NICE's main offices are in Holborn, London where the organisation has been based for the past three years. The Institute's main conference room, the Derwent Room, enjoys high utilisation by committees, researchers and other medical professionals wishing to conduct meetings and workshops in the pursuit of developing guidance for the NHS, and the room is also used for stakeholder meetings.
The auditorium can be configured in a number of ways: theatre style (taking up to 70 delegates), as well as in boardroom and classroom formats, where the numbers are reduced. When they first took up occupancy, NICE commissioned a multimedia infrastructure based around Sanyo projection, Crestron remote touch control and a 120" 'fast fold' type media display.
"But the increasing use of the Derwent room for technical meetings meant that our needs started to change and it became obvious that we needed a system upgrade," said office manager Christina Bishop. "We needed to be able to show a lot of complicated medical texts and diagrams and so graphic registration was essential."
The Institute put out a tender for an upgraded display - compatible with their existing infrastructure - that would deliver sharp content from PC/laptop, as well as composite and component video from DVD and VHS machines, and satellite news channels (since NICE themselves often appear on air). The display also had to be compatible with the Institute's Polycom video conferencing system.
ACS-APT Computer Systems were offered the contract and they in turn sub-contracted Snelling Business Systems, who recommended an 84" diagonal dnp Supernova daylight front projection screen from UK distributor Paradigm Audio Visual. This optical screen delivers 10 times higher contrast and twice as bright images as standard front screens, say Paradigm.
Snelling Business Systems MD, Toby Wise, remembers: "The old projector had been installed with a downward tilt and was not square to the screen. Despite running this twin lamp 5000 lumen projector on full power it still did not produce a bright, sharp image and the front row of downlights had to be turned off because of light spillage onto the screen." With the new screen fitted, he says, the projector could be run at reduced output using just a single lamp and the room lights did not need to be turned off.
"The correct alignment of the projector to the screen (requiring no keystoning) improved the image and at the same time eliminated a differential focus problem. The image is now vastly superior to that produced on the previous screen, and as the projector runs on a single lamp, the client is now saving on both money and energy."
(Lee Baldock)
