Viewsonic has just announced three new 3D capable projectors for the Aussie market. Sure, we could make a big deal about the lack of 3D content to make use of the projector, but we won’t. Not today, anyway.
On its own, it’s a stretch: the invite is green and vaguely Android-y, and there’s a faint rectangular device in the background, therefore Archos must be working on an Android MID! Right? Well, they are.
I can’t think of a more old school, geeky tribute to Queen than a band comprised of an Atari 800XL, 8-inch floppy disk, 3.5-in hard drive and HP Scanjet 3C. If only it sounded better.
Guess which version is the second gen DLP Pico projector. (Hint: It’s the smaller one on the right that’s better in every way.)
galleryPost('samsungmbp200picoprojector', 4, ''); The Samsung MBP200 has a limited 480×320 res, but has a built-in media player, LCD screen and includes a tiny stand that can turn a piece of paper into a screen. A baby screen!
Where, oh where were you, Nintendo Gameboy Colour disguised as a Texas Instruments TI-83 Series calculator, when I was in school? Where? WHERE? Probably nowhere to be found, really, as Gameboy Colours weren’t invented back then, and I was too busy trying to get off latin class to make out with girls in the backyard woods, anyway. But if you had existed back then, I would have been all over you too. That’s how much I like you. [Make]
50 years ago today, Texas Instrument’s Jack Kilby demonstrated the first working integrated circuit, or microchip. It’s a crude conglomeration of just five components, but it was also proof that a circuit could be miniaturised by housing all of its components on one piece of semiconductor material, allowing all these parts to work together without laborious (and technologically infeasible) manual connections. In essence, it’s the electronic wheel captured in first eureka. [Wired]
Sure, some of us remember using the Commodore 64, but do any of us recall what the ads for it were like? Boingboing has aggregated a wonderful collection of 101 classic computer advertisements by everyone from AT&T (yeah, I forgot they tried their hand in making PCs too) to Texas Instruments. Aah, to be back in a world where everything fit inside a bulky keyboard and displays were monochromatic. [Boing boing]
Texas Instruments has expressed its intention to build its LED Pico tech into mobile devices before, but this is the first well-implemented example to be properly demonstrated. Crunchgear got a brief go on the Frankenberry, and it looks like it works just fine. While the small clip doesn’t totally assuage our fears that such a system will produce poor images, the respectable projection size and apparent brightness are both promising for such an early prototype. [Crunchgear]
Hot on the heels of the Optoma pico-projector that uses a TI chipset, TI itself has announced the “industry’s first home-theatre lamp-free projector.” It uses a PhlatLight LED illumination source instead, and a Brilliantcolor chipset to give a 1080p display. This makes it capable of a 50% bigger colour gamut than traditional projector tech (that’s over 200 trillion colors!) and a contrast ratio that can go up to 500,000:1. The lamp-free bit is the part that will interest consumers: as well as not requiring expensive new bulbs, the LEDs consume far less power so you’ll pay for less electricity if you’re a heavy projector user. Apparently “multiple DLP customers” are expecting to launch projector products with the tech late this year. [Digitimes]
