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A Video Projector That Fits In Your Pocket
Sven-Erik writes "Video projectors able to project high-quality images will be embedded in your cellphones and laptops within two years. This is the promise of a new technology developed at Cambridge University. These pocket projectors will have no lenses and no light bulbs. Instead, these future battery-powered tiny projectors will rely on holographic technology and special algorithms. In 'Holograms enable pocket projectors,' Technology Research News explains that a 2D hologram will be created on a microdisplay and projected by using a laser beam. This has been possible because the researchers have written special algorithms which generates the holograms a million times faster than standard ones." Update: 07/03 21:21 GMT by T : Note that this text belongs to Roland Piquepaille and comes from his weblog; submitters, please strive to make your sources clear.
Apple will make this a standard component first, in the same way as they picked up on other trends and mainstreamed them, e.g. window-based UI, 17" screen, PDA.
To the best of my knowledge, the loss of image quality with standard optical equipment occurs due to imperfections in the lens. With this method, there seems to be no actual refraction taking place - it all operates on wave interference. And I quote:
"No lenses are required -- the projected image is formed entirely by diffraction," said Cable.
Believe it or not, the cost is not likely to be that much higher, because there's no need for precision optics, just a tiny screen and a laser.
Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
You know the funny thing is I remember thinking to myself the first time I saw that why the holographic video was grainy, it seemed preposterous to me that they could have that sort of technology on R2D2 and yet have it be all grainy in appearance.
And now it seems incredibly prescient lol, given the millionfold increase in processing speed using the noise variance method described in the article, the trade off between graininess and speed actually becomes quite rational.
"Hey guys, check out this hologram I just got! Just give me a second for me to plug my wireless phone into an electrical socket, so that my batteries don't get completely drained in 15 seconds."
Kind of defeats the purpose, huh? Already when I start using my video camera is limits my cell phone usage. Imagine the energy requirements for a hologram projector.
Let's forget about putting all this stuff in cell phones... let's concentrate on actually getting this in a real projector of some sort before we start making high-faluting promises of having everything in our freaking cell phones.
Go one step further and you might have a laptop with flip up lid that consists of little more that a reflective surface to shine the projector onto, flip the lid out of the way and have a presentation projector.