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The Pocket-Sized Projector Has Arrived
mallumax writes "David Pogue of New York Times has reviewed the Pico, which is a pocket projector from Optoma. The review is quite entertaining (Pogue projects the images on to a plane's ceiling, leaving passengers baffled) and detailed. The highlights are: It is a pocket-sized projector which runs on batteries and can project images and videos from a variety of sources like iPhone, iPod and DVD players with a 480x320px resolution, with a maximum screen size of 65 inches at 8.5 feet. It uses a non-replaceable 10,000 hour LED lamp and a DLP chip from Texas Instruments. The battery lasts for 90 minutes and can be recharged through USB or with its own power cord. The device weighs 115g and comes with an inbuilt speaker which is practically useless. If you want one, it will set you back by $430."
Angus Young has already said he wants one. Something about it having its very own power chord, I guess.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
A non-replaceable lamp on an LCD projector? No thanks.
is there some research that humans will live in rooms no bigger than 3 meter space in the future or something? (like one of those japanese coffin hotels)
i mean, sure enough, things are good to be compact and small, but there's this thing called TOO small
The Pico I remember used laser diodes, not just a LED light.
The lasers allow much greater efficiency - traditional projectors, like LCD Monitors, actually use more energy to display black, because it has to activate the cells to block light.
In this case, the lasers just shut off, reducing power usage to what's actually needed to make the image, not to make a full while screen all the time.
I don't read AC A human right
I say anyone really happy to see me would be packing at least 720p in their pocket.
Or you can lie in bed and point the thing straight up. In a dark room, you'll have yourself a huge, bright movie playing on the ceiling.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
the election must have taken its toll on me i swear the article summary said "projector from Obama" not "projector from Optoma". Anyways, I'm glad to see this technology finally reach the consumer at an affordable price. Next in line, perfecting the airscreen.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
Thank you and god bless.
You had me until that part. Sorry, bro, no brownie points for you.
Is that a projector in your pocket? Or are you just happy to see me? ;-)
I added the word "nerds" to http://wordandlink.com/, you should add a word too.
Then he spent some quality time with the Air Marshall and DHS ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Poor form sir, poor form. What good is a paranoid rant without some mention of jew bankers, the international money cartel, black helicopters, and the plan to turn Mississippi into an al-quaeda training camp?
-1: discredit to the white race.
I'm not exactly a gadget freak but I have to say I do want one of these (not at this price though). With the ability to store a whole bunch of video on a tiny device and the major problem of having to watch it on the little screen, this seems to fill the gap nicely. You just need a flat surface (as the review says, back of the seat in front of you on a plane or whatever) and you can watch it comfortably. And it still fits in your pocket. Why isn't everybody making them?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
for those around here that remember 1998, the Rio PMP300 was the 2nd but the most important MP3 player that came on the market. Not exactly ripping it up at 32 MB of RAM but an important introduction nonetheless and ultimately led to Creative and then Apple following with their MP3 players. Given that, in 10 years we may all have them on our key chains next to the USB terabyte drives.
"The people on the plane were baffled when they saw *porn* on the ceiling . ." and you thought cell phones were annoying when they came out . .
If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
I accidentally modded you redundant while trying to click insightful. So here i am posting to eliminate the moderation. That being said, mod parent up.
3M makes and sells a very pocketable battery powered projector already. It has been for sale for a couple of months. Has better specs too, and it's cheaper. I'm not sure why we have articles that ignore stuff like this. I know we can't be experts on everything, but man, the author couldn't do a quick google search for pico projectors?
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
Not surprisingly, the tech specs (http://www.optoma.co.uk/PicoIntro.aspx) don't say how bright the thing is.
The review claims 9 lumens - pretty dim.
While vi became vim, this is a huge jump in functionality for Pico
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
No HD, no wireless, no shaver. Lame.
This is where's it's at.
-Matthew Riley "TofuMatt" MacPherson
I have a website
traditional projectors, like LCD Monitors, actually use more energy to display black, because it has to activate the cells to block light.
That may be true in LCD shutter technologies, such as an LCD monitor. This baby uses DLP technology, which is essentially a chip covered in tiny steerable mirrors. To produce black, they simply aim the mirror off-screen. It costs essentially no more energy to produce black vs any other color.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I must be old. I read the title as "Pocket-protector"
The "g" was lower case, so I can only assume he was referring to Apollo, or perhaps Thor.
