Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/06/pico_projectors_at_computex/
Pocket DV cam packs pico projector
We've seen the future, and it's tiny
Posted in Music and Media, 6th June 2009 00:08 GMT
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Computex Tiny pico projectors provided some of the biggest buzz at this week's Computex mega-show in Taiwan, according to a report (http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090604VL208.html) from that country's tech-news source, DigiTimes.
In addition to powering pocketable projectors, pico-projection mechanisms and their optics are tiny enough to be incorporated into devices such as cell phones, media players, and cameras.
In fact, a pico-projector-DV-cam mash-up was on display at Comuputex, created by Taiwan's Life Technologies and to be marketed under their DigiLife (http://www.digilifeglobal.com/) brand.
The camera half of the DigiLife DDV-JF1, scheduled to be released by the end of this year, will have a 5-megapixel CMOS sensor that can capture 1280-by-720 resolution images at 30 frames per second, compress them using the H.264 codec, and play them back on its 2.5-inch LCD display.
But the surprise inside the DDV-JF1 will be a built-in pico projector designed to project 640-by-360 images up to four meters away at a diagonal image size of 50 inches.
Life Technologies hasn't yet decided which pico-projector technology it will use in the the DDV-JF1. As of today, it has four main choices: Texas Instruments' DLP (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/28/pocket_projector_for_phones/), 3M's LCOS (http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/Vikuiti1/BrandProducts/main/marketsweserve/projectioncomponents/LCOS/) (liquid crystal on silicon), and Displaytech's FLCOS (http://www.displaytech.com/picoprojectors.html) (ferroelectric LCOS) systems, which each require a focusing lens; and the lensless laser-based system (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/06/green_lasers/) designed by Microvision and planned for both OEM customers and the company's own Show WX (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/08/microvision_show_wx/), which is scheduled for release later this year.
DV cam manufacturer Aiptek (http://www.aiptek.com/), also headquartered in Taiwan, is also planning a cam-cum-pico unit for release before year's end. The company wasn't showing that combo at Computex, but it did have a passle of its own pico projectors on display, including the T20 (http://www.picoprojector-info.com/aiptek-t20-photo), designed for use with notebooks, and the T30 (http://www.picoprojector-info.com/aiptek-t30), for projecting video from an iPhone or iPod.
Also on display was Aiptek's upgrade of its award-winning PocketCinema V10 (http://www.aiptek.com/Projectors/), the V10Plus, which adds more memory and the ability to record from, as the company claims, "any video source."
The PocketCinema V10's aforementioned award - one of the Taiwan Excellence Awards (http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2009/04/17/4138519.htm) announced last month - was topped by another pico. Optoma's Pico Pocket Projector PK101 (http://www.optomausa.com/product_detail.asp?productsubcat=26&productcategory=Projector&product_id=399&itemno=PICO) won a Taiwan Excellence Gold Award, while Aiptek took home a Silver.
According to DigiTimes, Oculon Optoelectronics (http://www.oculon.com.tw/en/index.aspx), BroVista International (http://brovista.asianproducts.com/gold-showroomlist_A11891342123579109_A9448819452127__.htm), Honlai Technology (http://www.honlai.com.tw/), and ebon Technology (http://www.computex.biz/ebon/) all had 3M LCOS pico projectors on display at this year's Computex.
The next big thing may be quite small, indeed. ®