Slashdot Mirror
Micro-Projectors May Bring YouTube On-The-Go
An anonymous reader writes "A tiny portable projector, about the size of a pack of cards, may soon replace a ring tone as the most annoying thing on the train or bus. These technical innovations can project an image up to 50 inches in size in dark lighting, making them ideal for on-the-road business presentations. They can also be hooked up to cell phones or media devices, though, possibly introducing a whole new level of social intrusion into US culture. 'Digital projectors were once bulky. These new models, though, are small enough to fit into the pocket of consumers who want a big-screen experience from a small-screen device. Some of the models are expected to be on the market by year-end, or sooner. Prices have yet to be announced. Matthew S. Brennesholtz, an analyst at Insight Media, a marketing research firm in Norwalk, Conn., says he thinks the projectors will initially cost about $350, then quickly drop to less than $300.'"
Can I connect this thing to my HD DVD player? At $300 it's cheaper than buying a real 40 inch screen.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
How many mini projectors will have to "be comming soon" to get the editors to stop posting these stories?
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
If one is used in a movie theater, it's just the right size to crush under one's heel.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I'm pretty sure it was on /., too.
In any case, I, personally, can't wait for these. This, along with a sufficient Video Ipod, means I can take my music, videos, ebooks, and whatever else I want with me all for the size of a couple of packs of cigs. Excellent.
I'd definitely get one of these to use at work. Sometimes I find myself in a meeting with a few people in a place with no projectors, so it'd be useful to be able to go over something that could be kept in my pocket, ready to sue at a moments notice. This is especially useful since my employer is stingy with the number of conference rooms with projectors.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
The submitter could at least have linked to the YouTube Video of the projector prototype.
first post from osama bin laden!
So, how hot will the bulbs in these pocket projectors get?
I smell a market for a project projector protector!
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Because nothing says professional like holding a sales meeting presentation on a manilla folder or a NAPKIN.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
what does youtube has to do with this story?
there are plenty other better uses for this tech.
factor 966971: 966971
Great, now I'll be forced to watch hordes of reality shows and Blade movies. How much constant stimulation do people need? Seriously. I have ADD and have no trouble sitting somewhere quietly and just pondering things. Why do so many other people seem to? In most cases, there's absolutely no need to always be in constant communication with people through text messaging or watching Internet memes on the bus, or somewhere else where you're equally annoying other people. The Internet will still be there when you get home.
It's much better than the April Fool's jokes I submitted.
What? You're serious?
projectors will initially cost about $350, then quickly drop to less than $300.'"
Yeah, right. One that's as big as a kid's lunch box is thousands now. Well, let's see if we can find a link or two.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
At $300, it's probably VGA or SVGA res, good enough for DVD, but blow it up too large and you'll be seeing the gaps between the pixels. HD projectors run over $1000. A good 1080p projector can be had for about $2000 now, and they're generally quite beautiful.
I went to TFA to check the resolution of the projectors in question, only to find that TFA had no data whatsoever on that topic.
Without data on resolution, it's kinda pointless to discuss these things. Talk about vaporware...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Until now, projectors needed ungodly amounts of light to project an image bright enough to be usable in a non-darkened room. Either these miniprojectors use some kind of superefficient light source, or that 60" image can only be seen in total darkness.
You can't break the laws of physics. If you want a bright image you need to draw a lot of power. Even if you go with very efficient LEDs, the battery life on these things is going to be terrible.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Combine this in a single case with a CPU and a laser keyboard and it's the ultimate ultra-portable. On an airline tray table, take out the small box, which projects the image on the back of the seat in front of you, and the keyboard on the tray itself.
As component miniaturization continues, the limiting factors in ultraportables are increasingly the human interfaces - the screen and the keyboard.
This has been out there since 2007 http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/08/hands-on-with-microvisions-itty-bitty-projector/
And even in 2006. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/06/70942
At $300, it's probably VGA or SVGA res For youtube its probably QVGA (320x240) same as VHS, and good enough for a mobile phone.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
What happened to typical slashdot April Fool's Day?
All these serious threads are putting me to sleep. Quick, hook me up with something goofy!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
what ever happened to OMG Ponies!!!
The You Tube Ipecac Challenge displayed in a public setting. I can't wait!
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Finally pocket pr0n!
no other way to get all those half-bit movies that are being released into that small amount of memory, except using half-bit encoding.
only problem is, the tiny projectors play 'em half-fast.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Help me Obi-wan Kenobi you're my only hope.
