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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.
It's nice to see projectors finally coming down in price. The lowest price used to be the 2200MP Multimedia Projector for $899. Hopefully we will see more in the lower price range and maybe even under $500. The smaller size is definately a plus.
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cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Me too, neither =(
Why is Lumens (N/A) a con? And what does Lumens (N/A) mean? it doesn't use light?
The author probably slashdotted the site while writing and couldn't fill that part in.
Don't expect it to be bright enough to use as a Bat-Signal. OTOH, it's probably just the thing for those home slide-shows, which people wouldn't do at the cost of other projectors. Some may winge about the resolution, but I think 800x600 is good enough for most things as when I'm demoing apps, I target an 800x600 desktop, because most people around here are still using that even if higher resolution is available.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
otherwise it would be a perfect fit for the Mac Mini.
It's an LED projector. It doesn't use a incadescent lamp with a white hot burning filament. It's posted on slashdot for reason. It's damn cool!
http://web.media.mit.edu/~stefanm/TinyProjector/Ti nyProjector.html
US$699, why?
I build a projector by taking a slide projector and one of those miniture lcd screens.
I broke the screen open, removed the backlight and mounted in the projector. Hey presto a new projector. Everything ran on 12v, so I could in principle attach it to batteries or car adapter.
Total cost
4x3 cm LCD screen $60
Second hand projector $10
Total $70
Ok, so the image isn't the best quality and I had to get an extra cooling fan for the screen, which cost me about $10. My next project is with a laptop screen and an overhead projector with a one of those builders halogen lights. Then I can watch my favorite tv program against the side of a building.
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For $699, you get a LED (dim) LCD (crappy image) projector.
For $765, you can buy an InFocus X1a which has a much brighter lamp and will be nicer for movies and presentations. Plus, IMHO LCD projectors really suck because of the "screen door" effect. The X1a is a DLP projector which produces a more clear image.
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Time to take moore's law into you're own hands dude! Just rip apart an old LCD monitor and lay it on a used overhead projector... I bet you could get 1280 x 1024 for less than $200, especially if you don't care about it weighing 20lbs...
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
Heck, with my video card I can only play Doom3 at 800x600 anyhow. Otherwise it's a slide show. I might as well use this projector as my 17" LCD monitor ;)
About 15 years ago, Rogersound (in CA) had a projector that was about the size of a VHS tape. It made a 30" picture, but it looked like a black honeycomb between the projected image. It cost $350. A VGA projector with today's image quality and this size case could be released today, but at what cost?
A little bird told me about TI's version of the same thing, it hadn't made it to market yet because they wanted a higher lumen output on the projector.
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It is my understanding that LEDs still aren't quite bright enough for use in a projector. I've been toying with the idea of building my own LCD projector, and all the information I've seen on the net has said that LEDs just won't cut it. To get enough light, you need a cluster too big to approximate a point source. Using an array of them as a backlight has other issues for projection, but would work great in place of a CCFL in a standard LCD monitor (even if getting it to work is a bit labor intensive).
Here's one guy's attempt. There are tons of others, if you look around. No successes that I've come across though.
I haven't really kept up with LED technology, so maybe things have changed, but I kind of doubt it's any significant change. I have thought about taking a bunch of LEDs, putting them inside a reflective light box, and taking the light out through a multimode fiber optic cable, to scramble the light. The output of the cable would then act as a point source (with the appropriate lens in place).
Based on this little projector, and the rumors of LCD TVs powered by LED illumination, I'd guess that there are some LEDs out there to get the job done. These may still only be available to OEMs in large quantities though (assuming the OEMs don't have exclusivity on them).
I also have a suspicion that this system is not based on white LEDs (which are really modified blue LEDs, which is surprising, when you consider how good the color temperature ends up being). Instead, it's probably RGBs with dichroics mixing the colors. This would avoid the colorwheel needed in a DLP system, which would take up quite a bit of space and power.
Anyway, enough of this rambling. If this thing hits the market, and the picture quality is good (I'm mostly worried it won't be bright enough), then I'll get one. The speculative price is lower than a typical LCD or DLP projector, and there's no $600/yr operating fee (new bulbs). I wouldn't even worry about the cost of replacing the LEDs, since that's 10-20 years down the road (assuming pretty heavy usage).
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When my wife saw it (we were at a holiday dinner when it was shown around the table) she said it was the neatest little thing, but could they make it smaller!
The next comment shocked me: "We're working on making it half that size."
This Insight Media review from CES indicates only 10 lumens for this device - good for a 10-15" effective display. Hopefully this technology will improve further.