We have seen such great developments recently with pico projectors, laser’s being mastered and tamed into a tiny box to provide an autofocus’ing image on any surface without human intervention, tiny lcd pico projector displays being created at bigger and bigger resolutions while maintaining smaller and smaller sizes. All these developments are great, but what are we aiming for? A HD pico projector? a HD + resolution pico projector?

I think we need to not get greedy but I fully see a HD Pico projector as being a reality by 2012, frankly a full HD micro projector will be available then I would say. It will then become a war between the handheld high resolution battery/cord powered pico’s and the multimedia projector. I am guessing pico projector’s will have a feature list/spec nearing that of some of the best multimedia projectors now. For example the Panasonic PT AE3000 – this thing is one of the best ones you can buy for home cinema – its got full hd (1920 x 1080) and a whole host of other bits that give it its champion ratings all over the globe. I hope to see this full hd (1920 x 1080) resolution achieved from my hand, I don’t expect the capacity to be able to project 4 meter high crisp video but an improvement on 100 inch’s would be good, but resolution has to be the main improvement.

This will leave the multimedia projector’s providing the heavy large images while more and more pico projectors will replace them where its sensible, this is an all over evolution of the technology and something we should welcome, lower costs for business’s and improved freedom for single micro projector users. I also expect micro projector’s to be more common place around our day to day lives, in everything from cars to built into huge business boardrooms and even replacing the odd lcd screen/tv, mobile phones will definitely flirt with the micro projector and I wouldn’t be surprised if some blu-ray micro projector combo/DVD player/upscaler pico projector combo’s get launched by some big technology brands.

It will be an interesting few years for the pico projector, where do you think it’ll go next?