Everything is picturesque in Clinton NY, the historic village in the foothills of the Adirondacks that's home to Hamilton College. The view is good inside the school as well, where all classrooms, labs, and lecture halls have been recently outfitted with Canon REALiS SX50 Multimedia Projectors to support the presentation needs of the college's world-renown liberal arts curriculum.

Adding the ultra-precise, high brightness, SXGA+ (1400 x 1050) picture quality of the REALiS SX50 Multimedia Projector to Hamilton's academic environment was a significant development for the college, which is the third oldest in New York State, and one that places a heavy emphasis on deploying advanced information technology for its approximately 1,775 students.

"It was easy to see the difference in quality when we first tested the Canon REALiS SX50," says Tim Hicks, Hamilton College's director of A/V Services, a team within the IT Department. "The jump to a higher resolution was extremely exciting for our staff. Once we realized how clear the imagery was, we didn't hesitate to move forward with having the REALiS in our facilities."

To date, Hicks and his team have installed 28 REALiS SX50 Multimedia Projector's at Hamilton College's new Science Center. The projectors enhance the teacher/student experience by not only delivering images so crisp that even the smallest spread-sheet type is displayed clearly, but also by having a high brightness of 2500 ANSI lumens that doesn't require total darkness, so students can still take notes. The secret of the REALiS SX50 Multimedia Projector's ultra-precise imagery is Canon's proprietary AISYS (Aspectual Illumination System) optical engine, a patented means of maximizing the power of LCOS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon), the next-generation display technology at the heart of Canon's REALiS Multimedia Projector line. Canon AISYS-enhanced LCOS technology not only enables the REALiS SX50 Multimedia Projector to achieve its SXGA+ resolution, but also its high brightness, 1000:1 contrast ratio, and compact size (8.9 x 13.2 x 4.5 in.) and weight (8.6 lbs.). The REALiS SX50 Multimedia Projector also features a wide variety of analog and digital computer and video inputs (including component, composite, and S-Video, as well as VGA, DVI-I, and USB connections).

According to Hicks, the Canon REALiS projectors, which were supplied to the school by A/V contractor Visual Technologies, have proved to be versatile performers, providing increased resolution for the display of information from Mac or PC laptops, DVDs, VCRs, and document cameras.

"Extremely fine images-especially in the sciences-are frequently being projected," he notes. "One minute a geology professor might be showing a rock sample with microscopic details, then it's a PowerPoint presentation, followed by graphs and charts with very fine lines, all of which require the high resolution of the REALiS SX50 Multimedia Projector.

"Computers today have very high-resolution displays as a standard feature," Hicks continues. "Now, however, with the REALiS SX50 our professors and students don't have to switch their computers' resolution down when connecting to the projector, as they used to have to do. As a result, they don't have to worry that the images that they were preparing beforehand on a computer will look any different when they're projected to the class."

In addition to being able to display computer graphics, the Canon REALiS is capable of displaying true 16:9 720p high definition video and 4:3 480i or 575i standard definition video via its special 2:3 pull-down circuitry. Multiple Image Modes provide a variety of video display options, including Standard, Presentation, sRGB, and Cinema modes. Providing yet another advantage to the REALiS SX50's projection power is its Genuine Canon high-performance 1.7x optical zoom lens, which can project a 100-inch image on a screen from only 9.8 feet away.

"Beyond the highest possible resolution and the ability to accept DVI-I signals, our main criterion was that our new projectors not cost an arm and a leg," says Hicks. "Our cost-per-unit on the Canon REALiS was approximately one-third of what we had expected to pay for a projector of this image quality. And when you buy 28 of them, that's a big savings.

"Further adding to the value of the REALiS SX50 is the fact that they've been extremely reliable," Hicks adds. "We're proud at Hamilton College that we keep up our technology-enhanced rooms and strive to achieve 100 percent operation. We purchased an extra Canon REALiS projector as a backup, but we haven't had to use it yet. That type of track record is key, because technology today is so integrated into the teaching environment that if one thing goes down, it can throw off the whole class. The REALiS SX50 Multimedia Projector has afforded us complete assurance in the projector component's dependability, which is one more reason why we are planning to upgrade projectors on campus to the REALiS."

With Canon on campus, Hamilton College is better equipped than ever to take its academic mission to even higher levels. "A/V plays a key role in everything that happens on campus," Hicks concludes, "there's rarely a presentation or event that goes on without it. We need to trust our equipment, and Canon's name and history has always made me very confident in their optics. When our vendor recommended going with Canon, I had no questions about it."

For more information, go to www.canonprojectors.com

For more detailed specifications and connections, check out our Canon REALiS SX50 projector page.