We are really excited to let you know (in case you missed the announcement) that Samsung are now offering their amazing ultra-large, ultra-wide monitor, the CHG90, with a screen size of 49 inches (124.5 cms) and aspect ratio of 32:9 – equivalent to two 16:9 monitors side by side!
This screen, the largest aspect ratio available in the industry, is intended for the gaming community but could be an extremely useful display for the huddle room and could herald the availability of larger, more mainstream 32:9 displays.
Built with Quantum Dot technology, the monitor delivers a billion shades of accurate colour plus support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) providing mind-blowing detail across the total brightness range of the picture. Built very much with high frame-rate video in mind, the curved monitor has super-fast 1ms MPRT (motion picture response time) to add to an unprecedented all-round picture performance.
The PanaCast 2 camera, launched in May 2015 by Altia Systems, is the world’s first 180° 4K Panoramic Plug-and-Play camera to deliver video with a natural human perspective and also uses the same 32:9 aspect ratio! The combination of the PanaCast 2 and 32:9 displays promises an affordable, immersive, telepresence-like experience at the desk or in the video meeting room.
The PanaCast 2 with Intelligent Zoom provides a new and innovative solution to meeting the challenges created by modern huddle room and classroom deployments, where a much wider field-of-view is demanded than can typically be achieved using legacy PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom) cameras or low-cost webcams. It ensures everyone in the room is always in shot and whiteboards or flip charts are clearly visible thanks to its industry-leading 180° field-of-view and 4K (UHD, 4 megapixel) resolution.
For more information about the groundbreaking PanaCast 2 camera and to see it in action please click here.
For more information about the Samsung Monitor please click here.
We are delighted to announce that PanaCast 2, the world’s first 180° 4K Panoramic Plug-and-Play video camera along with its ground-breaking Intelligent Zoom feature, has been shortlisted for an AV Award in the Collaboration Product of the Year 2017 category.
Now in its 19th year, the AV Awards were established to recognise excellence across the Audio Visual Industry. The aim of the AV Awards is to reward innovation and best practice, whilst encouraging others within the industry to raise standards across the board.
PanaCast 2 – 180° 4K Panoramic Video Camera
PanaCast 2 with Intelligent Zoom has been recognised for providing a new and innovative solution to meeting the challenges created by modern huddle room and classroom deployments where a much wider field-of-view is demanded than can typically be achieved using legacy PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom) cameras or low-cost webcams. WIth PanaCast 2, everyone in the room is always in shot with whiteboards or flip-charts being clearly visible thanks to its industry-leading 4K (UHD, 4 megapixel) resolution.
And PanaCast 2 can capture a best-in-class 180° field-of-view without the excessive fisheye-type distortion typically created by single-lens, wide-angle cameras.
The Not-So-Dumb Light-Gatherer
The video meeting camera is changing its role from a dumb light-gatherer into the intelligent heart of the meeting room. In-camera video processing capability (the PanaCast 2 has nine on-board processors) presents opportunities for new functionality based on advanced video analytics and processing algorithms that can greatly enhance the user experience.
Intelligent Zoom
Intelligent Zoom, recognised in this shortlisting, is a case in point. Intelligent Zoom (IZ) detects participants in the room and automatically and dynamically zooms and pans to present the most appropriate framing. If additional people arrive or someone leaves the room, IZ will adjust silently and unobtrusively in the background without the need for user intervention of any kind.
PanaCast Whiteboard Application
The just-announced PanaCast Whiteboard app extends this concept of camera intelligence even further to automatically capture a standard whiteboard (or wall), correct for keystone and radial distortion, enhance contrast and brightness for improved readability and present that image as a separate source that can be sent as shared content in a video call. In many cases, this can obviate the need for an expensive interactive “smart” board, an important budget consideration especially when large numbers of huddle rooms are planned and where a Microsoft Surface Hub™ or a Google Jamboard™, for example, would be expensive overkill.
For more information about PanaCast 2 please click here
For more information about the AV Awards please click here
By 2025 the number of students around the globe enrolled in higher education is forecast to reach a massive 262 million!
