With a UK base in Hemel Hempstead, and sales office throughout Europe and the United States, the XL Video Group maintain a multi-million pound, state-of-the-art equipment inventory. Following impressive year-on-year growth the UK operation is shortly to relocate from its 9,000sq.ft premises to a massive 42,000sq.ft facility in order to accommodate its expanding hire fleet and marketing reach.
Sensing it had a shortage of dependable high-brightness projectors, took delivery of its first consignment of Christie DLP projection in the form of ten flagship S+20K SXGA+ Roadsters. Before the order was confirmed the projector had to pass the stringent evaluation criteria of XL's highly-qualified head of projection, Warren Galt, to ensure that it measured up to spec.
Driven by a powerful 3-chip DLP SXGA+ engine and delivering 20,000 ANSI lumens, the S+20K offers a highly-competitive combination of superior image quality and increased brightness levels from a small footprint, providing greater power, performance, roadworthiness and lower cost-of-ownership to meet the challenges of the most demanding environments.
Looking to broaden its base further into the corporate events market, XL Video was seeking a more creative solution than conventional high brightness projection, and jumped at the opportunity to take the Christie Twist Module option for the projectors, which will facilitate next generation edge blending and image warping on curved screen displays, with low-latency.
"We expect these projectors to be good 'crossover' products, equally at home on a Will Young tour as on live business events, said XL Video business development manager, Al Green.
"Christie has never been off our radar from the very beginning," confirms XL Video managing director, Lee Spencer. "We have made this commitment with the confidence of knowing we are buying from a dependable, DLP market leader that really does support its partner channel.
As for the choice of projector, he says: "While the average show we handle may run a 10K projector the next big jump is up to this class of projector. The S+20K really does output 20,000 ANSI lumens - and you notice that difference immediately."
Dale Miller, Christie vice president EMEA, says: "We have been working with Texas Instruments since 1996 and have built up a lot of experience in the DLP world - in fact the S+20K is today the brightest projector in its class for that footprint. There has been a lot of commitment to the product roadmaps and our success in the Digital Cinema market has borne this out."
Aside from the impressive feature set of the S+20K it is the reduced cost-of-ownership and ease of use after minimum technician training that appeals in particular to Lee Spencer. "When you add up the cost of spares, lens attachments and lamp replacement for an inventory of our size it can become extremely expensive to maintain."
But he says the Christie OEM lens adapters will allow competitive lens to be used with the S+20K, thereby avoiding further capital expenditure. And the fact that Christie's parent company Ushio is one of the world's leading lamp developers will provide a further benefit in terms of optical price and performance.
"We work hard to reduce cost-of-ownership by making re-lamping easy," says Dale Miller. "As for our support, we stock a complete range of spares and are wholly committed to the customer service experience."
Upon delivery of the S+20K projectors, eight were pressed into immediate service - five of them on the new Will Young Autumn UK tour.
(Chris Henry)
