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."

Re:does size matter?

[mcgrew]

Well, Mr. Gates, three meters is nine feet. Perhaps I'm mistaken in assuming that's nine feet diagonal as monitors are usually measured, but that's twice as big as my TV, which is over twice as big as any screen I've ever owned.

It doesn't say that the room has to be smaller than three meters; that's the maximum size of the projection.

Re:The lamp is non-replaceable?

[Ant P.]

Not to mention if they can't spare 4 cents an hour, they wouldn't be able to afford the electricity to run a full-size projector in the first place.

New Uses

[cowtamer]

This opens up entirely new uses for a projector for the nerdy crowd:

Some examples/ideas:
  * Projector tiling [64.233.169.104]
  * Cheap, portable 3D Scanning [ercim.org]
  * 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.)