The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast Casio Lampfree Projectors at Infocomm 2019

Episode Date: June 28, 2019

Casio Lampfree Projectors at Infocomm 2019 casioprojector.com

Hi folks, welcome to the Chris Voss Show podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks for coming by for another episode. We certainly appreciate you. Be sure to subscribe to the show and tell your friends, relatives, and everybody you know to subscribe to the show as well. Geez, wow, we're on Spotify, iHeartRadio, Spreaker, just about every sort of different variation of podcast app out there you can take and get the Chris Voss Show on. So please tell your friends to subscribe, share the show, all that good stuff. Certainly appreciate it. Today we're going to have a really interesting gentleman on the show and we're going to be reviewing a product that we saw at Infocom 2019. They won best of show which is awesome as well. It's going to be Wayne Borg. He's the marketing manager for the business product division of Casio.

You can go check out the Casio products. We're going to be talking about a Casio lamp free.com. And these things are going to blow your mind, especially if you're a corporate educator or if you're a speaker, I think you're going to love these products. So let's introduce Wayne and we'll get the show rolling. So welcome to the show, Wayne. Uh, tell us about what you guys are doing there at Casio. Well, what we're doing is we're making lamp-free projectors. Actually, we pioneered the technology in 2010. So this is now our 10th year of production of lamp-free technology. And what's great about lamp-free technology in projectors is that it eliminates the lamp,

which is the biggest complaint from users with projectors. And what we do is we use a laser and LED hybrid light source. And by using a combination of lasers and LEDs, not only do we eliminate the lamps, but we also are able to get high brightness, vibrant colors, and it's much more efficient than lamp-based projectors. So with lamp-free technology, they run cool, they last a long time, we rate them for up to 20,000 hours, so if you're using it in an office, eight hours a day, Monday through Friday, they'll last over 10 years. If you're using it in a school environment, 185 days a year, six, seven hours a day, you're talking over 15 years of operation life. And that's virtually maintenance-free operation. There's no lamps to replace. There's

also no filters in them either. So, there's no filters to clean. There's no filters to replace. And they're going to last for a very long time. So, another added benefit is that there's no mercury in the products because all lamp-based projectors use mercury vapor lamps. Oh, wow. They're expensive to replace, and they degrade quickly. Normally, after 2,000, 3,000 hours, they're almost at half the brightness, and they're expensive to replace. You have to get somebody to get up on a ladder and change it. There's labor costs involved, and also you have to properly dispose of it. It usually costs like $9 to $15 to actually properly dispose of it

so it doesn't wind up in the local landfill. So we've been talking about sustainability or environmental-friendly products. Lamp-free technology by Casio is definitely a great product to look at. You can learn more about our products on our website, www.catiolampfree.com but talking about sustainability one of the most overlooked benefits of lamp free product our projectors is that it uses 30 to 50 percent less electricity than a lamp based projector so if you have a hundred classrooms in your school and you replace all of your lamp projectors with lamp-free projectors, you're going to save hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year just on electricity alone, just from using the product.

So that's a great savings to your bottom line, your P&L. And also it's a great way to reduce your carbon footprint and get in on any green initiatives that you have going. So with that, one of the things that we've done is we've made a dust-resistant design. We've blocked off the optical system. So we still have fans to cool down the light source and the power supply, but none of the air is getting into the optical system. So with that, none of the dust and debris is getting into the optical system either. So with that, not only are they going to last for 20,000 hours, they're going to maintain the brightness the majority of that time. And that's one of the reasons why we don't need to have a filter in there.

