The Hindu : Front Page : Mobile phone-based ‘pico projectors’ coming

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Sunday, Jul 08, 2007
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Mobile phone-based ‘pico projectors’ coming

Anand Parthasarathy

They will allow you to enjoy the large picture size of a television set

— Photo: Special Arrangement

FITS ON fingertip: Texas Instruments has shrunk its digital light processor technology to fuel this pico projector.

Bangalore: You have streamed a breaking news clip using your mobile phone — or just want to watch the live video feed from a cricket match. The picture and sound are great — but watching video on the match box-sized screen of most hand sets, is no substitute for the comfort of your drawing room television set.

Get set for a solution that will reach you any time now — one that will allow you to enjoy the large picture size of a TV set without sacrificing the mobility of your cell phone. It’s called “pico-projection.” It is done by shrinking the video projector — that bulky, power guzzling accessory to power point presentations — to the size of a cigarette.... in fact small enough to form a tiny device that ‘fits on your fingertip’ or even something that can be integrated with the mobile phone.

Throughout 2006, multiple agencies worldwide, have been working feverishly to realise these pint-sized projection systems. They have second-guessed the need of so many executive ‘road warriors’ to make professional presentations, while lugging minimum equipment — and after a hard day’s work to enjoy a movie or streamed entertainment of their choice while lounging in their hotel rooms. In recent weeks, at least five competing solutions have been announced, all angled at the lucrative mobile phone market, which is two billion users strong — and growing: the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany has unveiled a sugar-cube-sized projection prototype, that uses red and blue lasers — and a single rotating mirror. It is looking for commercial partners. Seiko-Epson and Royal Philips Electronics have joined hands to create a reference design for a tiny ‘personal projector’ which exploits the 3-LCD technology patented by the Japanese player and lamp know-how from the Dutch company. They have realised a model that can be integrated into digital cameras, multimedia players and other hand-held devices.

Imagine taking a photo with your camera — and projecting it instantly on the nearest wall! Israel-based Explay launched the “Oio” Pocket nano-projector, at the Society of Information Display (SID) conference in California in May this year. It is offered as a standalone device, the size of a USB thumb drive — and has also been shown, integrated into a mobile phone. It can throw a picture equal in size to a 35-inch TV screen.

The same conference saw the U.S.-based Microvision unveil its ultra-miniature “Pico Projector” — in a package just 7 mm thick, to provide a DVD quality video picture...this device too could go into a cell phone.

One player who wins, no matter who eventually shrinks the projector, is Texas Instruments — whose Digital Light Processor (DLP) technology already fuels about half of all home, office and theatre digital projectors deployed worldwide. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year, this correspondent, got to hold what was touted as the ‘world’s tiniest projector’ in the palm of his hand. The TI Pico-prototype may appear soon under brand names such as Samsung, Toshiba and Mitsubishi, who already use DLP for their projectors. Others are gearing to squeeze it into phones and cameras.

While the rest of us may have to wait till year-end to be offered these incredible shrinking projectors, the world’s most wired nation is waiting for no one: SK Telecom of South Korea has announced availability of mobile phones in September featuring tiny projectors from another Korean player, Iljin Display.

Nobody is yet saying what all this will cost — but the guess is, having a projector on your phone will add about 30 per cent to the cost of a high-end handset. Not much perhaps when you think of it as cost of owning your own cinema theatre, albeit Lilliputian!

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