#Best pico projectors on the market movie

Pico Inside: The Nikon Coolpix S1000pj, at US $430, is the first camera with a built-in projector. Refreshing the individual pixels on the chip dozens of times per second creates a moving image. And in between on and off states, the crystals can allow different intensities of light to reflect. When the crystals are out of alignment, the beam splitter blocks the light to create an “off” pixel. When the crystals align with the polarizing beam splitter, the beam splitter lets the light through to reflect off the chip, where it bounces back to create an “on” pixel. A polarizing beam splitter at the front of the LCOS imager, acting like a goalie of sorts, either allows light to pass straight through or redirects it. The liquid crystals change their orientations in response to an electric field as their orientations change, so does the polarization of light that travels through the liquid-crystal layer and reflects off the coating. In LCOS, liquid crystals sit directly on a silicon chip that has been coated to act as a mirror. LCOS was developed in the late 1990s by JVC, which used it for large-screen projection televisions. But their hold is anything but secure: The scanning-mirror systems are about to mount a serious challenge.

Two of the first technologies to make it into commercial pico projectors were LCOS and DLP. With an estimated market of US $1.1 billion at stake by the year 2014, according to market research firm In-Stat, we’re going to see a good old-fashioned consumer-electronics footrace. Some of the leading players in this game so far are Aurora Systems, Himax Technologies, Light Blue Optics, Micron Technology (through its acquisition of Displaytech), Microvision, Syndiant, Texas Instruments, and 3M.

The battle for the heart of the pico projector is shaping up to be much more complicated, because to date there are three vastly different technologies-liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) microdisplays, digital light-processing (DLP) devices, and scanning-mirror systems (also called laser-beam steering systems, or LBS)-and there are even significantly different design approaches within these three categories. The battle between plasma and LCD for dominance in flat-screen television was heated and confusing (LCD won, if you missed it). Pico-projector technologies differ in how they turn light into the pixels that make up a video image. To do this, every pico projector needs chips to process and decode the image data for the hardware a light source, typically LEDs or laser diodes and mirrors and optics, to direct and focus the image. Or aim it at a dark ceiling and you’ve got a display with a diagonal of some 60 inches or larger.

#Best pico projectors on the market movie

Aim that beam at, say, the tray table nestled into the airline seat in front of you and you’ve got a miniature movie theater. What a pico projector does is simple: It takes a digital image and sends it out as a beam of light, creating an image that’s much bigger than the originating device. The mirrors tilt to direct that light to an external surface. The power of the lasers adjusts to determine the color of each pixel. Mirror Image: Scanning-mirror projectors send laser light to one or two silicon mirrors. In fact, market research firm Insight Media forecasts shipments of embedded pico projectors-in consumer electronics, cars, industrial applications, and medical equipment, as well as in cellphones-to reach 30.8 million units in 2014, up from about 1 million units in 2009. Over the next few years they’ll be popping up in more products and are likely to be the hottest new feature in mobile devices since the cellphone video camera. We’re just now starting to see the next generation of pico projectors, and besides being in smaller stand-alone devices, they’re coming embedded in cameras, media-storage devices, and a few smartphones-about 100 individual products so far. This year, they’re going to get what they want. Turns out that what people really want is a mobile phone, music player, laptop, or camera that projects big, bright, and sharp images-or an extremely tiny plug-in projector compatible with all those devices. They weren’t much-clunky little boxes that produced low-quality images and had to be cabled to a computer or PDA. The first generation of pico projectors hit the market in 2008. Petite Package: Inside this pico projector from Microvision is a silicon mirror about the size of the head of a pin.