Hitachi's ED-X10 educational projector

Being the naive souls that we are, we didn't know the main sought-after functionality for a gadget to be used in an educational institution is theft deterrence, but Hitachi seems to be onto the game. By painting their new ED-X10 projector a bright orange, they hope they can dissuade a couple of Halo-hungry frat brothers from "repurposing" the unit. (Is that why prisoners wear orange? So we don't steal them?) Hitachi has also packed in a transition detector that will lock the projector if moved, requiring a pin-code to use it again. If all else fails, the projector includes a steel security bar so you can just bolt the unit down and be done with it. Otherwise this orange thing sounds fairly average, with an XGA resolution, 2000 ANSI lumens, and a 500:1 contrast ratio. The ED-X10 is available now in the UK for around $1200 US.

[raymond @ Mar 28th 2006 2:19PM]

I gotta say, the orange would not deter me one bit. its kinda cool looking. of course, I'm not the immoral thief type either.

[Gristle @ Mar 28th 2006 2:33PM]

Wicked... in the UK, but in US $$$

[Alexandre Donzel @ Mar 28th 2006 2:42PM]

oh, so hitachi is supposing that all of us have WiFi and schooprovided UMPCs/Tablets to take our notes on while surfing on MSN and watching the powerpoint presentation of our geek of a teacher, of course projected onto the wall by a projector meant to stay in the room. we r a pretty well-off (french semi-private (dont ask , just check out ASEICA on google and ull see)) and we only have a few projectors to cover the 2000+ students, the rest of the projos being the old, transparent-sheet POSes

[TVGenius @ Mar 28th 2006 3:00PM]

Our community college is in the process of eliminating the TVs in classrooms (27-34" with scan converters) and at this point about 75% have projectors and about 25% have TVs, with those going away gradually. I doubt the fact it's orange is a deterrent, and given the lengths people will go to in the process of stealing stuff, the 'steel bar' likely won't matter. As far as the PIN, the morons who have been stealing Cisco IP phones from the dorms didn't realize that they're useless without Cisco VOIP servers... don't count on the orange projectors to be returned by the thief because they don't work...

[nizzy1115 @ Mar 28th 2006 3:02PM]

our district bought a bunch after it was aparent that these projectors were an urgent necissity for classroom education. 2 years later, they are only being used for big screen movie theater time. What a waste...

[Sam Swampy @ Mar 28th 2006 3:07PM]

This is actually a great idea. At my university, projectors are stolen all the time and it is especially easy because everyone lives near the classrooms. And I don't even have to explain why it is so appealing to have a 70" screen, especially when we can't have tvs in the dorms. Every time one is stolen, the school loses thousands of dollars because they are pretty nice ones. Recently they started putting alarms on the projectors, but I think this hitachi is an even better idea and universities such as mine would be all over this.

[JJ @ Mar 28th 2006 3:17PM]

HALO ROCKS!

[Randy @ Mar 28th 2006 3:47PM]

There IS a market for it: I saw two projectors walk from my University and those were hung off the ceiling about 10' up. Bit more serious than a casual gaming session, that :)

[Garrett @ Mar 28th 2006 4:12PM]

I would buy this FOR the orange color! I have a hard time believing that this will deter anyone.

[Mike @ Mar 28th 2006 4:25PM]

I'll admit to my mind wandering and imagining myself with a nice pair of bolt cutters taking down the projectors in my classrooms to bring home for some nice Xbox time.

[The_Solidshadow @ Mar 28th 2006 4:47PM]

Lol, I'm in year 10 (15yrs old) and almost every room in my school has a projector and smartboard, and I've lost count of the times me and a couple of friends have wanted to steal a projector, if only to play our xbox360s on it on a 70" HD screen. Not that we'd actually ever carry it out, of course ;p

[Lee Gibson @ Mar 28th 2006 4:48PM]

Sign #962 that you're a tool:

You post on a message board "Oh yeah! I meant to say first post in that other message!" and the other message was not even the first post.

Good job, Skippy. Tighten your helmet.

[Special_K @ Mar 28th 2006 5:21PM]

I think this whole "Computer for every student" mentality is total BS. At my school, no one has a laptop that they bring to class regularly, we have a few projectors that we take from class-to-class, and one old Dell (beige boxes, smugged CRTs, P3s or *gasp* Celerons, 128 MB Ram, no sound card) per room. If someone wants to do a powerpoint, cool- we just bring in the projo. But the idea that every class should have a projector, a top-of-the line PC (in most School Boards' minds this is an iMac) and a smartboard-along with one iBook per student-is soooo... 2001. We complain about dropping verbal communication skills, increased teacher laziness, and the loss of the great art of discussion, yet we want to sit students down in a classroom, run a PPT, have them type down notes, and expect them to learn better. Teachers use PPTs as substitutes for lectures, and remove interactivity by just letting the students read what's been written. Oy gavultz! The world sometimes makes me so verklempt.

