Hasta La Gadget!

Sanyo’s been a relatively large player in the short-focus / short-throw projector game for awhile now, so frankly, this was inevitable. As everyone (and their third cousin, in fact) races to jump on the three-dee bandwagon, the aforesaid company has just pumped out its first 3D short-focus PJ. The PDG-DWL2500J doesn’t boast the most amazing of specs — the native resolution sits at just WXGA — but it can project a 3D image from a distance as short as 2.4 centimeters. It also touts a maximum projection size of 110 inches, and it can be installed vertically or horizontally depending on your mood. There’s also an HDMI socket, Ethernet port, 16:10 aspect ratio, 2,500 lumens of brightness, a single 10-watt speaker and a price tag that’ll probably make you spit out your morning coffee. Word on the street has it that this one will launch next month in Japan for ¥450,000, and if that $4,868 conversion follows it stateside, you can bet only a handful will be lined up to drag one home.

Sanyo brings short-focus projector into the third dimension, may never look back originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 May 2010 10:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to market research firm DisplaySearch’s recently released Pocket Projector Technology and Market Forecast Report, the market for pocket projectors is poised for strong growth in 2010 and beyond. DisplaySearch forecasts that the total pocket projector market will grow from 0.5 million units and $117 million in revenues in 2009 to 142 million units and $13.9 billion in revenues in 2018, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 70 percent for revenues and 88 percent for units (as shown in the graph here, which is from the report).

“There were over 130 new pocket projector models released in the market in 2009, along with the first releases of embedded projectors into the market. Despite this, pocket projectors still face challenges of low brightness, short battery life and high price. Continuing progress in all the technologies surrounding pocket projectors will be needed to achieve the expected growth,” noted Jennifer Colegrove. Director of Display Technologies at DisplaySearch.

ViewSonic just announced its $99 (street) PGD-150 Active Stereographic 3D shutter glasses for its projectors, which helps to answer the question: Now that you can go out and buy 3D-ready projectors, what are you going to do with them?

That’s a question I’ve been asking as I’ve been working on ways to test the new generation of projectors, but you may have been asking the same thing about using them. There’s been lots of talk about 3D games and movies; however, when I first asked ViewSonic how to test 3D on their 3D-ready projectors, they told me I’d need stereographic glasses. And they weren’t for sale yet except as part of the Nvidia 3D Vision kit, which also required running games or movies strictly on a PC and worked only with systems using specific Nvidia video cards. Oh.

That’s just changed–at least for the particular 3D scheme that ViewSonic is using.

The pico projectors just keep on coming, and now it’s time for the 3M MPro 150 to shine. It caught our eye back at CES thanks to its ability to play media, presentations, and even display spreadsheets all from internal memory — no PC required. Now that ability has been given a thorough evaluation by PicoProjector-info.com and, while the overall performance of the projector was found to be good, it didn’t quite deliver thanks to a VGA resolution. That simply didn’t push enough pixels to render much business content, and the onboard media compatibility options disappointed as well. Build quality was said to be high and image quality good, but overall this one doesn’t seem to live up to its $350 pricetag. You can see the thing in action after the break, or hit the source link for all the review details.

Continue reading 3M’s PMP-packing MPro 150 pico projector gets a partially positive review (video)

3M’s PMP-packing MPro 150 pico projector gets a partially positive review (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hey, take it easy there, Canon. What’s the rush? The company has just released six reasonably-priced LCD projectors, so good luck making up your mind. Here’s the run-down.

The LV-8310 ($1,199, above) and the LV-8215 ($1,099) offer 1,280-by-800 widescreen WXGA resolution with a 16:10 aspect ratio. The first offers 3,000 lumens, and the second, 2,600 lumens.

The remaining four all offer XGA (1,024 by 768 ) resolution. The LV-7385 ($1,699) is the brightest at 3500 lumens. The LV-7380 ($999) offers 3,000 lumens, the LV-7285 ($899) has 2,600 lumens, and the LV-7280 ($799) has 2,200 lumens.

All six models include reduced power consumption and lower CO2 emissions due to a lower wattage light, and extend lamp life to 4,000 hours in Normal Mode and 5,000 hours in Quiet Mode. For more info, check out Canon’s projector page.