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It's that
time of the year with gadget enthusiasts pack their bags and head for
the sunnier climbs of Las Vegas and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
Among the delights on offer are projectors for your mobile phone,
monster television sets and high-definition wireless streaming.
Microvision will unveil a prototype of its PDA-sized, fully self-contained, battery operated, full-color laser projector at the show. The projector, codenamed SHOW, connects directly to laptops, mobile phones, portable media players (PMPs), digital cameras and other mobile devices to project large, high-resolution images and video onto any surface. The images projected can range anywhere from 12 inches (30 cm) to 100 inches (2.5 m) in size depending upon the projection distance and are always in focus. The production version of the device is expected to offer approximately 2.5 hours of continuous battery life, sufficient to watch a full-length movie without a need for recharging.
The company said that SHOW can project a widescreen, WVGA (848 X 480
pixels), DVD quality image - offering a very different experience from
the tiny 2-inch display solutions available today on various portable
devices. Designed for viewing high-quality projected images in a
variety of controlled lighting environments, SHOW offers more than five
times the resolution compared with competing miniature projectors that
typically only offer QVGA resolution (320 x 240 pixels).
"Consumers
want better display solutions that will enrich their
experience in watching TV, videos and movies, in playing games, and in
browsing the web from their cell phones and other mobile devices," said
Alexander Tokman, President and Chief Executive Officer of
Microvision. "While mobile multi-media subscription services are on the
rise, handset manufacturers, content providers and service providers
view tiny cell phone displays as a barrier to stronger consumer
adoption of their products and services. With Microvision's SHOW you
could view and share everything ranging from YouTube videos, MSN
newscasts, and Google search results to PowerPoint presentations,
feature-length films, and family photos in a large, full-color,
hi-resolution format instead of a 2-inch, QVGA display."
As
usual, there is the game of who's got the biggest television, with
Mitsibishi and Sony fighting it out to see who's got the bigger one.
Expect to see a 150-incher on show. Meanwhile there are still other
tellies that you can at least put in your front room without doing your
back in or have to demolish a wall in order to fit one in. Samsung
looks set to launch a 40-inch OLED TV that uses half the power of a
similar-sized LCD TV and is a fifth the thickness of an LCD TV. At
least you won't break your back fixing that on the wall.
And as more of us ditch wires, there are companies only too eager to help us along that route. DisplayLink
is set to unveil a USB device that streams HD video wirelessly in real
time, from your computer to your TV. IBM and MediaTek are also working
on products that transmit 2GB of data in a second (by contrast the best
wireless networks can do at the moment is 2GB in two minutes). This
kind of technology could stream several HD channels at once.
No doubt Steve Jobs and his chums at Apple will have a few things up
the sleeves of the polo-neck jumpers to try and outshine gadgets at the
CES, stayed tuned for a MacWorld preview soon.
CES runs from January 7-10.
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