1/9/2010
Texas Instruments spotlights its DLP chips for 'pico projectors'
By VICTOR GODINEZ / The Dallas Morning News
vgodinez@dallasnews.com
LAS VEGAS – Texas Instruments Inc. is probably the only company at the Consumer Electronics Show using Pez candy dispensers to showcase its hottest technology.
But Dallas-based TI's newest digital light processing chips for projectors are so tiny that they nestle comfortably inside the little cartridges.
The projectors themselves are almost as small and are being fitted into a growing array of handheld devices, from cameras to cellphones.
TI sees the entire "pico projector" category as ultimately being the biggest revenue generator for its DLP division.
"2009 was kind of the introduction of the concept," said Kent Novak, senior vice president and general manager of DLP products at TI. "2010 is going to be a broadening of the category."
The first phone with a DLP projector is already available in the U.S., although the projector for the LG eXpo on AT&T is a snap-on device rather than integrated into the phone.
The projector can beam videos, Web pages or any other image from the phone.
Not all pico projectors will be so tiny.
TI also was demonstrating the new Brightboxe, a $199 projector that's a bit smaller than a lunchbox and is designed for video game consoles.
A racing game on the Xbox 360 was splashed on the wall at TI's conference room.
The new chip does not allow for high-definition resolution; it maxes out at a resolution of 854x480. HD starts at 1280x720, while 1080p is 1920x1080.
Novak said he doesn't see much demand for HD video from a pico projector – even when connected to an HD-capable console such as the Xbox 360 – but competitors are betting otherwise.
Dallas-based Syndiant, for example, was founded by former TI engineers and is developing pico chips using a technology called liquid crystal on silicon rather than DLP.
Syndiant is pushing hard to get to HD resolutions, and the projector it developed with Foryou Multimedia Electronics Co. that's on display this week has a resolution of 1024x600.
The prototype is "just the next step in our path toward providing HD resolution in pico projectors," Syndiant chief executive Mark Howard said.
Analysts have estimated that consumers could be buying hundreds of millions of phones, cameras and other mobile devices with built-in projectors every year by 2016.
Several companies are racing to establish their projector technologies as top-of-the-line. In addition to TI and Syndiant, 3M and Microvision are two other big players, and Nikon created a proprietary projector system for its Coolpix S1000pj point-and-shoot digital camera released last year.
And, in keeping with the dominant theme of this year's CES, pico projectors eventually will be able to display 3-D images.
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