PicoP

video on your mobile phone and mp3 player is the latest thing; in fact full-length movie downloads from the likes of iTunes are almost common place. Too bad you have to watch all of them on that itty bitty screen. The world's smallest projector technology could change all that.

Microvision has invented PicoP, a laser-based projector that could someday in the not-too-distant future be placed inside portable cell phones, MP3 players, and other handheld devices. That's because the actual projector will be no larger than an Andes thin mint. The company unveiled a working prototype last night at Pepcom Digital Experience, a CES 2007 pre-show event that actually has no official affiliation with CES.

Using three tiny lasers (RGB colors), a combiner (to bring together the laser colors into a unified color pixel), and a tiny one-millimeter mirror, PicoP can project up-to-a 50-inch image in darkened room.

Images are not high-def, but they do appear in a sharp 800x 600 SVGA image at a 60 HZ refresh rate—that's because the combiner is shooting the combined pixels onto the mirror line-by-line. PicoP uses neither a projection bulb nor a focusing lens to produce the image. In fact, it conserves energy by only turning on the lasers when it needs them. So for an all green image, PicoP will turn off the Red and Blue lasers. This all happens in a fraction of a second. Microvision representatives said the technology inside is remarkable simply and actually resembles a DVD player's pickup head.

In the demo at Digital Experience, PicoP cast a vibrant image of Disney's Finding Nemo on a common piece of 8.5-by-11-inch white paper. The image was clear, but the amount of light in the large conference hall did not offer an optimal viewing environment.