Before you buy into "$300" you want to ask what the bulb lifetime is and how much the replacements will cost - because it wouldn't surprise me if the replacement bulb were to cost more than the projector and last a year or two. Think ink cartridges: projectors follow a similar economic model.
Hehehe. A Star Wars cosplayers dream come true. Think how much more authentic your R2 costume could be with one of these.
VHS is actually double that resolution (320 across x 486 scanlines).
Thanks for the info on the HD Projectors.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
Equally annoying when an article discusses new images of something yet never produces the images, only discusses them.
~ Ron Fitzgerald
I have a very powerful laser pointer. If someone's using one of these projectors annoyingly in public, I will just zap all over their picture. Perhaps from hundreds of feet away.
If they try to get tough, I'll just dial the laser up to "stun".
--
make install -not war
bugger that.
what I want is its big brother that can project HD image on the opposite wall, bright enough for normal viewing and about the size of a large book so I can hide it in the bookshelves on one side of the room and have a discreet drop down on the other. a small wireless remote could control the whole shebang.
or maybe what I want is the projector built into the lid or case of my laptop so I can project an image for 21" use in my hotel room or presentation, why would I want to carry another gadget?
or maybe I want the low resolution table top clock that can also project information, headlines, travel and weather onto my bedroom ceiling on a spoken command.
perhaps I want the discreet projector that can shine instructions or notes onto the smoked glass door in my hi tech corporate office. or airport. or train station.
why would I not want my sat nav to project onto my windscreen HUD like and stop me dangerously craning my neck to look at a 3" screen when I should be driving. while its at it, it can show key dashboard information as well.
what I absolutely do *not* need is a phone that can project images when hooked up to a matchbox - its a phone, thats all.
I like the tech, I really do - but I think they could do more with it!
anybody else got any cool ideas about what to do with a dinky little laser projector........?
I've got a 1080p DLP rear projector with a 50" screen. Why can't I just take off the screen and project the picture onto an even larger wall from further away?
--
make install -not war
There is one more company that is making these and apparently they did a demo in CES this year.
See here http://www.lightblueoptics.com/ They have a nice set of 'artists impression' of their applications !
"Micro-Projectors May Bring YouTube On-The-Go"
Like an iPhone?... Oh... Like an iPhone you can't see unless you are in total darkness.
"Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope."
Indeed, youtube uses exclusively a flash player... which is *bad* since it's not GPL. It's obvious that they are quite incompetent at youtube because they are not even able to code a fall back on a proper HTML element. That would allow standard video web browser plugins to handle the stream (most support flv codecs and format). Incompetence is the only reason I can think of, because I'm not able to picture google brut forcing flash on purpose. I don't think google being able to be that nasty... really.
I've been watching this develop and waiting for these to become commercially available for a few years now. Not because I want one, I don't. I want salespeople to buy them in droves, because it will shift the focus (heh) of more traditional digital projectors towards the home theatre market. I don't care if you can fit the projector in a briefcase. I want a good picture from a quiet projector at a reasonable price. If it's the size of a refrigerator, but it costs $50 and the bulbs are $10..? sold.
focus.....
As if Kirk doesn't get his own way often enough, with mountains that play Moulin Rouge!
Seriously though... I thing projectors on phones is a great idea. And yes, it'll draw power, but phones have been drawing ever-increasing power for a while now. They're (eventually) destined to be the next PC, remembering that the P is for "Personal", and that "Desktop" is what most of us now call our main workstation machine.
And for a little more future prediction... who's betting one of the most common lighttones will be "Help me Obi Wan --- you're my only hope!"?
How many mini projectors will have to "be comming soon" to get the editors to stop posting these stories?
As many as are hyped until one of them actually comes to market at an affordable price.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I've got a 1080p DLP rear projector with a 50" screen. Why can't I just take off the screen and project the picture onto an even larger wall from further away?
Maybe you can, but there may be issues as well. It might be designed only to focus within a few inches of the existing screen, because it wasn't expected that a person would try that, it's just easier to make. You would probably void your warranty. You probably can't set it to ceiling mount mode and hang it from the ceiling.
Imagine taking a nokia N810 and adding a projector in it. Add a usb hub for a little larger keyboard and a mouse and you can have an ultra portable desktop anywhere. Just add white surface.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
I'm trying...
"Life is not magic." Dr. Ron Weiss - "If we don't play God, who will?" Dr. James Watson
Because you were at the back of the queue for opposable thumbs? How the hell should we know what your handicap is?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Another use of this tech could be direct projection of the image on one's retina.