So there's no cleaning filters every six months. There's no replacing filters every year. The maintenance on it is really, really minimal. This is pretty cool. Yeah. Another added benefit is they turn on real quick. Most of our projectors turn on in five to eight seconds. Where with lamp-based projectors, if you've ever turned on a projector,

you're waiting a couple minutes for the lamp to warm up. And then if you accidentally shut it off, usually with our lamp-based projector, you have to wait for it to cool down a couple minutes before you can turn it on, and then you gotta wait for it to warm back up. With ours, it's instant off. There's no fans running to cool it since they run cool. With ours, it's instant off. There's no fans running the coolant

since they run cool. So if you accidentally shut it off, turn it back on right away, you're up and running in five to eight seconds. So it's really a time-saving convenience, too. That's probably the teacher's favorite feature, that they turn on real quickly and the fact that they're bright and they stay bright for for a long long time and over the years um you know we've we've come down and bridged the price cap so um you know since we've been in this this business for for a long time this is like i said this is our 10th year of production on lamprey um our pricing um yeah you're going to spend a little bit more money for the initial purchase, but, you know, it's only going to be $80 to $100 higher than a comparable lamp-based projector,

you know, apples to apples, same kind of brightness. So even though you're spending a little bit more for the initial purchase, if you look at the total cost of ownership, you know, after five or ten years, you're not changing any lamps. You're not changing any filters. You're using less electricity. Over the life of the projector, you're going to save a lot more money by switching over to a lamp-free, going to the laser LED-based technology. And it really sounds like it.

From what you're telling me, you know, it's a great value. We saw this at Infocom 2019 this year you guys are showcasing them uh you can go to cassiolampfree.com to check these out uh and these are great for schools because schools you know they don't have a lot of money when they spend money it's gotta last and you know you're talking about something that can last tens of years or 20 years or whatever, however long you can get the distance out of these. And you guys have, you guys have rated these to where even if you're operating like every day for eight hours a day, uh, it's great. Same thing with corporate, you know, corporates, uh, you know, just as miserly with their money and making sure that they get, you

know, the most distance for their thing. And of course you want the latest technology as well. Uh, you guys have got some really cool lineups here at the website. You've got the Superior Projector Series, the Core Series, Advanced, Slim. You've got a nice beautiful Slim one. That's really pretty. And then 4K Ultra HD with 8.3 million pixels. Holy crap. That looks awesome. Yeah, we always say we have something for everyone.

Our core series is great if you just need a basic projector, if you only need VGA or HDMI input. That's a great solution for the budget-friendly consumer. The core series is available in 3300 and 3500 lumens, so they're very, very bright and inexpensive. And then in the same form factor, we have our advanced series. And when you jump up to an advanced series, you get additional functionality, a built-in 16-watt speaker, full connectivity package with two HDMIs and powered USB.

And, you know, it's a great series. It also gives you enhanced Wi-Fi options, networking. And what we've done this year is we've added a suite of what we call educational solutions, but basically it's a collaboration tool. And it does a couple of things. For a classroom or for a conference room, it gives you quick wireless connections. So all you have to do is download our app from our website or from the App Store or the Chrome Store. And once you connect the first time using the app,

all you have to do is click on the logo, and it's automatically going to connect wirelessly from your device, either a PC, tablet, or cell phone, to the projector. So this will speed up connections for kids going from classroom to classroom or from corporate you know, corporate people going into a conference room. You're not having to fumble around with the wires. And not only do you get quick connections, but it also gives moderator control to one person.

So you can, the teacher can moderate and have control of whose PC they're going to display up onto the screen. And actually, you can connect up to 40 devices at one time, and you can project up to four of them on screen at the same time. So the teacher can connect wirelessly and then control all the devices from anywhere in the classroom. They can walk around and really get into the collaboration process they also have a cool feature called PC remote where the teacher can control their own PC wirelessly so they don't have to keep running up to the front desk and to change page webpages or or flip to the

next slide in their PowerPoint presentation, they can control that wirelessly from a tablet or a cell phone. This might be good for speakers, too, who go out and do their own sort of show presentation. You know, they're not big events, but, you know, events where they have to bring their own sort of projector or have their own, or, you know, they're doing small conference sort of speaking? Yeah, I mean, it's anywhere where you have a couple of people trying to connect or you have a couple of people presenting, you could easily switch from one device to another

and allow them to control the devices as well. So all of these are included in our network models on our advanced UltraShort Throw and Superior series at no cost. So, you would need our wireless dongle or hook up a wireless router. If you connect with our wireless dongle, you can connect up to eight devices at a time. If you use a router, you can connect up to 40. But it's a great solution for collaborating and connecting quickly. And we've already got a great feedback at Infocom this year on that as well. And then, you know, you mentioned our Superior series. That's our Superior Series.