Although why he's asking characters from popular Scifi Channel series to bless them is beyond me.
Looks like the webserver got bombed. Here is the cached site as of the 25th of October. Google Cache: http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:d-yiI5QQzfQJ:www.optoma.co.uk/PicoIndex.aspx+http://www.optoma.co.uk/PicoIndex.aspx&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox
This opens up entirely new uses for a projector for the nerdy crowd:
Some examples/ideas:
* Projector tiling
* Cheap, portable 3D Scanning
* Real-time photo sharing (obvious)
* Portable video-conferencing, telepresence (think projector-screen-like avatars around the screen with a tiny projector attached to each of them)
* Pseudo-Invisibility!! (Think helmet-mounted camera, white t-shirt, dorky looking wearable projector mount)
* Head-Mounted Projector applications (other types of invisibility, "Virtual Cockpit", freaking people out at night clubs, etc.)
...is a note played on an electric guitar played simultaneously with the note whose frequency is approximately 50% higher. The simple ratio means you get nice interaction between harmonics, even when the guitar is heavily distorted. They're very popular with many guitarists and are easy to play. Bands ranging from Hawkwind to Nirvana made/make great use of them. They don't usually come with projectors.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
When it goes on sale in two weeks, it will give parents a completely portable backseat-of-the-minivan movie theater for the kids.
Sure, provided you're driving at night, or with all the windows painted over.
"Pocket projector."
I can't believe no one made this pun before now.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Is it just me or is the movie on the NYTimes.com not about Pico but about MovieBeam? Pogue does not project anything on a ceiling, as described in the summary.
Now you'll be able to tell the geeks, because they will be the ones with the pocket-projectors.
I think you missed the point. It's one thing that the breeders have their children watching movies in the relative privacy of their own vehicles. What you should be afraid of, is that you will be subjected to all this in places you thought were safe.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
This baby uses DLP technology, which is essentially a chip covered in tiny steerable mirrors. To produce black, they simply aim the mirror off-screen. It costs essentially no more energy to produce black vs any other color.
Then gray must be even harder because it has to aim the mirrors back and forth rapidly.
That's only the fat, greedy, whitebread dickhead speculators punishing the common man for electing a president who will stand up for the people against the best interests of the greedy speculating fat fucks who drove gas up to 5 bucks a gallon and stole the common man's retirement accounts to stuff Wall Street's already fat ass.
No more free lobster and filet mignon for the financial institutions and other pigs feeding from the money trough: You and your crony-ass friends are on your way out. You have no chance make your time. So begins a new era, the age of the Common Man(tm).
TFA states that it's a 20,000 hour bulb, not 10,000 as the summary suggests.
Just FYI.
...until someone shows Goatse with this thing. It will make the flight that much more "entertaining"...
Puke.
Sooooo funny uvajed_ekil. I hope you always find a place to plug-in your cord.
I feel sorry for the guy. You should desire a projector longer than your pocket.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
It looks like a cool little gizmo, but not for me until the resolution increases. Might be neat, like the linked article suggests, if you use it on your ceiling at night in bed.
Even better, imagine making short clips of those creepy pale black-eyed children from Japanese horror movies and projecting them at random...
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
Uh, whoa. You could totally use this device to replace your monitor. Or just add a bunch of spare ones... Or use it as an occasional dual-monitor
Since it's light, it's probably perfect for projecting overhead onto a table..hrmm.
The lifetime issue is obviously a thing though, I know my monitor gets plenty of play. Although 7 years for the life of a monitor isn't so bad. I can't really recall using a monitor over 7 years old.
You're remembering the PicoP from Microvision, which is the only "pico projector" that will use lasers http://www.microvision.com/pico_projector_displays/howitworks.html . Everything else is just a small DLP.
There is no sig.
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
Speaking as a parent, I .. . .you got me.
You are not the customer.
Pretty sure it's the cost of high power blue laser diodes that's holding up RGB laser data projectors. I think you can get a red only version though, or you will be able to soonish.
Are you just happy to see me?
What's the average lifespan of a shark, cause I'd hate to need to replace a burnt out laser on one of those frickin' things.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I'm probably going to wait until I can get one with a pocket projector protector.
I think its uses in business will be limited without a way to connect it to a laptop for a slide presentation
I was looking at the information on the I saw the "throw distance" of 1.9...
and I started to think that this device could only be throw 1.9 meters and how I could totally throw it further.