You can adjust the power output to arbitrarily low levels to not boil your eyes away. Also this thing does not require focusing, thus allowing projection to screens of arbitrary sizes while maintaining resolution. You could for instance get a 50'' image from 1m away, as well as 5'' from 7m, giving you almost total freedom of choice for placing the unit.
So with pupil tracking it should be possible to put one on the desk before you to replace your computer monitor, TV, whatever. No need for those bulky VR goggles!
There is no sig.
What happened to typical slashdot April Fool's Day?
The Department of Homeland Security realized that April Fools jokes make it possible for terrorists to stage attacks and have the response delayed and disrupted by people who think the reports are pranks. So April Fools pranks are now considered to be acts of terrorism.
The historic worst offenders are already at Gitmo (due to a preemptive strike). Teams are rounding up additional pranksters as they commit their terrorim and cleaning out their postings from forums such as Slashdot.
If you've already pulled something today and haven't met them yet, it was either too small to be worth their immediate attention or they haven't found out and traced you down yet.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
A projector for a flat surface in that size is easy. The high-tech is creating the 3-D screen in midair and only illuminating the selected parts.
(Holograms won't do it: You can only see the floating image if the hologram, a mirror giving you an image of the hologram, or a diffuser that is already encoded into the hologram, is in the line-of-sight to every pixel.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Another great product from Google. ;)
If you RTFA, you'll find that they use "dark lighting". Obviously, that's just like regular lighting, except that it makes anything it shines on dark instead of bright. That's the scientific breakthrough that allows them to pack a 60" projector into a box the size of a pack of cards and power it with a single AAA battery. Dark lighting, I tell you, it's the future.
I'll take the glasses that let me see computer annotations on the world around me, while leaving everybody else unaware of them.
I don't recall the name of the company. But they're being made in Israel. For a couple years the FAA has working with prototypes for air traffic ground controllers - so they can look out of the tower at the planes and see the annotations - and images of the planes and runways themselves in a solid fog.
The lens has near-planes (slightly curved) of refractive-index discontinuities and works by multiple total-internal-reflection until the light hits the desired discontinuity and is deflected. The projectors are in a thickening in the frame at each side.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
you also forgot to mention they have existed for several years now. you can buy one now at http://salestores.com/mitsub44.html
They generally suck as sales people treat them like they are durable and they are in fact not in any way. they break easily. When i left Comcast the back room had 6 pocket projectors that were dead as hell from sales guys damaging them.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Tired of those obnoxious ring tones ? Now you can annoy all the senses of your peers with your new shiny projectors. Thank you technology for bringing annoyances to new levels.
So shouldn't I be able to get a lens or two to compensate? It seems cheaper than buying a second TV for the bigger projection (and the extra storage for the redundancy).
--
make install -not war
My thumb in your eye socket, jackass.
--
make install -not war
you also forgot to mention they have existed for several years now. you can buy one now at http://salestores.com/mitsub44.html
They generally suck as sales people treat them like they are durable and they are in fact not in any way. they break easily
Those are just smaller versions of old technology. The new ones being developed use lasers or LEDs as the light source. The laser projector being demonstrated by Microvision is amazing. Infinite focus, small enough to fit into a normal sized cell phone. It uses a tiny scanning mirror to display the image rather than a lens. Should be very durable.
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
The high-tech is creating the 3-D screen in midair and only illuminating the selected parts.
That's where the smoke comes in, as in "it's all done with smoke and mirrors". Although water fog from one of those small ultrasonic foggers is used instead of smoke. For a better image, the water is doped with fluorescent dyes that need activation by two separate UV frequencies to light up; use two projectors and you can light up the voxels (3D pixels) at specific locations in the fog.
-- Alastair
Here's the company site. No mention of battery life issues.
This thing is a one-pixel display being scanned in 2D by a MEMS mirror. One pixel scanned displays have been tried before, and they're usually annoying. One of the neat things about LCD displays, plasma panels, and TI DLP mirror systems is that there's no flicker at all, because the display has full persistence. This brings back flicker, big time; all the persistence is in the eye. This idea has been tried before, in bigger displays, and abandoned. So this isn't going to look great, but it will have niche uses.
Brightness is 10 lumens, incidentally.
so where is my damned "Zardoz" ring?
And this is exactly the kind of device that needs 10x more battery life than our best batteries, and 10x more efficient light output for bulbs.
Roll on radioactive batteries is what I say.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
You could, but you would also need a mounting system as well as an enclosure to keep dust of of it...Plus since it already has a fairly fixed focus on the existing screen you may need to remove that set up and finally, well ground kenses of any size can be extremly expensive.
If only there were a small projector device that probably would cost about the same as creating a focusing box from scratch...something that cost say about $300?