That's our latest series, and actually we won several awards at Infocom from Projector Central and from Tech and Learning. Best of Show Awards at Infocom and then at ISTE. So we're really proud of it. It's our 4,000 lumen series. We're offering it in WXGA and WUXGA resolution. The WUX resolution is native HD. The resolution on it is really, graphics are really incredible. They really pop.

The colors, this is our latest generation of our lamp-free light engine. The colors are more vibrant and deeper and warmer than ever. The 4,000 lumens is extremely bright. And the price point for a 4,000-lumen laser LED projector is under $2,000, which is very affordable, especially for the larger classrooms like in higher education and any classroom. Wow. The estimated light source life on those is up to 20,000 hours. Projection screen size from 30 to 300 inches, projection range for a 60-inch screen of 5.4 to 9.1 feet. Depending upon your VGA, of course,

it looks like it adjusts just a few portions of a feet, depending upon which version you buy. It's 1920 by 1200 for the two top superior ones, and then 1280 by 800 for the uh bottom tier um yeah pretty awesome man i mean this is really the future what it's going you know i i grew up in the age of the eight millimeter projector so i'm really familiar with dust on the lens and noise and fan noise i mean that's that's one thing that you run into when you're running with lamp uh you run in uh you know running with these loud uh fans that are trying to cool that lamp and you guys don't have any of that going on

no well it still has fans to cool down the cool down the light source and the power supply but they don't have to work as hard as the lamp based projectors do because because it runs cool so that's another benefit and the superior series, like you were mentioning, the throw distances, it has a 1.7 times zoom lens. So that gives you added flexibility with installations. It's going to fit into a, you know, you could put it closer or further away from the screen. So it'll fit into a lot more existing brackets where you don't have to make any changes and spend any additional money. Also, you can shoot in 360-degree angles. So you can shoot down from the ceiling, shoot up from the floor, left, right, portrait. You can angle it any way you want, and the Superior Series is going to work.

And it's actually one of the smallest 4,000 lumen solid-state projectors in the world right now. It's a very compact size, which is great for the retail channel where they're trying to hide the lower profile is more important. We sell a lot of our slim series into the retail where they're trying to hide in a compact space. Our Slim Series is only 1.7 inches thick and only weighs about 5 pounds. So it's one of the greatest portable projectors around. Even though they're so small and compact it's a real projector it's not a Pico projector

it's 3000 lumens so it'll work in pretty bright situations you're not going to have to close the shades and turn the lights off to use it and it's solid state so we don't recommend that you bounce it around, but there's less of a chance of something happening because there's less moving parts, so it's better for travel.

And actually, it comes with a carrying case to take it around with you. So those are really popular with the road warriors, the people that are doing presentations on the road a lot. The Slim is really cute. It's pretty nice. It's a 1280x800 with an aspect ratio of 16 to 10 with two times power zoom and focus. It's really cute. I like the size of it. I don't know why. It's just, I don't know. I love

stuff that's small, but yet powerful and super feature rich. And it weighs just 5.1 pounds, so you can easily take it with you. Like you said, there's a carrying case. Great for a smartphone or tablet connection. 1.69 inches in thickness, I think it says here.

And I think it's, now, do all of them work with the app or do you have to, or do only certain ones of your models work with the app? Well, we have an app for all of the wireless ones. For our new educational solutions, that's for our advanced series, ultra short throw, and the Superior Series only. Yeah. Being able to have that control is really important, and a lot of people need to take that into a factor when they price this, being able to have that control.

I like the feature where you can have, depending upon how you add the accessory, you can have up to 40 users on here. This would be great for, like, boardroom collaboration or if you're going into corporate meetings and you're collaborating on some sort of idea, everyone can kind of share or input or talk and jump on the line, right? Yeah. Yes. That's awesome. That's exactly what it's designed for.

