CES 2010: Laser pico projector offers glimpse of the future

You’d have to be filthy rich or a little crazy to drop $500 on a handheld laser projector, but Microvision hopes that eventually the technology behind its ShowWX projector will become ubiquitous.

Microvision’s ShowWX was on display at a CES media event last night, blasting the Austin Powers movie Goldmember onto a white board. Video was coming from an iPhone, which was about the same size as the device, and the ShowWX can be connected to any device with TV out or VGA functionality.

The image looked great — Microvision says laser projectors have better colors and saturation than competing DLP and LCoS projectors, and they needn’t be focused depending on the projection distance. The ShowWX projects an image of up to 200 inches diagonally in a dimly-lit room. One big downside: The ShowWX lasts 90 minutes on a user-replaceable battery, which could make movie-watching inconvenient.

But the real bad news is the aforementioned price point, which is tentative but unlikely to drop when the ShowWX is released stateside in a few months. Microvision understands that the ShowWX isn’t likely to be a hit. The real attraction is the PicoP engine inside.

From behind Microvision’s booth, spokesman Matt Nichols pulled out a case containing the engine. It’s about the size of two pennies lined up next to each other. Nichols said the long-term goal is to get that engine inside mobile phones and other handheld devices. But he realizes that the price needs to be less than $100, or even $50. That could take two to five years, he said.

Still, there’s the larger question of whether people want these tiny projectors in their handheld devices. It’s still a relatively new concept, with LG launching the first projector phone in the United States last month, and Nikon releasing a projector-equipped digital camera earlier last year. These devices, the former of which runs on Texas Instruments’ DLP technology (the tech in Nikon’s camera isn’t disclosed), will either set the stage for handheld laser projection, or they’ll prove to be a cool concept that doesn’t take off.