<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" LAS VEGAS \u2014 There&amp;#039;s been a lot of news about mini-projectors here at CES. Last night I was at a Texas Instruments demo of a DLP projector that came tucked inside the body of a cellphone\u2014not a real cellphone, mind you, just a piece of plastic shaped like a cellphone, with the images looking more like standard photos than video. Nevertheless, you have to separate gee-whiz from reality: As cool as a cellphone the projected video could be, that doesn&amp;#039;t mean one will be hitting the market tomorrow.  TI&amp;#039;s been showing off a lot of cool, offbeat applications for its DLP projection technology\u2014perhaps because it is becoming more and more evident that customers prefer flat-panel televisions (link to Reynolds piece on TVs) to rear-projection sets that rely upon DLP technology to produce their image. As rear projection dies as a format, companies such as TI have to show new and interesting uses for their technology.   As you may or may not know, DLP uses thousands\u2014sometimes millions\u2014of tiny micromirrors to project light against a surface. It&amp;#039;s a highly advanced technology that has worked well for years\u2014but that doesn&amp;#039;t mean anything&amp;#039;s gonna beat a sleek flat-panel on your wall. So TI has been shrinking its technology down to a truly tiny form factor. It seems promising, but there&amp;#039;s obviously still some work to be done.   I also saw another projection technology yesterday that looked pretty close to production. A company called Microvision produces a tiny, portable projector that uses red, green and blue lasers and a single tiny micromirror to project an image much the way old cathode ray tube televisions did, by scanning lines to create 60 frames per second. The whole projector fits in the palm of your hand, but a lot of that size comes from the battery; if you had an external power source, such as a USB, this thing could be as small as your thumb. [Check out video here; story continues below ...]  Of course, we&amp;#039;re not talking Jumbotron-size images, but the Microvision can display a small image at DVD quality, and, if its promoters are to be believed, the projector should come out before the end of 2008 as an accessory product to a mobile phone, portable player or gaming device.   When I asked the TI representative what he felt about the competing technology, he was less optimistic\u2014even downright catty\u2014claiming that the green lasers required to make Microvision&amp;#039;s system were going to be too expensive to use on a mass scale, and that, in tests, laser scanning projectors had the unique habit of making people feel ill. Hmm, note sure about that one\u2014I just saw it yesterday morning, and I feel fine. \u2014Glenn Derene "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a2468/4244056/>