It's awesome sauce. And then I haven't talked about our Ultra Short Throw series. So the Ultra Short Throw has a very short throw distance, 0.28. So you can put it from 6 to 24 inches away from the screen, and you can get up to a 110-inch size display. So this is really great for really tight spaces where you have really small rooms and you don't want to put the projector in the back of the room. This can go right up against the wall. We actually make a bracket so that you can hang it off the wall.

And also, you know, this way you're not walking in front of the – between the projector and the screen and casting a shadow. You get clear, shadow-free images with the short throws. This is the one most people use interactive software with. We don't include any interactive software with our projectors, but we're compatible with just about all of the third-party interactive software and hardware that's on the market. Awesome stuff. Yeah, we make three models of the Ultra Short Throw,

a 3,100 lumen and two 3,500 lumen models, one with networking and one without networking. And it looks like you've got a pretty interesting dust-resistant design on the throw cabinets. It's got three different areas, I guess. Yeah, so what we've done is we've blocked off the optical system. So by blocking the optical system off, we still have the fans that cool down the light source and the power supply, but none of the dust that's flowing through is getting

into the optics. So that's why not only does it last 20,000 hours, it maintains the brightness the majority of that time as well. That's awesome. I mean, I remember the old days of, like I said, 8mm or cheap projectors, and you'd have the, you'd get the dust that would get in the back of the thing, and you'd just be like, well, that's never, I guess we're just going to have to live with that. He's just stuck with it. So that's awesome.

And that's one of the reasons why we don't need a filter. And, you know, filters, you're supposed to clean them every six months, replace them every year. You know, if people don't do that, then, you know, the projectors tend to overheat. With our lamp-free, dust-resistant designs, there's minimal maintenance on it. You don't have to worry about filters. You don't have to worry about lamps. You know, you're just pretty much setting it and forget it, you know.

That's the, and that's the important thing with all electronics. Heat kills the longevity of any sort of product, whether it's networking or projectors or anything else. So keeping that heat value down is real important in the longevity of your product. Yeah, and we stand behind our products, too. We offer three years and 6,000 hours on the light source on all of our projectives. But to the education channel, we're offering a five-year full all-parts and all-labor warranty on our advanced, superior, and ultra-short throw series. So this way, when you're buying a Casio,

you can buy it with confidence. You're not going to have to worry about it down the road. And if you do have a problem, we're standing behind it, and we're going to take care worry about it down the road um we will stay and if you do have a problem we're standing behind it we're going to take care of it five years man that's a that's a really great warranty holy crap that's that's uh really standing behind your product and stuff that means you really believe in it i like when i see warranties like that i'm like they really believe in what they built so that's awesome and one of the reasons you know our factory you know designed this product

was was to remove mercury um from from the the environment um and actually um uh we've made over 1 million um lamp free projectors now and by our calculations we've removed removed over 44 pounds of mercury that would have went into the landfills of the world. So we feel really good about that, that not only is it a great product that gives you a great picture and lasts a long time, but it's also helping to remove mercury from the landfills of the world. So that's another reason to buy them. They're environmentally friendly. And I imagine a lot of corporate and educational buyers now. That's probably a factor for them.

Yeah, there's a lot of schools that have green initiatives, and what they're trying to do is reduce their carbon footprint so that way they don't use as much electricity. And going to a lamp-free projector is definitely one of the ways to go. And in a lot of the schools and even in a lot of the boardrooms, you're seeing there's been a trend to go away from projectors and towards flat panel displays. And the main reason is because of the lamps.

So because of the headaches with all of the lamps, they're switching over to the flat panels. The pro on that is, A, it's a great picture. And if you're watching graphics and you're watching sports or movies, it's fantastic. But if you're in a corporate environment and you're reading numbers and letters, or if you're in a school environment with the curriculars, mostly text and numbers, or corporate where it's Excel spreadsheets, the further away you are from the screen, the harder it is to read. So people don't realize that, you know, if you're 20 feet back from the screen,

you need a screen that's over 100 inches, you know, 100 inches diagonal. So, you know, most flat panels over, you know, 86-inch flat panels are over $4,000, where you can get up to a 300-inch screen with one of our projectors, you know, with a screen, you know, and it'll cost you under $1,000. So your cost per inch of a projector and a screen is much less than a flat panel. And like I said, you know, flat panels have a great, great, great image, but I think that with our lamp-free solution that eliminates the biggest headache from projectors,

that now a lamp-free projector and a screen is a very viable option in a lot of conference rooms and schools around the country. Yeah, there's nothing worse than when you hear that fan go on and it's blowing like at 5,000 decibels. You're just like, well, we'll just sit and listen to the fan on the cool-down the lamp of the projector. This is really awesome what you guys are doing.

