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Lots of innovation in a conference-room projector.
Projectors have become increasingly and predictably smaller and brighter over the last decade. More recently, many manufacturers have turned to ease-of-use advancements as a way to add value and differentiate products. That has meant everything from more intuitive onscreen menus and automated setup features like auto-keystone correction to remote LAN connectivity. It's all included with the intent of helping projector users work more comfortably and efficiently.
NEC is certainly no stranger to the trend. Its latest conference-room series projector, the MT1075, continues it. The MT1075 really is more than an example; it's more like a poster child for feature innovation. A new projector often will come out of a single innovation, but NEC seems to have thrown just about everything at the MT1075. Admittedly, a few of the features might be more useful in travel projectors, but it's hard to complain about innovation that's thoughtful and often very clever.
NUTS AND BOLTS
The 13lb. MT1075 is housed in a solid, if unspectacular looking, rectangular chassis in NEC's typical off-white, curved-corners design. Menu controls are on top, and thorough connections are in the back. It has DVI, 15-pin RGB, and 5xBNC for a second analog RGB and component video. There's a 15-pin monitor output, as well as S-Video, composite, and multiple RCA (video inputs) and mini (data inputs) audio inputs. Serial nine-pin and USB add control and remote mouse functionality. Interestingly, the included remote has two modes that use a small number of buttons to offer both remote mouse controls and menu controls in a very straightforward design.
The MT1075 also includes a couple of PC Card slots. Those have been around for several years to enable so-called "PC-free" presentations, as well as to update splash screen logos and graphics. More recently, PC Cards have been used for Wireless Networking cards, and NEC supports them all here. In fact, when you add either a wired or wireless LAN card the MT1075 offers remote administration and monitoring, including the ability to configure the projector to send email automatically to as many...