Sure, provided you're driving at night, or with all the windows painted over.
Well, it's not like opaque windows could make minivan soccer moms any worse at driving...
Awesome for the price. I want one.
I remember that the guys behind the beagleboard wanted to build a portable mini projector... Is this what they were building?
When it goes on sale in two weeks, it will give parents a completely portable backseat-of-the-minivan movie theater for the kids.
Sure, provided you're driving at night, or with all the windows painted over.
Watching minvan drivers, I though that minivans were sold with all their windows painted over?
Interesting, How do they deal with the speckle problem created by the coherent light source?
So screw LED sign of Ignignok or Er in an odd location. This projector + Smallest iPod w/video + reasonable sized external battery pack, and you have "terrorist" device that will have Boston PD shitting themselves! Porn will be everywhere!!!
Video graffiti!!!
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
iWant1
... or are you just happy to see me?
Seriously, though, are they coming to Europe?
yeah!!! a full 9 lumens...
Never having seen it actually in use, I couldn't say. Could be that they deliberately detune it a bit when it goes through the combiner.
After that it works a lot like a CRT monitor, constantly redrawing the screen.
I don't read AC A human right
Dunno for sure, but there are a few ways to deal with the problem, most of which are covered under patents, of course. Basically the idea is to quickly (i.e. above 30 Hz or so) vary the phase of the light over a wide area so your eye doesn't have time to perceive the speckle.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I don't give a fuck... as long as i don't have to hear another word about president and elect for another 2 years.
4c:61:7a:79
An even cheaper version will be available from Digikey in Jan. http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail?name=296-23836-ND
LED. I believe Microvision's Pico projector is the manufacturer that is/was planning a laser-based Pico projector.
It would seem they had a great plan, but another company (Optoma) has now beaten them to the market with a LED projector.
So most likely Optium will now command the market, and the Laser projector will suffer the same fate as Betamax/Laser disk.
That is.. unless Microvision really does get the Laser projector out fast, and consumers buy theirs instead for some reason.
But if their target market all buys the LED projectors before the Laser projector could be finished, they'll have noone to sell to.....
Um, okay...
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
I'm not sure what you read, but the summary has been edited, I think. My original response was prompted by the term "power chord" in the summary, when it should have read "power cord." Here's a link for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humour#Understanding_humour.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Basically the idea is to quickly (i.e. above 30 Hz or so) vary the phase of the light over a wide area so your eye doesn't have time to perceive the speckle.
Given that we're not only combining 3 lasers, we're also left and right starting around 38k times a second, and up and down at least 60 times a second, moving it through more than 3/4 a million pixels equivalents every 1/60th of a second.
I think that varying the phase wouldn't be a big deal.
Then again, the whole thing depends on a bit of light that stays in one spot for only millionths of a second, lasting for hundredths in our perception. It might not be hanging around long enough for the sparkle to be visible.
I don't read AC A human right
So most likely Optium will now command the market, and the Laser projector will suffer the same fate as Betamax/Laser disk.
Well, it might not either - DLP is later technology than LCD, but both persist, and I'd even say DLP is gaining in projector fields.
The LED device is around the size of a wallet. The laser one prototype was the size of one of those small matchboxes. Going by this website, they've gotten that down to a penny. Going by Microvision's own site, they're looking to integrate the laser technology into a cell phone. If it can be made cheap, durable, and effective enough, it'll be able to carve it's own niche easily enough.
I don't read AC A human right
I know a guy who works on this tech, they can already fit in a cell phone. It's just not affordable. He tells me as the price of the lasers comes down, it will become commonplace to have a projector in your cell phone. I think he anticipated 2010...
Given that we're not only combining 3 lasers, we're also left and right starting around 38k times a second, and up and down at least 60 times a second, moving it through more than 3/4 a million pixels equivalents every 1/60th of a second. I think that varying the phase wouldn't be a big deal.
I've not worked with the laser-based TV systems, but I've had lots and lots of experience with industrial beam-steered lasers, and my experience with those that use visible wavelengths is that they exhibit extremely strong speckle no matter how fast the beam is being moved around. If the beam is being placed in exactly the same spot, with the optical path being exactly the same length, I'd think there's a pretty good chance speckle would continue to be an issue, but I can't support that prediction observationally. The problem is that you have to continuously vary the phase across the entire width of the beam such that the speckle is being changed faster than the eye can perceive. I suppose one way to do it might be by distorting the focusing lens by a fraction of a wavelength such that the optical path length on subsequent scans of a given pixel would vary quickly enough to be below the threshold of perception.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
CNN are still waiting for the Pocket Holographic Projector edition to come out.
