the MyScreen image each time you hit the BLANK button on your remote. You can lock your customized screen to make it to difficult to accidentally erase it, and on later models, you can even protect it with a password.

I believe network-capable Hitachi projectors have even more MyScreen features, like the ability to push to a customized splash screen to all projectors (or any image or short presentation) over the network. The prospect of adding a network drop to all of our rooms just for projector maintenance seems far down the road, so I have not purchased projectors with this feature.

Happy splashing!

Short-throw video projectors for interactive whiteboards: Hitachi CP-A200 review

When it comes to video projectors, I tend to prefer ceiling-mounted over front-wall mounted. There a number of interactive whiteboards out there with video projectors that stick out awkwardly over the whiteboard.

The interactive whiteboards with builtin projectors may be easier to mount and possibly rig cabling than whiteboards with separate ceiling projectors, but they are generally ugly and generally more expensive than buying the individual components yourself. Plus, they seem to hang so low that students will be tempted to knock around the projector for fun (though ceiling projectors are not immune to this), and taller staff members could knock their heads on the projector.

We had a situation where a certain classroom might contain asbestos ceiling tiles, so we were not allowed to disturb the ceiling. So, we were forced to go with a wall mounted projector. Because this room was smaller than an average classroom, I toyed with the idea of installing a projector at the back of the room, but the throw distance was still too far and we would have had to purchase an overly expensive projector.

We settled on a wall-mounted short-throw projector from Hitachi, the CP-A52. It looks great, but you have to picture it upside-down (note to self: take a picture!). There is only about a foot of space between the wall and the projector. The door that you see in the picture is motorized; it automatically closes when the projector is shut down. The current iteration of this projector is the CP-A200. The CP-A200 is 3000 lumens, has XGA resolution, and has a street price under $1400.

With Hitachi's normal ceiling projectors under $650, we're only considering the CP-A200 where a ceiling projector won't work. For example, our Library is considering one for an area with a 2-story ceiling. Normally, if we really had to have a projector for that location, we would have to consider mounting a long-throw projector across the room at around $4000 or so. The new class of short throw projectors is making this a more reasonable prospect.

Check out this full review of the Hitachi CP-A200 over at ProjectorCentral.com.

You can get a very competitive quote on the CP-A200 from Troxell Communications. In Illinois, my rep is Kevin LeBlanc at 847.854.6772.

I receive no compensation from manufacturers, websites, or retailers.

Customizing your Hitachi Video Projector

I have pretty much standardized my school on Hitachi LCD projectors. We have them going back to 1999. Here are my Hitachis in the approximate order we received them:

• (9) CP-S860
• (5) CP-S225
• (2) CP-X380
• (3) CP-S318
• (3) ED-S3170
• (1) CP-X340
• (9) CP-S235
• (3) CP-S240
• (7) CP-X250
• (27) CP-X251
• (2) CP-X444
• (11) CP-X200
• (1) CP-X400
• (15) CP-X201
• (2) CP-X206
• (19) CP-X2510
• (1) CP-A52 (short throw)

We do have a couple Epsons, Sharps, Panasonics, and Proximas that have slipped in for various reasons.

Now that almost every classroom in our building has a video projector, I am taking a look at some of the advanced features they have. Namely:

• Creating a customized welcome screen (Hitachi calls this MyScreen)
• Customizing the names of the various inputs
• Setting the transition detector
• Setting the fan speed to HIGH
• Adjusting the time between nagging Clean Filter messages
• Setting a password

Further articles will go more in depth into these various features.