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NEC Display Solutions client installation Corporate

Pinsent Masons

The versatility of laser projection

Laser projection offers outstanding benefits for digital signage and meeting room visualisation due to its excellent installation flexibility and high brightness. A complex large image requirement at Pinsent Masons is ably addressed through stacking and edge-blending multiple NEC laser projectors.

Pinsent Masons is recognised as one of the most forward-looking and innovative law firms in the country. It operates from 25 offices throughout the UK and beyond, with outreach across 4 continents. The company prides itself on being a purpose-led organisation. The firm believes that helping its clients to succeed is about more than driving profits. Championing change, promoting progress and enabling everyone to make business work better for people is part of its DNA.

The Challenge

Pinsent Masons has recently completed a transformation of the reception area at its London head office to create a social hub for staff and visitors. Reimagining what’s expected of a law firm reception area, the space now provides a more relaxed environment with a coffee van and comfortable seating. The welcoming space is designed to accommodate small informal meetings, town hall gatherings and other large events.

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Intrinsic to the overall foyer design is an installation of NEC projectors delivering a large projected image onto the wall which is visible to passers-by, contributing to the firm’s corporate identity. Constantly refreshing content includes corporate videos, promotion of the company’s industry credentials including Law Firm of the Year, seasonal greetings and digital art, or switched to provide the backdrop and presentation screen for company events.

The combination of high ambient light conditions, requirement for a very large image area and textured fabric wall hanging as the projection surface meant that an exceptionally bright projection was required. A single very large projector did not sit well with the interior design so a solution combining multiple smaller footprint projectors was specified.

The NEC Solution

Laser projection offers a great many benefits for digital signage; any surface becomes the canvas, even an irregular surface can be accommodated. When the projection is turned off, the wall simply becomes a wall again – no big black screens. The footprint is minimal; a projector can be wall or ceiling mounted, discrete and unobtrusive, with no great demand for supporting infrastructure. Yet the resulting projected image is bright enough even for areas of high ambient light, such as Pinsent Masons’ large foyer, with a consistent long-life performance and no maintenance. Professional features such as stacking and edge-blending means that multiple projectors can be used to deliver a larger single, brighter image with added redundancy should one projector fail.

Due to the complexity of the foyer installation, NEC called upon Visual Displays Limited to manage the specialist projection elements of the project.

In order to achieve the necessary brightness, pairs of projectors are ceiling mounted, stacked, one above the other. Originally in a 3 x 1 array, 3 pairs of stacked projectors created a single very wide image, however, in order to accommodate the content, a 16:9 format image was required so an additional pair of stacked projectors was added to create a 2 x 2 array. The image is soft edge-blended with a 15% overlap to create a single very large image using a Vioso warp and blend system with camera calibration.

I was happy to be involved in this project, we have a long-standing relationship with key players in the NEC team and we have worked together on similarly complex installations,” says Greg Jeffreys, Director at VDL. “The P series projectors impress me because they offer a very high spec yet a small footprint. They are also the quietest projectors I have ever worked with making them useful in all kinds of spaces – we are currently developing an application using these projectors for video conferencing.

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Other meeting rooms are equipped with NEC E Series large format displays where the larger sizes deliver presentation content in ultra-high definition for pixel-free viewing even close up.

Marcus Clarke, AV Services Manager at Pinsent Masons recognises the benefits of standardising on NEC for his visual display needs: “NEC is our preferred supplier for visual products with projection and large format displays used in our meeting spaces and for digital signage in the foyer. Not only are they ultra-reliable and have an excellent warranty on the products, the relationship we have means that I can be entirely confident in making the best purchasing decision – NEC takes the time to understand exactly what we want to achieve. Accurate and transparent information is vital when planning an AV project, NEC was able to give me a price on a product which was not even yet available and once it had been quoted, this price did not change over time. Nothing is too much trouble, I was able to borrow a loan product to test over a period of time.”

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In an earlier deployment of laser projection in Pinsent Masons’ auditorium, NEC supplied 2 x 12,000 lumen PH1202HL projectors. Originally planned to be integrated within a housing hidden from view, when this was no longer a viable option, NEC was able to offer a solution which met the client’s desire to maintain the aesthetic.

By customising the units to match the colour of the ceiling, the projectors are unobtrusive yet continue to deliver reliable performance. NEC finds the solution for its customers; “no other manufacturer can be so flexible and accommodating,” Marcus confirms.

The Result

The vision to which the architect and interior designers were working towards on the refreshed foyer area at Pinsent Masons demanded an unobtrusive technology element to support a minimalist uncluttered finish. NEC specified P Series laser projection as the ideal solution, delivering versatile installation flexibility combined with superior reliability.

“We have enjoyed a longstanding partnership with NEC, we have some units which even after 16 years are still working today, testament to the quality and reliability of its technology,” says Marcus. “We can be confident that when we turn on an NEC display or projector, there is no question as to whether it will work!”

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