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World's Smallest Projector

Posted by samzenpus on from the there-are-no-small-roles dept.

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."

6 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. now that is progress by jacquesm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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...

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    MP3 Search Engine
    1. Re:now that is progress by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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?

  2. What's the brightness on it? by MSRedfox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  3. Re:I bet the image is horrible by awol · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    --
    "The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
  4. Re:I refer you to my signature... by cnettel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The only editor you need is emacs.

  5. Re:I refer you to my signature... by LaoChe1984 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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