Mount Hermon Stops Buying Bulbs and Saves with Hitachi's Laser Projector

	Mount Hermon main conference center

In 1906, Mount Hermon became the first Christian camp and conference center located west of the Mississippi. Over the last 110 years it has grown to include two more locations throughout California and is home to hundreds of camps each year. The center relies on a Hitachi laser projector in the main auditorium to welcome and inform campers every summer, as well as host church group meetings and outdoor school sessions. In the end, IT manager Dave Peterson's decision to go with Hitachi's laser projector keeps him off the ladder changing bulbs and keeps him engaged and in the moment with every camp at Mount Hermon.

Mount Hermon Association is home to many camps, retreats, and events in California. During the summer, the main conference center runs family camps with programming for all-ages. During the other months the conference center is available for church groups and para-church ministries to coordinate their own events using the meeting spaces, dining facilities, and on-site lodging. Because of the constant activity at the center, the projector in the auditorium is used much more than a regular church, and Peterson found himself changing out bulbs and filters much more than usual with the old projector. That's why when the time came for a new projector, with the help of David McLain from CCI Solutions, he decided on Hitachi's laser projector to lower the cost of maintenance needed.

"During the summer we have the projector turned on eight to ten hours a day, six days a week. We were going through bulbs like crazy and they're expensive," says Peterson. "When I saw that new projectors had a laser light source with no bulb I was really intrigued. Now, with the laser, there's nothing that will go out in the middle of a session."

In the end, it was the price point of Hitachi's laser projector that captured Peterson's interest, but his staff really benefitted the most from the transition. Mount Hermon's old projector was not an HD projector and would sometimes run into stretching or compressing issues if groups brought HD content. With the new Hitachi laser projector, the conference center has the ability to share content in full 1080p, which is how they've been producing their own content for years. The production staff no longer has to sacrifice pixels for the sake of the projector.

"I knew for a while that a projector with a laser for light instead of a bulb was where we needed to take the conference center," says Peterson. "It is the perfect match for the type of content we project and how often we use the projector. It seemed out of reach when I first started looking at pricing, but once I saw that Hitachi offered the same quality but at a much more affordable price, I was sold. I never want to go back to changing bulbs all the time. We're getting exactly what we need from the Hitachi laser projector."

For more information on Mount Hermon, please visit http://www.mounthermon.org/