I don't think a $300 mobile (or stationary) projector is going to do 1080p anytime soon. Certainly not one as nice as my 50" DLP.
:).
I wonder how long it will take before "dual mode" TVs are available. I don't want to watch a 200" screen all the time, especially if it needs a darkened room.
Maybe some kind of fiberoptic bundle that can plug into the enclosed rear projector, maybe with extra lumens for the bigger projection, but sharing all the other equipment. A fiber bundle could even point at an arbitrary wall without moving the enclosed set.
I'd love to see a homebrew version that just sticks a fiber bundle "pickup" in the path inside the enclosure, and points it at a wall through a lens box at the outside end. But I'm not ready to sacrifice my set for the experiments
--
make install -not war
... to connect to my PC to play Duke Nukem 3D! Which do you think will come out first? The projector, or Duke? ;-)
Likewise cell phones, MP3 players and personal video players seem to be rampantly used in public by jerks who wish to annoy others with their conversation, music or video. Now we'll get to put up with projections. Of course, when you ask them to stop due to decency or courtesy, they'll start shouting about it being a free country and they have the right to show their crap wherever they want.
At least one part of the article was prophetic: we'll definitely start seeing "No projectors allowed" in public places. Nice idea for business; new annoyance tool for consumers.
*waves hand* this is not the projection device you are looking for
That would require opposable thumbs. Got anything else?
That one is by Microvision and uses raster-scanning Lasers. It's a different technology and there have been reports of nasty artefacts due to laser speckle, but we'll have to wait and see. There's another company called Light Blue Optics who are also working on a small projector for mobile phones. Theirs is a different technology too and rather than raster-scanning, it bounces lasers off a Fourier transform of the desired image. Somehow it all comes together to form the actual image you want. One advantage of this is that if there is a fault with an individual pixel, the "badness" is imperceptibly spread over the whole image rather than showing up really obviously.
I still prefer the idea of video goggles though. It makes much more sense if you want a mobile "big screen". The Indicube is a portable video player using video goggles and will be released soon. The screen will have an FOV equivalent to something like a 17 inch monitor on your desk with a 800x600 resolution.
If someone starts annoying me on a bus or plane with small projected images distracting me, I see no reason why I should not then start demonstration of the awesome art of shadow puppetry until they desist.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Which basically means that it's still actually 320x240 as the parent said (like a regular non-HD CRT TV).
But the VCR is quickly alternating between odd and even lines go give the illusion of a higher resolution.
(2 times per frame. So the VCR sends 60 fields per second for 30 fps US/JP NTSC shows, and 50 fields per second for 25 fps EU PAL/SECAM shows - although at a slightly higher resolution).
If you display the video on a non-interlaced (progressive) display like a computer screen, you get interlace artefacts (combing : when object moves, because the two fields that compose the image weren't recorded at the same time, alterneting odd and even lines show different position), unless the initial source from which the video was made wasn't interlaced (basically : 25fps PAL video tapes made from 24fps cinema movies).
(and that's ignoring the even more artefacts your get because VCRs encode the colors at a lower resolution than the picture, the same kind of concept like modern digital MPEG compression)
But anyway, the casual user of such kind of projector will very probably be watching youtube video or other video bytes designed for handheld screens, and in those situation, given the compression quality, even a 320x240 projector might be overkill.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I mean, just look at the prices - $350 for first-gen technology of a micro projector? If it was any good they'd be pitching it at businesses for $2500 a pop.
No sig today...
VHS is analog in the horizontal, so that "320" is sort of meaningless.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
... and interlaced?
he didn't saw it ;D
Not really meaningless, just variable. VHS varies in quality depending upon the speed used. Generally speaking:
SP == 335 distinct black-and-white dots from left-to-right
EP/SLP == 305
The quality of the signal affects the resolution, so that it is not fixed like digital. If you go to a more advanced standard like Laserdisc or Super VHS, then you would see 560 distinct B&W dots. And finally DVD, when viewed through analog S-video, would be about 640 viewable resolution... the maximum that NTSC can handle. ----- Some analog standards like Enhanced Definition Betamax CLAIM they can do "over 670" horizontal resolution but I don't really believe that figure (especially since it's coming from Sony).
Chroma resolution:
The color resolution on analog really sucks. On a DVD you get about 350 pixels across for the chroma resolution, but on VHS it's only 40 across. Pretty poor and the reason why third or fourth generation copies suffer from severe chroma blur.
So in summary:
VHS is *approximately* 320 horizontal x 486 visible resolution with 60 interlaced fields @ 30 frames per second.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.