How many meetings have you been to where there was a scrabbling for the lights at the beginning and end of a sales pitch? One new addition to the meeting room technology market is interactive room-control systems. A room control system will allow you to control most of the IP TV in the conference room from a single centralized area.
A room control system ends all that moving around to switch on the lights, complaints that the thermostat must be turned down, and questions about who is nearest the projector (and who knows where the button is to turn it on).
Another more elemental addition to IP TVtechnology in meeting rooms is a devoted computer. This is especially necessary for those that tend to spend a lot of time presiding over meetings. Instead of being required to unplug and haul a computer into the conference room (or, worse, calling the tech unit to set one up in there for you), all you must do is bring a CD of your presentation, or find the presentation via the web. This makes setting up for meetings fast and unproblematic, and also helps with IP TV, as everything is already in its place.
With the price of travel ever-increasing, video conferencing is becoming more and more key, especially in larger companies with nationwide (or world-wide) branches. While the traditional teleconference still has its place in a meeting, and probably always will, the opportunity to see and speak easily to your coworkers or clients can be very important.
After a digital projector, the next step in conference room technology is the electronic whiteboard. The traditional dry erase board has been a conference room standard for years. But it has limitations which really are seen when compared to some of the IP TVtechnology accessible today. For one, everything written on a whiteboard is temporary, and must be erased to leave room to write more. This means that, if the lecture notes will have to be referred to later, somebody will have to be assigned to take notes from the board. But this old-fashioned custom is a thing of the past. Electronic whiteboards eradicate the need to take notes by hand, as all that is noted on their surface can be printed (as with Copyboards), kept as digital information (as with Peripheral boards), or even be arranged, grouped, and interacted with (Interactive Whiteboards).
A new variation on the electronic white board is the PDP, or Plasma Display Panel. A plasma display panel is essentially a huge, but much slimmer, flat-screen IP TV or computer monitor. PDPs are in general 42″ to 50″, and have a very clear, intense screen, making them great for video conferencing. Since PDPs are a relatively new addition to the IP TV market, they’re also very costly, ranging from about $8,000 to $20,000. For around $4,000 extra, companies can invest in an interactive overlay for the PDP. This is a relatively small investment when compared to the price of the PDP and when bearing in mind the many practical uses of a PDP with an interactive overlay. An interactive overlay will put in touch sensibility and annotation abilities, letting you to use your PDP just like an interactive whiteboard.
www.edgevision.co.uk