Finding the right AV solution for your boardroom

A large part of the appeal of renting meeting rooms by the hour is that you won’t have to deal with the large overheads associated with equipping your meeting space with the latest audio visual tech. But for those startups who spend a lot of time presenting to potential clients and partners or who videoconference often, having their own meeting room with reliable AV equipment might actually make better financial sense in the medium to long run. Below are some tips from the team at Perception Live, a technical event production company who specialise in AV installation and maintenance.

For many smaller businesses, particularly those that have only just recently started up, renting conference rooms on an ad hoc basis probably remains the most sensible route. If however, your company has their own onsite boardroom or training space, you would already have felt the need for some basic AV equipment.

You don’t have to break the bank to get reliable AV equipment.

The most fundamental piece of meeting room equipment tends to be the projector. These can vary enormously in specifications and subsequently, price. A high-end projector can cost as much as a car. But if you won’t be screening HD films on them, the really expensive ones are unlikely to give you good value for money. If you’ll be largely looking to project still images or mirror a computer screen through the projector, you can get something that will do the job well enough for a lot less.

Other things to consider when buying a projector are the light bulb and screen. Projector light bulbs have limited lifespans and will need to be replaced after around 1500 hours. Depending on your equipment, this can get pricy quickly. So it’s well worth investigating the cost of a replacement bulb before you buy a projector. Projector screens can equally vary in price and can make a big difference to the quality of your presentation. However, if you have a solid, smooth wall in your meeting space, you might get away with painting it white and projecting directly onto the wall.

Unfortunately projectors won’t work for everyone. To get a good picture, you would usually need to block out any light. So if you have a particularly bright workspace, you may want to consider a large screen or potentially even a video wall. These can cost quite a bit more than a projector setup, so consult an AV technician beforehand to ensure you’ve fully explored your options and have chosen the right solution for you.

Try renting before you buy.

There is no better way to get to know equipment than to use it. If your company is considering investing in a full suite of corporate AV equipment, you might want to rent some of the AV equipment first to see how it might work in your space. Many AV companies, including ourselves, hire a range of presentation, video and audio equipment, either as individual items or part of a set package deal. This will give you a good sense of what works and what doesn’t, before you take the plunge.

Consider whether any of your existing equipment won’t already to the trick.

Our final word of advice is to evaluate your existing equipment and see how you might be able to repurpose it. For a small meeting, a propped-up computer monitor could work just fine to display images and video. And thanks to technology like Skype, it is possible to have a fairly high quality teleconference simply using your cellphone’s speakerphone setting.

Of course of it you have the budget and want to project a really sophisticated image, you can always call on the professionals to come around and do a quote.