This is really awesome. Those of you who want to check this out, go to Cassiolampfree.com. I know it's the Keystone Correction Vertical on the Superior Series is 30 degrees auto or up to plus or minus 30 degrees manual if you want to adjust that. So that's great too. Yeah, so when you're installing it, you can adjust it and fine tune it to get it perfectly square. Awesome, Sauce.

And the projection range on the Superior is, I know I quoted the 60-inch, so I'll quote the 100-inch here. It's 9.2 to 15.4 feet for the two top models and just a little bit off from that for the two bottom models. So pretty awesome. It's energy efficient. It saves mercury out of the environment and we all know mercury is not the greatest thing to have in the environment i mean unless it's natural mercury i suppose but we really don't need those in landfills uh and uh yeah you can save a lot of money you can get uh 20 up to 20 000 hours of of productivity out of it

so you definitely get your money's worth. When you take 20,000 hours and divide it by the price of these things, it comes out to be super cheap, really, when it comes down to it. Yep. And then you've got your five-year warranty and the superior lineup to 4,000 lumens. You've got your 4K. So you guys can go to their website and check it out it's at casio lamp free.com they've got six different series of uh production models the superior

the core the advanced the slim the 4k ultra hd and the ultra short short throw and then uh inside of that they've got of course different models for each of the different series of products they do. They look beautiful, too. They look really super nice. And, yeah, you guys won a lot of awards at Infocom. We were promoting that during the Infocom show with you guys. And you guys won a number of awards, I think, there for some of your different Casio products. Yeah, we're proud of our Superior series.

Everyone that's seen it and evaluated it has liked it. This is our first WUXGA offering in our lamp-free projectors, so you can get that full HD. I think that's something that people have been asking for, and that's starting to become the standard in certain channels now as well. Yeah, and our Ultra Short Throw and the Superior both won Best of Show Awards at ISTE this week in Philadelphia. So we're really proud of the product. But again, we pioneered laser projector technology in 2010.

We've been making it for years. It's tried and true. This is now the Superior is our eighth generation light engine. So if you're looking to switch over to laser projectors, you should definitely check out our assortment and look at what we're doing today. And that pretty much says it all, Chris. Awesome, Sauce. In fact, I was just looking up, before you mentioned the Best of Show, I was looking up to see what the awards were. Yeah, Best of Show Infocom 2019 Best of Show winner, the Casio

XJ-S400 UN DLP Laser LED projector. And I think there's some other ones here throughout the thing. But yeah, we were promoting your guys' booth. Really interesting stuff that was going on. What's the next big show you guys are doing so people can maybe catch it, that show

if they're out at it? Well, that was going on. What's the next big show you guys are doing so people can maybe catch it, that show, if they're out at it? Um, we're, well, summer's kind of an off, off, off season for us,

but, um, we'll be doing, um, Educause in the fall and, uh, as well as,

uh, IETC and the Rocky Mountain AVX show and, oh, there's a bunch of them. Yeah, there's a lot.

If you're looking for a projector for your classroom, if you're looking for a projector for a conference room, these are a fantastic solution. Most of my influencer friends are speakers. And so if they aren't going to big shows and speaking where there's already a projector that runs their thing, they're doing small conference room sort of things for corporate. And so this would be perfect for them to take in because they can have – I know one of the biggest complaints they have is getting their slides to work with whatever the projectors that they go to in small conference rooms. So this is a great way where they could just bring their own and then everything's set up. They don't have to, they don't have to, you know, muck around with trying to get everything

paired and get everything sequenced. And I've had some of my speaker friends that they've actually, you know, they've actually just had to give up on trying to work with whatever the system is that they're at. So this is a great way they could take any one of these on the road with them. And then they just, they have it set up, they have it programmed, they can control it with the app. That's another thing, of course, they like in controlling their slides as they go through their presentations. So this would be a great product for them as well.

