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Matchbox Sized Color Projectors?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it dept.

Justin Nolan sent in a very brief link about ultra small projectors which says "Upstream Engineering is willing to provide miniature color video projectors for use with portable video player, travel TV, laptops and handhelds next year. Upstream's patented technology, called Photon Vacuum, maximizes the amount of photons sent to the target from the light source in a minimum space and allows the creation of devices free of a variety of components currently used in projectors that unnecessarily waste energy. Photon Vacuum enables the smallest projector designs in the world, ultimately to a size of matchbox. The company says is going to push the power consumption of the whole device ultimately to below 4 watts while still gaining a travel-TV sized color projection" You can also read Upstream's website for almost as little information.

14 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Cost by cartzworth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Are they going to be 2k US+ like conventional projectors? Will they force the price of conventional projectors down?

    1. Re:Cost by surstrmming · · Score: 5, Informative

      The new Swedish "OptiLight" projector for should drive prices down later in 2004. It's expected to retail for $500.

    2. Re:Cost by MoonBuggy · · Score: 5, Informative

      In the shop I work in we demo projectors regularly. 1000 lumens can be seen adequately when projected through a sheet of perspex onto a blue wall in full indoor lighting. On a proper white screen with the lights dimmed 700 lumens should be fine. Even better for lumen-optimisation is using it to project onto a sheet of paper from behind - looks like a nice flatscreen TV, very portable and doesn't depend on light conditions nearly so much.

      If I were buying a proper projector for home cinema I'd go for 1900+ but something cheap and portable to show up charts or a slideshow of my graphic work would work fine with 700.

  2. making a big screen by DavidDeLux · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Now, if lots of these min-projectors could be put together in a matrix, will this mean that, finally, big screen TVs can be produced more cheaply. (If one mini-projector does dead, just swap it out).

    1. Re:making a big screen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
      Now, if lots of these min-projectors could be put together in a matrix

      Surely you meant:

      Now, if lots of these min-projectors could be put together in a beowulf cluster ...

  3. Power Consumption by Jotaigna · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Thats the spirit. Every electric and electronic appliance should go for that goal. While the effort to finally get a cheap, clean and reliable source of energy is good, we must for once pay attention to nature and reduce power consuption to a minimum, that would buy us some time or being able to rely in smaller sources of energy like wind or solar pannels. Size does matter!!,
    Although I dont know what im going to do whith such a tiny proyector, maybe i'll put it in my back pockent and sit on it afterwards and break it. Or have it stuck in a child's ear.

    --
    "The quality of life is inversely proportional to the number of keys on your keyring."
    1. Re:Power Consumption by Baumi · · Score: 5, Funny

      Every electric and electronic appliance should go for that goal.

      I don't know - my matchbox-sized fridge isn't selling too well...

      Jens

  4. Vaporware! by jonnylawUSA · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sounds like these guys will be up for the 2004 Wired Vaporware awards.

  5. I call BS by MythMoth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There's nothing on that site to indicate that they're anything other than vapourware.

    It doesn't follow that it's impossible - on the contrary, I think this is a technology we'll be seeing very soon - I just doubt that it will be from this company.

    So why do I think we'll be seeing it soon ? Simple, grasshopper. Lasers. It's easy enough to build a poor quality monochrome vector display out of a laser diode and a couple of mirrors on motors. That's expensive and clunky.

    A laser diode and a couple of piezo-transducer-mounted mirrors would be a slightly more elegant mechanism, and if you can build a vector display with this, you ought just as easily to be able to build a raster display.

    So all we're missing is the cheap green laser diode and the cheap blue laser diode to complement the existing cheap red laser diode.

    Now, you CAN buy a green laser pointer that's only moderately painfully expensive - and now that there's an imminent demand for blue laser diodes for high density DVD players I'm hoping their cost will plummet.

    I don't have the skills to build this, but I'm hoping someone will get onto it soon.

    D.

    --
    --- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
    1. Re:I call BS by srleffler · · Score: 5, Interesting
      There are blue laser diodes on the market now too, I believe. They're probably still too expensive.

      I don't actually expect laser projection displays to go anywhere. The advantage of a laser for projection is its high brightness (intensity in a small area). That's great for vector display where you want to "draw" bright lines. When you use a scanning laser for a raster display you lose this advantage, though. You need the same amount (intensity) of light with a laser as you would with ordinary projection. Unless the laser is more energy efficient than the ordinary projector, you're better off with the latter.

      There are also safety/legal issues with laser projection. Any laser bright enough for a large projection display is dangerous if it stops scanning. The projectors of course have interlocks that shut off the laser if the raster scan jams or stops, but such a system could fail or be defeated by someone with malicious intent.

  6. Fake... by loony · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Little info and terms like "Photon Vacuum" make this thing sound like the next high end graphics card from the bitboys... If they had a usable product they would give you at least some information - especially since the design is according to them patent protected...

  7. website down by Andreas(R) · · Score: 5, Funny
    The website is slashdotted, here's a screenshot of the projector:


    .

  8. What technology? by arsenix · · Score: 5, Funny

    Are they sure they didn't mean photon vapor? I hear they are working on fusion as well...

    --
    (this is offended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
  9. Re:Dream on! by mindstrm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Really?

    So... at 100% conversion, how much power does, say, your average 17" monitor put out in terms of light? (not counting heat, etc)

    You might be surprised just how bright 4 watts of pure light is.

    a 100W tungsten incandescent light bulb is about 2.6% efficent.... or 17.5 lumens/watt so 1750 lumens.

    Good tungsten halogen bulbs, 3.6% (3.6W) or 2500 lumens for a 100W source.

    So.. a matchbox projector with 4W of output with a 100% luminous efficiency would give us, say, 650lm/W * 4W = 2600 lumens...

    If you google around for projectors, you'll find that for $2000 you can get around a 2200 lumen projector.

    That's a 200W lamp.