Source One Rentals

Source One Rentals is based in Costa Mesa, California, which is about 9 miles south of Disneyland and the Anaheim Convention Center. But that doesn’t mean we can’t service the rest of southern California! We offer Los Angeles computer rentals out of this office, as well as laptop rentals in Orange County and a range of other services. If you have a conference, trade show, training or just need a couple laptops to get you through a particularly busy time in your office, give us a ring and see how competitive we are on rates.

Have you been thinking about having a party but you’re not sure what you can do to really blow everyone away? If you’re looking for a way to really wow the crowds, consider renting a movie night package from Source One Rentals. We now have a 16′ inflatable screen, which is massive — you could share this with a couple hundred of your closest friends!

Our convenient backyard movie night packages include everything you need to make your event a success. We provide a bright projector, big screen, sound system and a DVD player. We can handle setup and strike and even provide an onsite technician for the duration of your show to make sure everything goes to plan.

It’s an affordable evening you can plan to spend with your family and friends. It’s also a great solution to celebrate the end of a season (team sports), entertain the crowd at your next girl scout sleepover, or use it as a fundraiser for your school. Give us a ring to learn more!

Visit our backyard movie night page for more details.

We have a new website built just for LCD projector rentals. Check out www.projector-rental.com.

We’re often asked why anybody would want to rent computers when the cost has dropped so dramatically and gear can be purchased for relatively cheap. So we ask: why would anybody buy a bunch of gear for a one-time or seasonal need in a far-away city?

Most of our computer rental customers fall into a couple categories. There are corporate clients who rent computers for temporary use such as end-of-year accounting purposes. There are conference and trade show clients who need PC rentals for annual events. And some clients rent computers simply to hold them over for a short period, such as if their own laptop is out for repair or they are headed out on vacation and want something small to keep the kids entertained.

We work with hotels, convention centers, event planners, corporate IT technicians and Average Joes to keep them up and running whether they need to rent computers for a single day training or computer rentals for a week show. If you need to rent laptops or desktops for your office or corporate event please contact us for more information.

If you want to spice up your next party consider adding karaoke to the mix. It’s fun, easy and affordable… and your guests will not soon forgot these memories. It’s easy to get setup. All you need is a sound system, a monitor, and of course the disks that contain all the music and lyrics. These are normally video CDs so be sure your DVD player will play them.

Of course you could go out and buy all this equipment, but it can be rather pricey. Or you can rent karaoke music and speakers from a company like Source One Rentals which has all the goodies for any size party. We have a great all-in-one karaoke system and dozens of CDs with the most popular party songs. They are available now for your holiday party.

If you are planning an event and want to use a projector as part of the presentation you should consider how much space this will take. There is a relationship between the size of the image and the distance from the projector lens to the screen.

Large-venue projectors (like those used at concerts, in theaters, or in ballrooms with very large screens) allow you to select from a variety of lenses, which can help you better fit the image to the space alloted. Portable projectors, on the other hand, typically do not have the ability to change lenses, which means you don’t have much choice about where the projector is going.

Most standard projector lenses are somewhere around 1.5-2:1, meaning for every one foot of image (in width) you will need to move the projector 1.5-2 feet away from the screen. For guestimation purposes, then, assume you need about 2′ distance for every 1′ wide. Using a little basic math you can then figure out how much room a projector and screen would really take.

For instance a 6′ wide screen, for which you expect a 6′-wide image,  requires the projector to be about 12′ back, give or take. A 12′ image would require you to place the projector about 24′ back. You get the idea.

But what happens if your room diagram just doesn’t allow for that much space? For example, what if you want a 12′ image but you absolutely can’t take more than 15′ of floor space to do it? Or maybe you have a super long distance to go, like from the back of a concert hall onto a relatively small image. You need to make a choice. If your budget allows for it you can inquire about a projector with changeable lenses which would allow you to fit into the space better. If that’s not an option you may need to change the screen size — bigger or smaller, depending on the facility.

Summer is winding down, but for all you southern Californians out there, it’s not too late to put together a great event for your friends and family. I’m talking about a backyard movie night!

It’s kind of like a movie theater, but in your own backyard… or invite the whole block and do it at the end of the street. We have everything you need to make a successful night of it: a monster screen, a bright projector, a good sound system, and a DVD player. You provide the movie and popcorn and a few good friends.

Get your outdoor party started now. Visit our backyard movie rentals page for details.

There’s a new product on the market that significantly reduces the amount of space required to project images onto screens or walls. These “super-close projectors” rely on a few tricks — literally using convex mirrors to reduce the distance required to get the image on screen. In fact the new NEC WT610 projector provides a 100″ image from just 26″ away. Compare that to a standard projector, which would need about 12′ for a similar image.

That makes these units perfect for rooms with very little room to spare, such as restaurants and trade show booths. Using a table or adjustable AV cart, the NEC projector can be placed almost right against the screen and still results in a 6′ image. That’s quite a help in tight quarters. This particular projector is 2000 lumens, plenty bright for a 6′-8′ image, typical for small audiences.

Most of our customers aren’t AV professionals — that’s what they pay us for. So it’s not unexpected that many of our clients have no idea how big a projector screen they should use for any given event. While there’s no hard and fast rule for choosing a projector screen, we can make some generalizations based on some common criteria.

A good starting point is to determine the purpose of this screen and how many guests you expect. Naturally if this is for the kids to watch Finding Nemo in the backyard a small screen will be fine, but if you’re planning a conference with several hundred attendees you will need something much bigger. Portable tripod screens are commonly available from 5′ wide to 8′ wide; past that you are looking at a screen that requires a little bit of setup, like the large fastfold screens, which are available to 20′ wide.

Here is a general guideline for choosing a screen size:

:: Small groups, 1-40 people: 5′-6′ tripod or rollup
:: Medium groups, 50-125 people: 7′-8′ tripod or fastfold
:: Banquets, 150-250 people: dual 8′ tripods or fasfolds or one 10′-12′ fastfold
:: Conferences, 200-350 people: Dual 8′-12′ fastfolds

Keep in mind that the larger the screen, the brighter the projector needs to be. Portable conference room projectors (usually 1000-2000 lumens) are fine for 5′ images but not sufficient for a 12′ image — for that you will want at least 3000 lumens if there’s not a lot of light, or 4000-5000 lumens if there is some light.

High definition, or HD for short, is the latest technological craze to hit mainstream America. Primetime television commercials pitch a variety of new televisions (LCD and plasma screens) with high-resolution images that make viewers feel like they’re right on set. But what does it all mean to you?

At home, it means a lot — gorgeous pictures, surround sound, an overall experience that surpasses going to the movie theater. But in the corporate world, and generally for rentals, this HD changeover isn’t quite as important. That’s because most business presentations are still created with XGA (1024×768) resolution computers, which looks pretty good for data presentations such as PowerPoint slideshows.

Some customers will take advantage of the new technology. For example, if you’re screening a film for investors you might like to have the latest and greatest technology in your corner, and HD will certainly provide a much richer experience than standard definition. But keep in mind that no matter how much you spend on an HD monitor or projector, it won’t make your old VHS tapes look any better… in some cases it might appear worse due to the high-resolution capabilities of the newer monitors. You can see that for yourself by going to your local electronics store and asking them to switch from the HD signal to a standard definition channel.

As of this writing there is still a considerable upcharge to go from standard definition projectors and plasmas to their HD counterparts, and while they do look great with the right content, they aren’t necessarily the right choice for you. If you’re not sure, just ask.