Big rumours swept a few sites over the last few days that before the summer is out HP are going to launch a pico projector enabled laptop, its only rumours as far as we can check so far but what a rumour! The idea has been floating around for a while, combining the tiny embedded pico-projector’s with the systems that power them, idea’s of a netbook with no screen just a small projector, fuller systems the size of a regular keyboard with the pc built into it, projecting across desks etc. But if the rumours are correct HP are stepping up the idea beyond the speculative talking, could we have a fully feldged pico projector laptop by the end of 2010?

So you have a new pico projector, its your pride and joy and you love taking it places and projecting onto random things from walls to cars – but what if you drop it? Some pico projector’s come with cases as standard but probably the majority do not come with their own carry case. Camera case designers and manufacturers are slowly starting to make or tailor pico projector carry cases specifically but not many are available in everyday shops.

Another pico that popped up its small little gadget head at CES 2010 was the new Samsung pico projector. The last samsung pico – the samsung mbp200 seems almost like a distant memory now, being one of the first pico projectors to hit the mainstream around the time of the original 3M microprojector the Mpro110. Since then 3M has launched two new pico projectors all the way to market, but is the new Samsung pico projector a killer gadget? or just another pico-projector late to the party?

Another day and still I havent had a chance to check through and post all the CES pico projector bits – this popped out in my face this morning though – Optoma the manufacturers behind the ever popular optoma pk101 pico have just launched yet another pico projector. The Optoma PK 301. Released at CES the new microprojector from Optoma blows the previous numbers out of the water with a 50 lumen lumenance and a nice big widescreen 854 x 480 resolution.

This new Optoma PK301 is said to be shipping as early as March/April and for a pico with those specification’s thats soon. With the showwx still not formally launched for purchase its pico’s like this pk301 that will clean up, with higher resolutions and brighter driver’s the laser driver of MVIS’s pico will flop. Its great to see optoma bringing it though with a nice big jump in resolution, its not unfathomable that within 2010 we might see a HD one, if you ask me, I mean its the first quarter and we have seen more pico projectors launched with better resolutions than I expected than in the whole of 2009.

We are just catching up with the backlog of pico projector’s and associated gadgets from CES but heres something we havent pointed out yet, although it may be a day or so old. Sanwa have launched a super cheap pico projector – the Sanwa 400 PRJ001- and by super cheap we mean very very cheap. Retailing in the US for $119 that would make it just over £72 (based on google currency conversion) – although we havent seen it in the wild in the UK yet. If we get the Sanwa cheap microprojector its likely to cost sub £100 (we estimate) and could likely retail at £99 or similar, although like we said – we can’t see the sanwa pico for sale in the uk yet anywhere prevelent.

The Sanwa 400 PRJ-001 on a 3 legged stand (could or could not be included in final uk product)

The other day we did a post about the video’s uploaded last year (early 2009) from microvision (MVIS). Added to youtube under the alias of “picounderground” and showcasing some of the possibilities of a laser pico projector the video’s these video’s are nothing new but are worth revisiting and do show how the idea of a pico projector is not new. Perhaps 2010 will see a new set of these micro projector experiments, we hope so!

Last post we looked at the animal themed pico experiments and this time we are going to look at the sports based ones. Picking extreme sports was definately a good choice for MicroVision, they appeal to their target market and work quite well in these experiments. First up is a compilation of all of the other video’s from picounderground featuring sports, entitled “urban sports” the pico is used to project surfers, climbers, skiiers, parachute artists, kayakers and more onto urban surfaces. My personal favourite is the ice climbers seemingly climbing up a pillar and the surfer riding the side of a building. Not quite as good as the video’s we looked at last time but still worth a view or two…

As in our last post, a review of the Royaltek RPJ2000 we are now going to have a look at the MicroVisions ShowWX in action, namely at a string of videos added to youtube over 2009, tagged as picounderground and originally put at picoUnderground.com these videos show experiments in the use of the microvision laser pico, often walking around town using the pico projector wirelessly and taking advantage of the microvision show wx’s auto focusing because its a laser pico. Switching a video image around multiple surfaces quickly without the need to refocus makes the pico perfect for city urban video graffiti. Theres 20 or so visual experiments using this micro projector all around town so we will split them over several posts – first up is “Oceana” a water themed video showing some great projections of sealife onto walls etc. I particularly like the killer whale video projection: