LEDs provide light sources for pocket size front projectors

Why try to view images on a tiny hand-held screen when you could project the content onto your bedroom ceiling?DLP-based pocket-sized front projectors containing LED

light sources are making this possible,writes Tim Whitaker of LEDs Magazine.

Compact front-projection devices,which can take images from a phone handset gaming console or digital camera and project them onto a wall, screen or even a ceiling, now constitute a small but exciting market for LED light sources.

The devices,commonly known as “pocket ” projectors, typically weigh less than 1 lb and can be operated from a DC battery supply.

However, the size and weight of the battery are such that consumers will need fairly large pockets to carry the whole system and fairly deep pockets to afford price tags in the 7 700 –1000 bracket.

All pocket projectors currently on the market use LED light sources, and are based on digital light processing (DLP)technology developed by Texas Instruments (TI).Consumer electronics giants such as Samsung, Mitsubishi and Toshiba, along with several other suppliers, already offer pocket projection systems.

Pacific Media Associates (PMA), a market research firm, believes that the pocket projector segment will reach one million units by 2009, growing from a few tens of thousands of units in 2006.

However, at this stage it is difficult to predict how this nascent market will evolve.“In many ways,it ’s too early to tell what the volume driver or application for pocket projection is going to be,” says

Wolfram Gauglitz, European business development manager for DLP Products at TI.“As an attachment to a mobile phone handset, a digital camera or a gaming console, we think that DLP projectors using LEDs have a real opportunity.”