Phoenix College Turns to Hitachi to Update Campus with State-of-the-Art Projection Technology

As the original college of the larger Maricopa County Community College District, Phoenix College was founded in 1920 with just 53 students. Today, Phoenix College has more than 12,000 students enrolled to gain accreditation in hundreds of different programs. As a college that ranks among the nation's leading institutions of higher education in the use of technology, students who attend Phoenix College have come to expect top-notch facilities and resources.

Phoenix College has more than 150 classrooms and more than half are outfitted with a projector and a DVD or VCR to provide professors with a variety of teaching mediums. Recently, the college has begun to phase out some of its older projector models and has replaced them with newer, more powerful products from Hitachi America, Ltd., Digital Media Division.

Response to the new Hitachi projectors has been overwhelmingly positive from both faculty and students alike. The centerpiece of the recent Hitachi installations is the campus' 700-seat auditorium. Three projectors are installed and wired to receive RGB and composite video from either a control booth or a laptop. A 24-foot Stewart screen in the center of the stage is used to showcase images from a permanently installed Hitachi CP-X885W, while two 10-foot Stewart screens flank the larger screen to display images from Hitachi CP-X995W projectors. Through the use of an Extron decoder, the same image can also be projected on both the left and right screens simultaneously. This configuration provides Phoenix College the flexibility to use their auditorium venue for a wide variety of purposes, from guest speakers to campus movie nights.

Phoenix College also purchased more than 25 Hitachi projectors for use in its classrooms. The majority of these units are Hitachi CP-X430 series projectors, which provide the versatility and power to project large images in brightly illuminated lecture halls.

The faculty uses the projectors for a number of purposes, including PowerPoint presentations that they can use to digitize and store their lessons for easy accessibility and future use. "We now have Hitachi projectors operating in nearly one-third of all our classrooms and the difference with the Hitachi units has been remarkable. The brightness, performance and level of features have far exceeded our expectations," said Mike Poplin, Director, Media Services Department at Phoenix College. "As an administrator and purchaser of technology for our school, two of my goals are to make the technology simple to use and easy to maintain. Partnering with Hitachi has helped me ensure that both of these outcomes have been met."

Courtesy of Hitachi America, Ltd.

For more detailed specifications and connections, check out our Hitachi CP-X885W projector page.