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

Underwater Projection

[daddyrief]

Don't let the, sharks get a hold, of this one...

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?

I refer you to my signature...

[Kawahee]

Why is that comma there?

It uses, lasers to project the image

I thought that we had editors to check for this sort of, thing.

Laptops

[ianare]

This would be awesome for an ultra-portable laptop: just a keyboard without the screen, just project onto any wall ... or use a very light roll-up screen.

Re:Laptops

[ZJVavrek]

Or one of those laser keyboards. Like this. http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/8193/ Get some reasonably powerful device, add the two of those and maybe some kind of location sensing finger ring for a mouse... voilà, now you have a justifiable reason for Linux on your cell phone. Not that you needed one.

Re:Laptops

[johannesg]

You want to combine this with a projected keyboard (http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/8193/). And possibly a wiimote-based multitouch interface instead of a mouse. Add a bit of cackling and you'll look like a mad wizard!

You know what, I think the 21st century has arrived at last!

This Isn't Going to be Good for the Community

[matty619]

And just think, by simply using 50 mW lasers, it will now be possible for the masses to skywrite commercials on the cloud cover. Or at the very least, everyone can have their own Bat Signal Device. Or project a 500' Goatse on a downtown sky scraper. I don't see how this can possibly go wrong. -M@

Re:This Isn't Going to be Good for the Community

[jacquesm]

I think your power calculations for skywriting are off by several orders of magnitude. That sort of laser is best not used near anything combustible either, not unless you want it to combust that is :)

A friend of mine who pioneered lasers in pop music (for Genesis in the Peter Gabriel days) once turned down a proposal to implement this because of the limited range of conditions when it would operate and the enormous power levels required, it's a bit of a difference to project something on a wall 5' away from you vs on a semi-transparant medium several hundred meters away. Of course you don't need to take my word for it, or you may have meant your original post in a sarcastic way (but that's hard to tell here sometimes).

a 50 mW laser will carray a good distance as long as you don't start scanning it, then it quickly becomes useless.

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?

Cell phones will have these!

[MindPrison]

No doubt!

Personally I cant wait - this is TOO much fun, imagine the on-the-fly presentations you can do with this baby, no longer youll have to wave everyone over to your microscopic cell-phone screen to say "watch what I did this weekend".

Oh wait...

Thats not good...

Re:Obligitory laser post

[wizardforce]

will angry mutated sea-bass suffice?

Good

[DerWulf]

Very cool product. The name sucks though. Google finds 2.560.000.000 hits for "SHOW".

Re:I bet the image is horrible

[awol]

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

Microthis, Microthat

[Conanymous Award]

What's up with all these companies from Redmond, Washington being called Microsomething? Is Microvision something that is needed to see Bill's Micro-soft?

Re:Would be great for multi touch touchscreen

[apt142]

At $200-$300 my first thought was, could this replace my TV set? I'd just need a tuner, which I could get for my computer. It sure would be nice to reduce all of my entertainment equipment to one computer, a speaker system and an iPod sized projector.

The resolution isn't what I would like, especially if I wanted to hook it up to my computer. But, I'm sure that'll improve in future versions.

Re:Mess with the teachers

[HTH NE1]

A classroom? Are you kidding? Think about using this in a White House Press Room Briefing to project video evidence of the lies!