Window specialist chooses Epson

Müller & Co GmbH chooses Epson projectors to present the diversity of modern windows

A window into the business

Windows are more than just openings in the wall. From the inside of a building they are essential for comfort, and from the outside they determine the first impression given by a building. They set the brightness of rooms, the insulation level, amount of heating required, and – last but not least – they offer effective protection, more or less, from unauthorised access to the home.

Modern construction materials and manufacturing techniques offer today's homeowners an almost immeasurable number of window variants. That is why Müller & Co GmbH – founded in 1905 and based in Schmitten in western Germany – focuses on windows and doors as building components. In the 1970s, the company was one of the first in West Germany to focus systematically on plastics as a construction material for its products, and today its 120-strong workforce offers advice, sales, installation and service to its customers in the broader Frankfurt/Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region. Linked directly to the company is a plastics manufacturing plant that enables the fastest and most flexible production possible of custom doors and windows.

Space for variety

In order to give its customers a realistic impression of the effectiveness of modern windows and doors, the company converted an abandoned manufacturing warehouse into a presentation area with around 1,000 m² of floor space. Here, customers can experience the effectiveness of attractive building components first-hand in a realistic environment. A central part of this modern presentation area, which was officially opened in April 2014, is an EB-G6450WU installation projector.

"You don't buy windows and doors for a house at regular intervals, but perhaps once every 20 to 30 years. Any decision has to be very carefully weighed up when doing this. In order to help our customers, we place a strong emphasis on the most realistic presentation of our range," says Gunter Blumhagen, IT Manager at Müller & Co GmbH, about the company's presentation strategy. "Even though our presentation area is already the same size as a large sports hall, the large number of possible door and window variants still means that we're limited. The projector helps us here because, in contrast to the real buildings in the exhibition, it works as a virtual facade that we can design according to our needs."

With a projection diagonal of over 8.6 metres, Müller & Co GmbH presents its customers with examples of door and window installations – sometimes life-size – which helps customers to make an informed choice for their own homes. "Because we need the most realistic projection possible, high light output and natural colour reproduction were especially important when choosing a projector," comments Blumhagen. "We offer door and window frames in many different colours and designs, and customers have to see them in order to be able to form an opinion on the various nuances." Even the test installations were highly demanding, because in order to ensure that the projection is free of shadows even when a customer is standing right in front of the projection wall, the projector had to be installed at the upper image edge – more than three metres above the floor. In addition, the large image diagonal had to be achieved with a relatively small distance between the projector and the wall to keep the whole installation as compact as possible.

Challenging demands on the installation

"Müller & Co GmbH gave us a very tricky problem with its requirements for projection quality in the existing bright environment," says Sven Pestinger, Managing Director of Pestinger GmbH, the company responsible for the projection installation. "In order to meet the specifications, the projector had to have a high light output and deliver clear, lifelike colours. It also needed a wide-angle lens with a wide zoom range." The EB-G6450WU offered both and also offered a lens shift function allowing the projector to deliver distortion-free images if it is positioned off the central vertical place of the projection surface.

Müller & Co GmbH uses an Apple TV set-top box as a data source, sending projection data via the in-house LAN to the projector. "In order to get the highest possible projection quality, we adjusted all of our illustrations to the projector's WUXGA (1920×1200 pixels) format, because this means that there are no distortions caused by rescaling the pictures. Thanks to the projector's precise detail and colour fidelity you can now even see things that previously – for example on a monitor – remained hidden to us. Of course, this helps us a lot when persuading customers of the quality of our products," concludes Blumhagen.