Bits & Bytes

NAVITAR Slides into the digital age

Certain markets have kept their analog slides despite the stampede to PowerPoint® presentations. Medical schools and teaching hospitals, for example, still use countless 35mm slides to illustrate health issues. However, most conference centers have replaced slide projectors in favor of a room with a single digital data projector. Now, Navitar, Inc., however, is using Sony digital technology to bring classic analog slide presentations into the digital age.

Based in Rochester, NY, Navitar is offering a solution aimed at this single-projector environment. Presenters using 35mm slides simply put them in the slide carousel on Navitar’s VideoMate® 6100 projector and plug the VideoMate product into the data projector using a compatible XPG or S-VIDEO connection. Navitar’s video slide projector also lets users present slides on a TV monitor, record them on a CD-ROM VCR, or capture the images on a computer hard drive.

To achieve this analog-to-digital conversion, Navitar has built the VideoMate 6100 projector around two innovative Sony products. One is the DFW-X700 color digital video camera, which incorporates a half-inch Interline progressive scan 0.8 million-pixel CCD and a highbandwidth IEEE 1394 digital interface, which is compatible with the VideoMate projector.

The second is the Sony DFW-S77, a digital imaging station for use with compatible Sony IEEE 1394 digital cameras, that lets users manage, show, store, and share images over network. The DFW-S77 controls the camera, shows images on PC or video monitors, stores images on local media or a network, shares images via e-mail, prints images when connected to a printer, and offers remote access to images via the Internet.

“We went with Sony because we wanted the best of both worlds—really high resolution and true digital technology,” says Navitar president Julian Goldstein. “Sony’s technology helps our customers get more mileage out of their analog images.” —Michael Goldstein