Tiny Projectors Provide Full Screen Video from Cell Phones
Posted on: Friday, 4 April 2008, 01:00 CDT
A number of companies are rushing to develop “pico projectors”, devices that project whatever is playing on a small screen, such as a cell phone, onto walls and other surfaces.
According to companies developing the new devices, the technology differs significantly from standard projectors, and eventually the tiny pico projectors to be built into portable media players and cell phones.
At this week’s CTIA Wireless industry show in Las Vegas, companies such as Redmond, Wash.-based Microvision Inc. demonstrated prototypes of the projector. Currently about the size of a deck of cards, by the time the device hits the market this later it should be about 30 percent smaller, according to the company’s director of projector product management, Russell Hannigan.
The demonstration was conducted in a darkened room, with the prototype connected to an iPod Nano and held about 6 feet away from the wall. It produced a surprisingly crisp, bright video as sharp as any DVD and measuring 6 feet diagonally across the wall. The image was less impressive when displayed on the brightly lit showroom floor, but nevertheless projected nicely on to a piece of paper held a foot away.
Microvision's pico projector works by shining red, green and blue lasers on a rapidly moving 1-millimeter square mirror, which then "paints" the picture line by line, fast enough to blend into a single image.
Hannigan said the company is aiming for a 2.5 hour battery life for the initial projector, and that the device’s high energy efficiency allowed the company to dispense with vents and fans used in standard projectors.
Alexander Tokman, the company’s CEO, said the projector would sell for $300 to $400 through its partners, of which Motorola Inc. is the only one he would name.
Macrovision is also working on a projector small enough to be incorporated into cell phones by the second half of last year. Tokman predicts that the price of these integrated projectors would increase the cell phone’s price by only $100 because cell phones already contain batteries and other necessary electronics.
"The two things people are buying now are cell phones and big-screen TVs," he said. "This brings those two together."
Texas Instruments Inc. and 3M Co. also have prototypes of the device they may soon bring to market, as does Alcatel-Lucent. Randy Giles, director of optical subsystems at the company’s Bell Labs research arm, demonstrated a small projector at CTIA that displayed Disney's "Fantasia" from a Nokia N95 phone.
Like Microvision, the company’s projector uses lasers, but it is otherwise more conventional, using technology similar to liquid-crystal displays that block or pass light through to the screen. The image appeared dimmer and was smaller than Microvision's, but Giles explained a prototype currently in the lab produces images14 times brighter. Giles also expects projectors to be built into handsets sometime next year.
Microvision's Tokman said its research suggested that teenagers would be the big market for the company.
"They prefer this to spending time with their parents,” he said.
"They would rather shut themselves in a dark room and project movies on the walls.”
Source: redOrbit staff and wire reports
Related Articles
- Agere Systems Announces Low-Cost Cell Phone Platform for the Market's Largest Segment
- Cell Phone Companies Tout Strong Gains
- Phone Companies Reinvent Landlines
- Cell Phone Companies Sue Kentucky Over Tax
- Two Cell Phone Companies Going National
- Size Is Not Biggest Factor for Cell Phone Companies
- Cingular to buy AT&T Wireless: ; Cell phone company would gain in services and technology
- Phone Companies Cut Internet Service Prices
- Changes Create Challenges for Wireless Phone Companies
- Cell phone giants regain lost market in third quarter
 |
 |
User Comments (0)
RSS Feeds