Texas Instruments

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

Here's a nice video from the Mobile World Congress show - TI demoing their DLP pico-projector chipsets and gadgets that use it (the Samsung Beam and W9600, LG Expo and NTT DoCoMo dock F-04B).

TI announced a new DLP chipset for pico-projectors, which is the thinnest and smallest to date. It has nHD resolution (640x360), 1000:1 contrast ratio, true RGB LED wide color gamut. TI say it also has an improved power efficiency and electronic footprint compared to their previous DLP chipsets. 

The nHD chipset is 20% thinner than the WVGA chipset and 50% smaller in volume. TI say the new nHD chipset will enter production in 2H 2010, but 'leading manufacturers' already include it in their next-generation designs. Via Engadget.

TI has announce version 2 of their DLP Pico Projector Development Kit. The new kit adds HDMI direct PC connection (there's also a DVI to HDMI adapter). It also includes a sync signal output and selectable high-speed DMD patterns with a variety of frame rates.

The v2 kit will sell for $349 and is available now from TI. Via Slashgear.

Here's a couple of short videos about DLP pico projectors. The first show the first camcorder with a pico projector add-on:

The second video is showing Samsung's W9600 projector phone, a quick demonstration:

Both DLP projectors use the new WVGA chip (854x480 DLP Gen 2).

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

TI and Asia Optical are showing a prototype digital camera with a DLP pico-projector, both developed by Asia-Optical, which will offer the module for customers in the second half of 2010.

This camera uses TI's new DLP chip that supports WVGA (854x480) resolution.

Samsung has released some more info on their Show pico projector phone. We already know they are using TI's DLP chip, and now we learn that the phone uses the PhlatLight LED PT-39 chipset from Luminus devices. 

Via CompoundSemi

Here's a nice photo of TI's DLP chips, the old Gen1 and the new Gen2:

TI DLP chips Gen1 and Gen2

You can see how much smaller the Gen2 Chip is...

Texas Instruments thinks that projector phones will be as popular as camera phones are today. They invested heavily in a new DLP chip, which should be ready to customers at the end of 2009, and in commercial products by 2010.

The new chip is 20% smaller than the first version, supports twice the resolution and makes brighter images. It is alos more power efficient.