Carl Brighton Posted October 21, 2008 Share Posted October 21, 2008 (edited) The Aiptek C10 "Pocket Cinema" video projector has been eagerly awaited by Geek-dom with a fervor not unlike that surrounding certain video cameras :lol: This is a small self-contained video projector "about the size of an iPhone". (Typical Geek-Speak: how many non-geeks would know how big THAT is...) I managed to have a sneak-peek at one on the weekend. Basically, it's described as having "VGA" resolution, uses a high-power white LED for the lamp and an LCOS (liquid crystal on Silicon) for the light modulator, gives about 45 minutes operation per charge of its Lithium Ion battery, and accepts ordinary A-V inputs or SD cards. The concept is fascinating, but bang-for-buck wise I think it's a bit like the first MP3 players of around 8 years ago.... I haven't been able to find out the UK or US price is, in fact the only price I could find anywhere was a place in Australia which is quoting $A650! I'm not sure how that translates into other currencies, but it would appear to be around the price of a bottom-end laptop. And how did it perform? NOT all that well for something that expensive. First of all the colour rendition is diabolically bad. It looks like a CRT TV that someone's waved a magnet over! The picture brightness is quite low as you might expect. In a normally lit room, anything bigger than about 10" diagonal is unwatchable. In a darkened room you can get a much bigger image of course, but if you need to go to all that trouble, why not just use an ordinary projector? Also, it's not really "VGA". It appears to have a 640 x 480 monochrome LCD with the an RGB colour mask added, so it's more like 210 x 480, which becomes painfully obvious as the image gets bigger. It has built-in "stereo speakers" which sound like you'd expect them to sound. It's a great toy, but I don't think I'm going to be rushing out to buy one. Besides, the prices will probably drop savagely over the next few years. But watch this space.... Edited October 21, 2008 by Carl Brighton Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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