Masons Sound for Venues supplies and maintains the sound, lighting and video equipment and systems for Gorilla, a 700-capacity multi-purpose live music and entertainment venue in the centre of Manchester.

Gorilla already had an Optoma EH2060 projector to provide visual backdrops for club nights and video playback for film screenings. This projected onto a 4m screen positioned at the back of the stage area, with HDMI and VGA connections running from both the stage and the Engineer's position at the rear of the venue.

Gorilla is a bar, kitchen, stage and club.  Set under the railway tracks on Whitworth Street West it hosts comedy, clubnights, theatre and live music. As well as the nightclub, Gorilla has a studio, gin parlour and main bar, which won the prestigious Bar of the Year award at the 2013 Manchester Food and Drink Awards.

Although happy with its existing EH2060 projector, the use of fog during performances blocked the infra red signal and needed an additional infra red repeater to operate the projector. 

The previous model also needed a video scaler to provide all video format options at both the stage and Engineer's booth. 

Gorilla was delighted with the overall HD image quality, brightness, reliability and functionality of the EH2060 but, with the additional features offered by the EH7700, was happy to consider upgrading to this brighter, higher resolution projector.  This had to be equally reliable and able to be installed using the same mountings.

Masons Sound for Venues recommended the EH7700.  The full WUXGA (1920 x 1200) resolution offered 15% more pixels than the venue’s existing 1080p projector enabling it to project unscaled Full HD video with extra detail.  It is also significantly brighter (7,500 ANSI lumens rather than 4,000) and incorporates BrilliantColor™ technology to produce stunningly bright images with perfectly balanced, life-like colours.

Reliability was an essential consideration for both the venue and Masons Sound for Venues. All ProScene projectors are designed for continuous 24/7 operation. Independent testing has proven DLP® to be the most reliable of projector technologies. Whilst other technologies may show image quality decline after only a few thousand hours, DLP® technology can remain unchanged over hundreds of thousands of hours.

The projector’s dual lamp system enables an even higher level of reliability as both lamps can be used together to achieve maximum brightness, whilst still providing redundancy should one of the lamps fail. Alternatively a single lamp can be used in Lamp Relay Mode to combine the full lifetime of each individual lamp and thereby minimise service intervals.

The dust-sealed, filter free design of the EH7700 also reduces the amount of ongoing maintenance required. This was of critical importance to Masons Sound for Venues as it has more than 25 projectors leased out across various venues, all requiring regular maintenance and servicing.

The projector’s five motorised lens options and 360˚ operation, including reproduction on a ceiling or floor, guaranteed it would be flexible to install.

The EH7700 has the option for wired remotes, while the web browser interface and full support for Extron’s IP Link, AMX dynamic device discovery and PJ-Link protocols, allow almost all aspects of the EH7700 to be controlled across a network.

The step-up in performance made an instant and obvious impact.  Its increased resolution, from 1080p to WUXGA, gave greater flexibility in terms of format options.  The increased connectivity of the EH700 with two VGA inputs, meant the venue no longer needed a video scaler to provide all video format options at the stage and Engineer's booth.

The option to wire in the remote control, in addition to its infra red connectivity, resolved the issue of heavy fog blocking the infra red signal simply and effectively. 

And the install was very straight forward without any issues. Set-up of the image was intuitive and, despite the EH7700 being significantly larger than the previous model, the existing cage mount could accommodate the new unit.  This was due to the five lens options available with projector.  Four of these can be easily adjusted via motorised lens-shift, zoom and focus which ensure ultimate flexibility for installation.  Masons Sound for Venues used the standard lens on the projector which has an excellent throw ratio of 1.45 ~ 1.95:1 and a 1.33x motorised zoom, enabling it to fit within the existing mountings and project the image where it is needed.

Feedback from Gorilla has been extremely positive.  As a result of its increased performance, the system is now being used more frequently and for a wider range of events.

The project was completed in November 2013.