[Glenn @ Mar 28th 2006 5:50PM]

Special_K - I don't know what level of school your talking about, but at my university teachers have been using PPT for years. They still use white boards/blackboards or use the pen in PPT when needed. I've only had ONE teacher in 4 years who was a good teacher that didn't use PPT (he had been teaching the same class forever (Automata Theory) and would fill 3 blackboards in 10 minutes off the top of his head, all classs, every class, all semester; I don't think there are many teachers like that.) The rest of the teachers I've had that didn't use PPT (or other electronic notes) were more or less unorganized and basically shooting from the hip, there was no guarantee that what was on the test was covered in class, or that we would finish everything to be covered, just more confusion in general. It really makes classes more consistent and easier to learn (which is a good thing IMO).

I realize it's not a magic bullet but it certainly helped my education.

[Robotron @ Mar 28th 2006 5:59PM]

I use to be an network eng for a schoolboard and I can't tell you how many of these things go missing.
Our final solution was to encase them in a bulletproof plexyglass casing with special venting mounted on the roof.

Oh and just for the record I've never seen a school buy something like this (at least where I'm from).
They usually spend anywhere from $5,000 - $20,000

[Michael Orellano @ Mar 28th 2006 6:19PM]

Wow no one can seem to put 2 and 2 together. Orange = Easy to see. Easy to see big object is now hard to hide. Jocks (halo fan boys) get caught and have their a$$es beat by 44 yr old security guard who has been waiting for some pay back. Projector is returned to its origional location.

[contra419 @ May 20th 2008 9:17PM]

Paint it lol

[Paul @ Mar 28th 2006 9:13PM]

It seems to me that if a company wants to make an "Educational" Projector they should make a normal projector available at a lower price to schools...

Also, I kinda like the orange color, for a determined theif the steel bar would not be an extreme challange, and as stated before the pin code is not evident until after the device is stolen and I doubt a theif would return it....

[Paul @ Mar 28th 2006 9:41PM]

"Orange = Easy to see. Easy to see big object is now hard to hide." qtd. Michael Orellano

Um... I do understand that this was the origenal concept, however when I think of people stealing projectors they do it when no one is looking and when they have a clear plan of escape, its not like they are going to walk around with it under their coat all day.

[evo @ Mar 28th 2006 11:02PM]

Does it beep when it's time to change slides?

[Pinkerton @ Mar 28th 2006 11:11PM]

Orange also screams "HEY, I'M STOLEN!" to anybody who sets eyes upon it later. Smart thieves will invest in a can of black spraypaint. Others will show their new orange projector to all their friends, one of whom might narc.

[The_Techncian @ Mar 29th 2006 2:44AM]

At our school (south London - UK) 15 projectors have been stolen in the past 3 months. Now we are getting Sahara Projectors (http://www.wedgwood-group.com/sahara_protector_dlp_projector.htm) in cages and bars on the windows.

Sahara projectors are much better than this Hitachi one as they have a removable panel that will disable the projector if it is unplugged from the power. Sahara projectors deserve a front page mention on Engadget more than Hitachi (but I guess Hitachi give a few demo kick back unit to the Engadget crew for that privilege).

[Nogami @ Mar 29th 2006 9:12AM]

The school I work at was also having a problem with projector theft, and purchased newer models that have ethernet ports on them. Besides offering easy maintenance checkups (the AV dept gets warnings via monitoring software about projectors left on, bulb life near limit, and can do some remote assistance if users have issues), they also ping the projector's IP address every couple of seconds. If the ethernet port is disconnected, it triggers alarms in security and in AV.

Seems like a well-designed system that is relatively fool/theftproof. The projectors also have the school's name and contact info burned-into the startup screen ROM so it can't easily be resold.

[Teacher101 @ Apr 4th 2006 12:13PM]

I agree with Post 22 - Give some credit where it is actually due for once rather than paid for!

The Hitachi guys have jumped on the orange bandwagon. This Hitachi orange projector seems to be as mentioned by poster 22 a copy of an idea from Sahara, who launched THEIR orange security projector (The Protector) a while ago.

Pin coded projectors like Hitachi's, I am led to believe, can still be quite simply 'chipped' to make them work again and therefore the number one request from schools was a removabe panel which can completely disable the machine and some way of telling potential thieves not to bother...both of which the Protector has.

Sahara it appears actually designed the Protector in consultation with UK Schools, Local Eductaion Authorities, Police, Insurance Companies and Government Bodies to ensure they included the features that were needed to help reduce theft from schools.

There were some projectors stolen from a school ealier this year but because the Protector's warned thieves that if removed they will cease to work,(and were bright orange I guess) they were left behind.

Maybe a coincidence but our next purchase of projectors will be Protectors too...and the more word gets round the less people will attempt to steal these machines!

Tell as many people as you can is my advice.

[CHRIS THOMASEN @ Mar 31st 2008 3:21PM]

As a sales professional for a local system's integrator and having several higher-ed clients, the theft of projectors is wide spread despite using lock-tite on the mounting bracket and pipe threads, security-screws, and security cages. In talking with campus security, it is difficult in most cases to tell a student from an IT person. So they see a person lugging around a projector and think broken projector, or in some cases the projectors are hidden in empty paper boxes. The orange color is an eye-attention getter and hopefully now that most campus security teams have been alerted to this type of threat, they will react in a more effective manner which will decrease the theivery and defer replacement costs!