Part 1 in a 2- Part Series
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About two months ago, I was in the market for a new laptop. So, what did I do? I made a list of all the features and specifications that my new laptop needed to meet and created a spreadsheet with all the possible manufacturers that could "fit the bill". Then I went onto the web and spent an evening filling in my spreadsheet with all the possible contenders. And, the outcome? Well, I bought another Dell mostly because of the satisfaction I have enjoyed when dealing with their impeccable technical support team.

Well, a few nights ago, a friend from Disney called me, and asked if I could help narrow down his department's search for a new projection system and give him a list of manufacturers and specifications to look for when doing his search. I obliged him and we started brainstorming over the phone. After spending about an hour on the phone with him, I came to an interesting, but frustrating, realization. It is almost impossible to do an apples-to-apples comparison of features and performance in our industry. Why? It's simple, no standards.

Ok, we do have the ANSI Lumens standards, and some manufacturers are even starting to use them, but in reality, they're useless if not specified with the contrast ratio. But, even if we include ANSI Lumens as a standard, that brings our total to, well, ONE. One standard.

Imagine buying a laptop that was specified to perform at 330MHz only to find out a month later that it was actually only 166 MHz. I bet you would be pretty upset. Well, what's the difference in that example and buying a projector specified to output 1000 lumens and, after setting it side by side with the 800 lumens projector you purchased a month ago, you see that the new projector is actually dimmer! So, what's the difference?

Well, I don't want to pick on the projector manufacturers as in many cases it's not actually their fault and; that's not the point of this article. But the projector example is only one single product and one single example. Now, put yourself in the shoes of someone who designs, specifies and sells (or even buys) systems with over 50 professional AV products in a typical application and virtually none of them with standards. What do you have? The day-to-day perils of the average AV contractor out there today, that's what. If you think you're confused, imagine having to integrate 50 non-standard products without standardized specifications into a system and trying to guarantee a customer it will work, even though the system is using products that he/she has never integrated together before. And, to top it all off, because virtually every system the typical AV contractor does today is custom and there aren't any standards, in many cases, each manufacturer must be called one-by-one to insure compatibility.

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