Until then, they're happy to fake it.
1) Purchase Pico ....
2) Upload animated "player decoy" Counter-Strike spray into iPod
3) Project onto wall
4)
5) Profit!!!
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
No wonder they didn't post the resolution even under "technical specifications" on their website. (The flash movie may very well say what it is, but I didn't load the damn dirty thing.) 3M's projector has twice as many pixels... And it's about seventy bucks cheaper. Might as well have the slashvertisement for the better product, eh? Gotta put one of these suckers on my wish list for sure. I think this is just the display device to use for a motion simulator.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Trying to figure out whats what here...
microvision.com
PSP resolution = 480x272
Pico resolution = 480x320
Would LOVE to see component input on the Pico....
Not so good for the regular consumer.
If you're using it to play videos, then suddenly, you need a second device and a wire. If you need headphones, then it becomes three devices and another wire, which means it becomes awkward and tangled to use and store, which means it won't get used unless you are really driven. And if the intent is to share the experience with more than just yourself, you'd need more than one second set of head phones.
I can see a pocket projector becoming much more useful when it includes a decent sound system, has increased luminosity and plays media directly from a USB memory stick, all of which are possible. Though, for a single user, a netbook does all of that and much more.
Remember? TV's allowed us to view things without having to turn out the lights or worry about setting up a projector.
Still, if you happen to be doing lots of small presentations on the road, I can see this device as having real benefit over lugging around a big projector.
-FL
Bulb not replaceable. No thanks we have been through 3 of those puppys at my house on dlp tvs at 300 bucks a pop.
Now you want me to pay 400 something a pop. If those bulbs lasted as long as a picture tube fine. But in real life about a year.
Have you seen the Divistar one sold at Pearl ?
Maybe too big for pockets... but it looks nice, and is less expensive than the Pico.
http://www.pearl.fr/article-PX3140.html
* LED, 20.000h
* 63,5cm (25") image at 1m
* 100:1 contrast
* builtin speaker 1W
* silent fan
* VGA and Cinch-AV
* Screw thread for tripod
* Size: 90x44x80mm
* Weight: 200g
And its 170 euros with 19.6% taxes (aroud 240 US$).
I wait to see such device working, I'm in doubt about light power and image quality with such contrast.
Note: the euro symbol (â) is not recognized in plain old text mode.
-- Laurent Pointal
They are selling a mobile phone + palm size projector
Review:
http://www.cheaa.com/Product/DH/HangQing/2008/11/37964152257.html
http://chinese.engadget.com/2008/08/26/epoq-egp-pp01-kirf-projector-phone-now-shipping/
just for 2000RMB (~285USD).
It claims to have 34-64 inches projected screen at 1-2 meter @ 640*480 resolution, does not mention the lumen though.
Better yet, looks like the speaker is much larger :P And after all it's a cell phone too.
This isn't a pico, it's a pocket projector. Different class. Many of the pico units do use lasers.
Technically, it IS a pico, or at least named that:
"David Pogue of New York Times has reviewed the Pico, which is a pocket projector from Optoma.
I was initially confused a bit because I remembered a pico under development a different company that used lasers to increase efficiency and reduce size.
This Pico, at most, is a generational improvement.
The laser one, as far as I know, would be a breakthrough design - a full color laser image producer? That would be a first on the market.
I don't read AC A human right
Wouldn't industrial lasers be far, far more powerful than the ones we're talking about? Plus, wouldn't any individual instance of speckle be minimized by the small footprint of any given pixel?
How hard is it to vary the phase? Given that you mention changing the phase faster than the eye can perceive, wouldn't the fact that we have a mirror moving the beam in the kilohertz sideways mean that the beam is moving faster than the eye can perceive anyways?
I don't read AC A human right
Yes, we can peas.
And beans, and tomatoes too! ...
BTW, Zeus is my God! This jehova whatshis-name has nuthin' on MY God!
And so you are correct. I was assuming this was a pocket class unit because of the title of TFS.
This appears to be one of the smaller pico units like the LED unit from 3M, and laser projectors from Microvision and Symbol Tech.