Yeah, sure. Definitely, definitely. Anything more we need to know about the Casio products? There is one other thing. We talk about sustainability. I'm not sure if you're familiar with TCO Certified. No. They're a third party evaluating company out of Europe.

And basically, they're kind of like how Energy Star rates products in the United States to make sure that they're doing everything they say they are TCO certified does a similar thing in in in Europe but they they do actually more they look at the factory where it was produced to make sure that the factory is doing you know is not using any child labor or unsafe labor conditions or anything like that, and that it's a clean facility. And then they look at the product, just like Energy Star, to make sure if we climb 3,500 lumens, it is 3,500 lumens, and that all the performance meets or exceeds what we're claiming and then

it looks at um uh how it goes back and recycles into the environment so uh we actually have um 11 models that are certified tco certified so that's that's a that's a something also that we're proud of um that um that these models um you know, actually TCO certified came around because cell phone and computer buyers were concerned about where these things were being produced, whether they were being produced in sweatshops or anything like that. So TCO certified kind of, you know, certifies these products to make sure that they came from a safe factory, that they're claiming everything they did, and that they also are going to go back into the environment and not have any hazardous materials in them.

So we're very proud that we have 11 models that are TCO certified. And that's another thing to talk about if you're, if you're, um, uh, if you have a green initiative, um, or, or, or you're looking at, uh, leads, uh, building environments and things like that. So, um, that's pretty awesome because everyone's got green initiatives nowadays. Everyone wants products that, you know, they're, they're sourced well. And, uh, you know, child labor is always a factor and all that good stuff, making sure that everyone is doing what they're supposed to be doing. And that's awesome. I'm going to be looking for that, doing some research and understanding that certification more because I think that's great. A lot more people should be looking for that

because I know that's a real important, especially like millennial consumers, Gen X, Gen Y, you know, they're becoming more concerned about what's going on with all that and what goes into their products and how they're made and stuff. And that's awesome. Yeah, and Casio, you know, we're not afraid to have people come and evaluate and test out our projectors. In fact, we have the first projector in outer space. We have a projector that's up on the International Space Station. Holy crap.

And it had to go through a battery of tests in order for it to allow it up there. Actually, two years ago, they watched the Super Bowl on our projector. Did they really? In the International Space Station. That is an awesome story. And like I said, the factory had to supply all of this because that's a contained environment

so they had to find out exactly what was in it and if anything happened and what if this shattered, what if this happened. And so it had to go through a rough battery of tests in order to get approved to be up there. And it did. That's awesome.

We have the first projector in outer space. Awesome stuff. So basically, Cassiolanfree.com has space age technology projectors. That's correct, yes. That is an awesome story. I love that story. So that's great. If it's good for NASA, it's That is an awesome story. I love that story. So that's great. If it's good for NASA, it's probably good for your thing.

I mean, even the kids would like that. When they're in the classrooms, they'd be like, oh, this is a NASA projector. It's been in space. So that's really great. Anything more we need to know? I think we pretty much covered everything, Chris. Sounds good. Well, it's been great to have you on the show, Wayne. Everyone go check out

CasioLampFree.com. Hopefully we'll get some of these products to review on the Chris Voss Show. We'll look forward to that if we get a chance. But go to their website, CasioLampFree.com. Alright, folks. Well, thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by the show today. Be sure to check out the website

for Casio and all that good stuff. stuff they got some really exciting products and I was really impressed with all the stuff we learned about their Casio projectors anyway be sure to refer the show to your friends neighbors relatives give us like subscribe to us on YouTube hit that bell notification button so you get all the notifications for the updates of the show be sure to share the show on your social channels we certainly appreciate you folks that do that you guys are awesome and thanks for tuning in we'll see you next time