Optoma

Optoma hopes to sell over 70,000 pico-projectors in 2010, up from 37,600 in 2009 and 10,600 in 2008. Optoma's market hare was 13.1% in 2009, down from 29.8% in 2008. Global pico-projector shipments are expected to exceed one million units in 2010 (up from 286,000 in 2009).

Optoma PK-201

Optoma's latest projectors are the PK-201 and PK-301, both offering WVGA DLP chips, internal memory (and a MicroSD slot) and A/V, USB and VGA connectors. The PK-201 offers 20 lumens and costs $299, while the PK-301 offers 50 lumens and costs $386.

Optoma has released the BR-PK3AN remote control for their PK201 and PK301 pico projectors. It costs $19.99 (you can pre-order it over at Amazon.com, we don't know when it'll ship).

Optoma PK201

Both projectors use TI's new 854x480 DLP chip. The PK201 offers 20 lumens, USB/VGA/HDMI/A/V ports and a microSD card slot. It's now shipping for $299. The PK301 offers similar features, but is very bright (at 50 lumens). It costs $399.

Remember Optoma's pico-projector bag? It's now available for $42. The Bk-pk30df portfolio has a 15.5" built-in white screen, includes a mini tripod and has a dedicated pocket for pico-projectors. It weights 2.2lbs (1Kg).

Optoma Bk-pk30df

Buy the Bk-pk30df now for $42.

Optoma's PK-201 pico projector is now shipping for $299. The PK-201 uses TI's new WVGA (854x480) DLP chipset, offer 20 lumens brightness, has USB/VGA/HDMI/A/V ports and also 30Mb of internal memory and a microSD card slot (from which it can play back movies and photos).

Optoma PK201

Buy it now over at Amazon.com for $299.

Optoma's upcoming pico-projectors, the PK201 and the PK301 are now up for pre-order over at Amazon.com. Both use TI's new WVGA (854x480) DLP chip, has USB/VGA/HDMI/A/V ports and  internal memory and microSD slots, and can play back several movie and photo formats. Both are expected to ship within a few weeks.

The PK201 sports 20 lumens (or 12 lumens at eco-mode) and has one 0.5w speaker and an audio-out jack. The PK201 costs $299.

Optoma PK201

The PK301 is very bright at 50 lumens (it also has a 20-lumens eco-mode). It also has a 0.5w speaker and audio-out jack. Optoma will also offer an external battery pack because the high-brightness mode needs a lot of power. The PK301 costs $399.

Optoma PK301

TI has announced their second-generation DLP chip for pico-projectors back in February 2009, and now it's finally ready. The new chip is smaller than before, and supports WVGA resolution (854x480).

DLP chips, Gen1 and Gen2

TI has issued a press releasing listing a lot of new devices that use the new chip. There's an upcoming Samsung projector (called SP-H03) and one from ForYou, too. Hopefully we'll get more details on these two soon. Here's the complete list of DLP Gen-2 products listed in TI's release:

• NTT DoCoMo pico-projector phone dock F-04B
• Samsung W9600 projector phone
• Asia Optical digital camera protoype
• Optoma PK201 and PK301
• Samsung SP-H03 projector
• Foryou Media projector

The Time has chosen their 25 best travel gadgets of 2009. The Optoma PK-101 is one of them. Interestingly they didn't chooser one of Optoma's newer models (PK-100 and PK-102. All of them use the same DLP module - 480x320 resolution and up to 66" images).

The PK-101 is on sale now from Amazon, for 219$.