A Widescreen Laser Projector In Your Pocket

Edis Krad writes "Redmond based company Microvision is in the last stages of developing and releasing a portable, laser-based projector, code-named 'Show WX.' The projector has a resolution of 848 by 400 pixels (WVGA) and, since it uses laser-scanning rather than LCD to form the images, it does not require a lens to focus, allowing it to display images virtually in any surface. The device comes with its own user-replaceable battery, which means you could take it with you anywhere you want. Although there is no pricing information on their website, according to this local news video, it could cost at least $200."

Re:Can somebody explain how it works?

[acrobg]

My guess would be that it projects as three scanning lasers: for red, green, and blue. Because they would be scanning across, the field of view as the beams of light move away from projector gets larger (hence larger projection at a larger distance). However, it also gets dimmer, meaning a 12" projection distance will havea brighter image than a 100" projection distance. Also, if you're projecting closer, it looks like it will have more definition to the image as well. Not that the pixel-count will change, but the amount of space each pixel takes up wil be larger, so if it's 100" away, but the image is viewed from 3' away from the screen, the image should look pixelated, as opposed to viewing it from a farther distance.

Power and brightness...

[bzzfzz]

... are the two limitations of small projectors. They claim 10 lumens while most conventional mains-powered projectors are typically 1000-2000 lumens. That makes the product usable alone in a darkened room but not much of anywhere else. Their claim of "movie capable" battery life rather than a specific time period leads me to conclude that they watch shorter than average movies.

I predict that, like the pen scanner, [planon.com] this proves to be a geeky cool but practically useless device.

Re:Power and brightness...

[j1mmy]

The trade-off is performance vs size. You can take this thing anywhere and you don't need to plug it in to the wall.

Re:Can somebody explain how it works?

[lobiusmoop]

CRT's project an electron beam into a fixed-size phosphor pixel on the screen. This is projecting a laser dot onto a wall (or whatever), I was mostly just not sure how you get an image instead of just a series of lines appearing.

Re:Price is expected to be

[Pinky's Brain]

They don't produce a very good green. Frequency doubled IR is not an option either because you can't modulate the beam fast enough.

Re:Price is expected to be

[byornski]

Two waves of different frequency will not interact in the same way as in say Young's double slit experiment. When two waves of nearly equal frequency are added, "beats" appear in the waveform that would appear as a brightening and darkening of the light in different places over time... beats [wikipedia.org]