Eiki International, Inc.

Missoula, MT - September 2015… Known as the Garden City for its mild winters relative to the rest of Montana, the city of Missoula is comprised of six wards, all of which are overseen—from a governmental perspective—by the City Council Chambers. To ensure the best possible image quality for the weekly city council meetings, sub-committee sessions, and other public hearings that take place there, the city government recently upgraded the house projection system with an EIP-UHS100 HD Widescreen DLP® Projector drawn from the catalog of Santa Margarita, CA-based Eiki International, Inc.

EVCO Sound & Electronics of Spokane, WA, an AV systems design / build firm specializing in projects for the Business, Education, Government, Healthcare and House of Worship markets, was contracted to handle the Missoula City Council Chambers’ facility upgrade. EVCO Sales Engineer James Wasem, who oversees sales design and engineering, project management, and some installation for the company, discussed the nature of the Missoula City Council Chambers project.

According to Wasem, the new 8,000 lumen Eiki EIP-UHS100 DLP projector with an AH-CD20202 lens was a replacement for an aging 5,000 lumen LCD projector. The previous projector and screen delivered lower quality results than city officials desired, especially for the viewing of spreadsheets and high-detail images. City management wanted to ensure the new projector was very crisp and bright and had the ability to project a larger image.

“The new Eiki projector is used to display public hearing content that includes PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets, photos, and other related content,” Wasem explained. “HD content is sent from a laptop computer via Extron DTP-series transceivers using a shielded CAT6A cable and is delivered to the projector’s HDMI input at 1920 x 1200 resolution. The new projector was installed in the existing ceiling mounted location, suspended about 12 feet from the floor and 19 feet from the screen. For this project, we used the Chief projector mount that was included with Eiki’s bundled installation package.”

The old projection screen in the City Council Chambers was a 4:3 aspect ratio motorized model. To accommodate the output of the Eiki EIP-UHS100 DLP projector, a new fixed Da-Snap screen manufactured by Da-Lite was deployed. This screen features a 164-inch diagonal 16:10 viewing surface.

When queried about those attributes of the Eiki EIP-UHS100 that made this projector the ideal choice for this project, Wasem offered the following, “The 8,000 lumen Eiki EIP-UHS100 DLP projector was the perfect fit for this job,” Wasem reports. “The new projector delivers a beautiful image on the large screen—even in high ambient light conditions. Further, Eiki’s special installation package for this projector enabled us to deliver great value to the client by offering spare lamps, filters, and the Chief mounting hardware. While this installation didn't require the advanced configuration features included with the EIP-UHS100, we were impressed with the option for edge-blending, advanced image ‘warp’ adjustment, and lens shift functionality. These features are often found in projectors that carry higher price points, so this made us confident in our value offered to our client.”

With today’s sophisticated AV installations, quality customer and technical support services are essential in order to keep a project on schedule. Here too, Wasem gave Eiki high marks, “Eiki customer and technical support was very helpful during the design phase before the sale. Rich Noll, Eiki International’s Western Regional Sales Manager, ensured we had the right configuration that met both the technical and budget requirements for this job. We were very pleased.”

The Missoula City Council Chambers installation was initiated and competed in August 2015 and the equipment was placed into service immediately afterward. Since that time, Wasem reports the new Eiki projector is doing exactly as city officials had hoped for. “Our client was instantly impressed with the increased brightness, clarity, and size of the image,” Wasem said. “The high quality components and value added installation package that came as part of the Eiki bundle really made the project possible. This has been a win-win for all involved.”

To learn more about EVCO Sound & Electronics, visit the company’s website at www.EvcoSound.com