To elaborate on our Pico Projector press release of last week…

The value proposition that VEE brings to smartphone and tablet displays is the same as in pico projectors: increase viewability.  As with on-board displays, VEE optimizes the viewing experience for viewing conditions: that is, source data and ambient light viewing conditions are examined in real-time, with the output from our chip being display (projected, in this case) data that is viewable in all lighting conditions.

This is applicable to the pico projector market in a number of ways.

Primarily, it addresses the lumens concerns that OEM’s have.  Multiple OEM and ODM’s have stated to us that one of the biggest issues with PP adoption is insufficient lumen output.  We believe the OEMs don’t particularly care how bright the image is (in fact, brighter is worse due to the increased power consumption of the projector light source)—they simply want a projected image that is readily viewable without having to turn off all the lights in the room.  We’re joining a growing group of suppliers calling this need ‘effective lumens.’

Right now, most OEMs don’t believe projector effective lumens are at a level that is expected and useful to a user.    While an immediate solution to this is simply turning off the overhead lights and drawing the shades, this is not a realistic thing to ask of ever more demanding consumers.  A CSSP containing VEE, if placed between the processor and pico projector, enables much greater effective lumens due to our ability to optimize the projected content for the viewing environment.   Is it enough to move pico projectors from the research to implementation phase on handheld devices?  We certainly hope so!

Other barriers to pico projector adoption are size, cost, and power consumption.  We’re hearing that new devices are offering size and cost within OEM targets, which is great.  Power consumption, of course, remains key to success.  A 1W pico projector will drain a typical smartphone in less than 1 hour of use—that is certainly not an ideal implementation.  We believe that DPO will also come into play here as projector illumination sources become more power efficient.

We have tested our technology in multiple systems (including DLP and LCoS systems), both at the pico projector designer/manufacturer and OEM levels, with each test proving successful.  When our chip technology is added, the difference in viewability had been immediately noticeable to everyone who has seen it, engineer and layman alike.