Add to this the trend towards the adoption of blended learning, flipped classrooms and e-learning strategies and it’s not surprising that demand for video in the lecture theatre, the classroom and in study rooms is growing fast.
For these new learning strategies to be effective they must enable students and lecturers to collaborate effectively with one another by creating the very best user experience while making the technology fade into the background.
However, for most universities and colleges, the old-style Pan, Tilt and Zoom (PTZ) camera that is still being specified, just isn’t up to the job anymore and has many drawbacks which include:
The PanaCast 2 is the worlds first 180°, 4K Panoramic, plug-and-play video camera specially designed to meet the challenges of the modern collaboration (or “huddle”) room as well as classrooms and lecture theatres.
Its best-in-class field-of-view ensures that everyone in the room is in the video sent to the far end without the need for any user intervention. Whether that’s a group sitting close to the display (and therefore, the camera) in a small collaboration room or capturing an entire auditorium audience or lecture platform in one camera shot.
| Institutions | |
|---|---|
| Yale University | University of the West Indies |
| University of Chicago Medical Center | University of Texas |
| Stony Brooke State University of New York | Cornell Law School |
| University of Florida | University of Sunshine Coast |
| Harvard Physics Department | University of Western Sydney |
| University of San Francisco | University of Technology Sydney |
| Oregon State University | University of Arizona |
| University of Technology Sydney | |
| Use Cases |
|---|
| Distance Learning |
| Satellite Campus Learning |
| Remote Learning |
| Connected Classrooms |
“The actual image captured by the camera when we tried it in a lecture theatre (300+ seat) was perfect. Every seat in frame, handled the lighting conditions well, good focus, seamlessly stitched. Very impressed.”
“With PanaCast, students feel like it’s one classroom. They can glance at the panoramic video and see their classmates, no matter how far away they really are.”
“We recently installed several of the PanaCast 2 panoramic cameras in our Zoom meeting rooms. Prior to that, we’d been using an industry-leading PTZ-based conference kit but the camera just couldn’t cover everyone in the small rooms we’re using so we looked for a better solution and the 180 ° PanaCast 2 solved the problem.
One big thing we noticed was how easy the PanaCast 2 was to install. The old, heavy PTZ kit took most of a day due mostly to the challenge of mounting the camera. As we couldn’t invert it, we ended up having to engineer our own camera bracket! The PanaCast 2, being smaller, lighter and able to be inverted, cut installation time to just two hours and resulted in a much neater install.”
"More than 2500 organisations in 38+ countries are using the PanaCast daily to improve their communication and productivity.
Over 200 universities are now adopting the PanaCast for lecture capture and huddle room deployments."
“(PanaCast 2) is a very different form factor than the usual 1080p camera that we are using elsewhere in the lab. You can see it has no seams and it’s a very good picture quality.”
Robert
ScobleFuturist / Rackspace
“PanaCast…actually seems like something that would be both fun and exceedingly useful.”
Michael
SeoWriter / TechCrunch
“The actual image captured by the camera when we tried it in a lecture theatre (300+ seat) was perfect. Every seat in the frame, handled the lighting conditions well, good focus, seamlessly stitched. Very impressed.”
Geoff Lambert
Sr. Project Manager of IT & Digital Services / University of Western Sydney
“… a great improvement over standard video chat experiences.” Read article
Michael Gorman
Editor-in-Chief / Engadget
“The panoramic view allowed me to see all five remote participants at the same time, and the 4k resolution provided great visual detail – allowing me to feel ‘connected’ to everyone in the meeting.”
What Ira M. Weinstein thinks about the PanaCast 2
Senior Analyst & Partner / Wainhouse Research
“We chose the PanaCast 2 video camera because it gives an immersive sense of participation to remote meeting participants. With PanaCast 2, there is no need to squeeze together to get into the scene or waste time panning and zooming like with a typical conference room camera.”
Jolean De KortJolean De Kort
Director Employee Technology / GoDaddy
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