Edis Audio Visual keeps you abreast of news, views, comments and changes
Press Notice issued by the Department for Children, Schools and Families 20 January 2009
'The latest local authority projections for new, rebuilt or refurbished schools to be opened under BSF are: 115 in 2009/10; 165 in 2010/11, rising to at least 200 new schools every year thereafter'.
A full version of the latest report can be found here Second Independent BSF evaluation published 20 January 2009
Money Talk By Caroline Firstbrook Head of Strategy, Accenture BBC (Jan 2009)
"Times of change create opportunities as well as threats. For some companies, the current economic environment will challenge their very survival.
While for others the downturn offers the chance to extend their lead over the competition."High performing" companies will be looking at ways to strengthen their position and emerge from the downturn stronger and better-placed to win".
If you just went out and bought yourself a fancy new HDTV. You're reveling in all that high definition goodness and you're still recovering from the fact that you didn't make the jump away from standard definition sooner. And then you realize that you've run yourself into a pretty significant snag. While you kept an eye out for refresh rates, contrast ratios, and all those other numbers that separate a good high definition television from a not-so-good one, you failed to notice that your HDTV only has one -- or if you're lucky -- two HDMI ports. And what's the point of getting an HDTV if you're only going to feed it content via component cables, or worse still, composite.
So, you've got an HDTV with just one or two HDMI ports, but you've got that high definition satellite set-top box, you've got that glossy wonder known as Apple TV, you bought yourself an HD DVD player in preparation for your new home theater experience, and you're itching to get in on some Virtua Fighter 5 or Resistance: Fall of Man. But you don't want to have to crawl behind your TV each time you want to switch sources. Well, that's where this lovingly simple solution comes into play. HDMI Switchers are simplicity themselves. The Edis Switchers swallow up to five HDMI sources and spits them out into single HDMI cable that you can connect to your HDTV. There's no strange configuration to consider, no software to setup. Just plug it in and it's good to go.
When comparing an "old" TV and HDTV of the same diagonal screen size, the HDTV screen is actually 11 percent smaller. To make sure your HDTV has the same screen area as your old TV, it needs to have a diagonal measure ("screen size") that's six percent bigger.
But this is not the whole story, especially when it comes to watching "old" TV shows on your new HDTV, you will need a much bigger screen to see "old" pictures at the same size.
Your new HDTV needs a screen that's at least as tall as your old one, then not only will you be sure that you're getting a bigger picture, you'll also be certain that when you watch "old," non-HD programs on your HDTV, the picture you're looking at will not be drastically smaller than the one on your old TV set.
You may ask why? Well we're all familiar with "letterboxed" TV -- bands across the top and bottom of the screen when we're watching a widescreen movie on regular TV, for instance. When that situation is reversed when we're watching a "narrowscreen" program on HDTV there are bands to the left and right of the picture.
To find the HDTV screen size (diagonal measure) that gives the same height as your old television, take the screen size of the old TV and multiply by 1.22. So if you want an HDTV with a screen that's the same height as your old 34-inch TV, for example, the chart below shows that you need to buy an HDTV with a 42-inch screen, and that they will both have a height of 20.4 inches. On either TV, a non-HD picture will be the same size. The total HDTV picture area will be one-third greater than the total picture area of the old set.
If your old TV has a 34-inch screen, for older programs to be the SAME SIZE on your new HDTV, the new TV should have a 42-inch screen.
"Old" TV size versus equivalent HDTV Size
| Old Screen Size (Diag., Inches) | Screen Height | HDTV Screen Size (Diag.) |
| 21 | 12.6 | 26 |
| 27 | 16.2 | 33 |
| 29 | 17.4 | 35 |
| 31 | 18.6 | 38 |
| 32 | 19.2 | 39 |
| 34 | 20.4 | 42 |
| 36 | 21.6 | 44 |
| 40 | 24.0 | 49 |
| 42 | 25.2 | 51 |
| 50 | 30.0 | 61 |
| 55 | 33.0 | 67 |
| 60 | 36.0 | 73 |
Best viewing height for flat screen TV
How high should your wall mounted TV be? The ideal viewing height when seated is about 42" for most people sitting on comfortable furniture. The ideal viewing height of a TV screen is between one third and half way up the the viewable screen. As an example a 52" flat screen TV has a screen height of about 26", one third of this height is 9" approx and one half is 13". Therefore the highest the bottom of the viewable area of your TV should be is 33" (ie 42"-9"=33") and the lowest is 29" (ie 42"-13"=29”). This might seem low from an interior designer's perspective but a little high for ultimate viewing comfort without a “cricked” neck.
The simple answer is to fix the centre of the TV screen at about 42” or about 1 metre (give or take an inch or two) from the floor, irrespective of the screen size.
I've visited a few schools in China, though I don't suggest that all schools are like these in Guangzhou, but I was very impressed. Classrooms had projectors, visualisers, some webcams for science, teacher's desks with full audio visual controls including microphone and amplifier sysytems. There were often controls of the PCs built into teacher's desks in IT suites.
Labs, music rooms, libraries and language areas were all very well equipped with specialist integrated furniture and fittings. So some good ideas for us for the future!
Voice reinforcement is the use of microphones by teachers to enhance learning in the classroom. The emerging technology is Infrared microphones since VHF ones can cause interference problems between themselves and with other equipment. The problem is in finding microphones that are unobtrusive but still can be used all day long. Also since many schools already have amplifiers for their whiteboard systems the lowest cost option is a microphone and receiver that connects into that system (or used with an additional amplifier)
We've worked on such a solution and very pleased with the results. We think this will be the up and coming technology for schools in the UK and Europe (it's already taken off in the USA)
Welcome to the return of the Edis Blog! Our site "disappeared" when our ISP moved locations and "lost" our server during the move ..... and then we found problems with our back-ups.... so the rebuild has been really slow. Could be a warning for others to ensure that back-ups or offline versions are really in a fit state to re-load or repair your site after a catastrophic failure.