Mitsubishi LED Projector: Small, Cheap, Durable

mcaycedo writes "This new projector is my top number 1 "must have" gadget. The reasons: price (US$699), size (fit in your hand), convenience (uses AC, batteries, card adaptor) and duration (lamp life:20000 hours). The cons: only SVGA (800x600), lumens (N/A)" There are tons of applications for a LED projector of this size, too: in cars, integrated into portable video players, information displays of all kinds ... and as resolution and brightness improve, even more will emerge.

Comments

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of them...

[AC-x]

You could build a full-resolution cinema-sized display, then all you'd need is a couple of matrox multi-head cards to drive them :)

This isn't an article, it's an advertisement

[winkydink]

I keep looking, but I cannot see how this is anything more than a product pitch. No comparisons, just 'this thing is really cool and think of all the cool things you can do with it'. TFA is nothing more than a rewarmed press release of the projector.

Re:This isn't an article, it's an advertisement

[winkydink]

Keeping you up to date is giving you a round-up of the top ones out there and "picking" a winner, not just announcing a winner with no selection criteria; that, my fellow /. reader, is called an advertisement.

Profit Projections

[Doc Ruby]

Video projectors haven't been following Moore's Law lately. A 2000 lumens 1024x768 for under $1000 has been years in coming, since that profile dropped below $3000 a few years ago. It appears that it's because the projector vendors target salespeople, and are feeding them with ever more portable projectors, more costly to produce than big, stationary ones. Maybe the higher turnover of travelling salespeople means they sell more units in that sector, always needing the "brand new" one, at the highest price, than across the board. I'd have thought the mass-marketing of home theater would have offered larger profits on more sales, without competing on miniaturization R&D.

Where is the 20lb ceiling-mount livingroom projector for $1000, that does 1024x768 @2000lm? Maybe this Mitsubishi projector will help compete them into existence.

Re:Too expensive for what you get

[LurkerXXX]

Right. But the bulbs only last 4000 hours and cost ~$340 each. That's an extra $1300+ over the lifetime to equal what you get with the bulb in this little unit.

So for 20,000 hours of viewing it's:

$ 699 for the new LED unit.
$2100 for the InFocus X1a.

Re:20,000 hours lamp life - 2000 ?

[merlin_jim]

Are you/they sure it's 20,000 hours of lamp life? If that were true, that would be about 10 times more than for a typical projector. Just recently I purchased a Panasonic projector. During my research and shopping around I observed that all bulbs have between 2,000 and 3,000 hours of life in them.

So.... I question that 20,000 hours of life time quote...

You shouldn't... this projector uses LEDs, not lamps. The projectors you were looking at all used incandescent or flourescent technologies; a bright/hot/charged region getting electricity slammed through it to force it to give off photons.

This uses solid state LEDs; silicon junctions whose atomic makeup cause them to give off a specific frequency. Suitably heatsinked (and these come from the factory suitably heatsinked) you can give off TONS of light for a very long time.

This is good. This is exciting. These LEDs probably cost LESS than a bulb for a traditional projector, and last for a much longer period of time.