World's Smallest Projector

SkinnyGuy writes "Mixed into all of PCMag's CES preview coverage is an interesting story about a projector that's no bigger than an iPod. An early version showed up at last year's CES, but some of the guts weren't inside the small body. Now they are. It uses lasers to project the image. Really fascinating, futuristic stuff."

Comments

now that is progress

[jacquesm]

Finally something that is not wasting 90% of it's energy as heat, not to mention replacing ridiculously expensive bulbs every few hundred hours.
A low intensity version of this and you don't need a projection area any more, just beam it in directly :)
note to self: do not stare into laser with remaining eye...

Re:now that is progress

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually.. their original product plan had the image directly beamed into your eye... virtual retinal display. Rumor has it that Bill Gates suggested they turn it around and point it at a wall instead. Their "Power of one" motto pointed out that there were no problems with dead pixels ( unless of course you lost one color or the "one" pixel ). The nicest part in my opinion is that there is no focus as the image is being transmitted from what would be the focal point ( hence the "virtual image" bit ). I suspect this focus-less projector will allow better "surround" virtual reality systems.. just blast the image onto full-face visor! They must've thought of this.. it's such an obvious use?

  As far as the laser.. I don't think it uses a laser anymore.. the led update was surprisingly richer and made the laser version look like chicken scratches.

  Nice to see they might make some money off of this technology instead of turning into a boring barcode scanning company. Maybe they had some other money makers to shake lately?

What's the brightness on it?

[MSRedfox]

I own a PK20 pocket projector. It fits in the palm of my hand, does 800x600 native, and uses ultra-bright LEDs with DLP tech to handle the images. It gets 10,000 hours of lamp life but is fairly dim as a result. It is much brighter then the first gen, PK10, but it still gets washed out easily. In a lightly lit room, I can do a 40" image, and in pitch darkness(or almost black), I can project around 60-70" without issue. I'm curious how the brightness of the lasers will be. Will it be able to project a 5' image in a lit room, or will it need the lights fully dimmed? I also wonder what the viewing angle will be, will it be very narrow with a fast drop off to the sides (which would make it less then ideal for portable presentations). Does anyone have any actual specs on the unit?

Re:I bet the image is horrible

[awol]

Yeah, those scanning electron beams suck so much, the laser has got to suck too. Right??

Re:Laptops

[StarfishOne]

"Add a bit of cackling and you'll look like a mad wizard!"

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke

:D

848 by 480

[DavidD_CA]

Why don't these devices support normal resolutions?

If they are going through all that trouble to make a really cool tiny projector, can't they figure out how to make it support 1024x768 without resampling the image down?

I realize that 848 by 480 is used by some video formats and is 16:9, but still. Anyone using this to show a lecture or demonstrate how to use a computer program is going to be disappointed.

Re:I refer you to my signature...

[cnettel]

The only editor you need is emacs.

More interested in the laser technology

[91degrees]

Sure, small is cool, but these laser projection systems seem better than LCD/Lens. Lower power, cooler, presumably no need to focus. And can easily be made quite portable at a higher resolution.

Re:I bet the image is horrible

[myz24]

I dislike LED brake lights because they appear to flicker. I also see rainbows on 4x DLP projectors. Do I have superman eyes?

"24fps" is a myth....

[Joce640k]

The whole "24fps" thing was invented by Disney and it relates to smooth *movement*, not lack of flicker.

Cinemas can get away with lower frame rates because film projectors have a duty cycle where each image stays in place for 90-odd percent of the time then they switch to the next frame as quickly as possible (this is why film projectors make a clattering noise - they jerk the film through the mechanism). This means that most of the time there's a solid image being projected.

CRT monitors flicker a *lot* at 60Hz, and they've got persistence of image in the phosphor. To completely eliminate CRT flicker you have to go to 75Hz or more. Even then that only eliminates flicker in the center of vision, you can still see it in the corner of your eye where there's more rods than cones.

With no persistence the human eye can see flicker well over 100Hz, maybe even as high as 150Hz.

Rainbows on DLP projectors.

[Joce640k]

No, I see them as well, and so do many other people.

Sorry.

PS: DLP doesn't scan the image line by line, it projects the entire image all at once. This gives it a much wider duty cycle (ratio of "on" to "off") than a scanning laser beam. A wide duty cycle reduces flicker a *lot*, it's the only reason DLP projectors work at all.

Re:I refer you to my signature...

[LaoChe1984]

Yours, is the incorrect, one. Why, is that comma, there? I thought, that we had editors, to check, for this sort of thing. There, fixed those, for you. James T. Kirk

$200-300? No.

[Kalewa]

The eeeeeeepc was supposed to be $200 too. That stupid OLED keyboard was supposed to be $500. I don't see this going for less than $600 by the time the bean counters get done with it. For $200-299 it's a toy, and everyone will buy one, but very few companies seem to understand that price point. I'll believe it when I see it.

Re:I refer you to my signature...

[sootman]

The editors, are busy.