Movie projector in a phone

At the CTIA Wireless 2007 show, Texas Instruments is providing public demonstrations of its digital light processing (DLP) “pico” projector, a tiny movie projector that can fit inside a cell phone.

Texas Instruments showed off the components and a prototype at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year to a few reporters. Now the company is touting a working prototype in a phone. The phone is fake, but the projector works.

The projector contains three lasers, a DLP chip and a power supply and measures about 1.5 inches in length. With the projector, the cell phone can beam DVD-quality video onto a screen or a wall, thereby allowing it to serve as a video player or a television. By using the projector, the actual “screen” size can be much larger than what a person would get by using the LCD panel integrated into the phone. The chip inside the phone, in fact, could drive images for a widescreen television.

TI has not said when it will start selling projectors for cell phones, but it expects better convergence between televisions and cell phones to progress rapidly over the next few years. Finland’s Upstream Engineering is working on a phone projector, but implementing it in a different manner.

Source: News.com

Related Links: CTIA Wireless 2007 show, Texas Instruments