This new projector is the successor to the GP2, and BenQ claims it comes with improved brightness and better contrast. The GP3 can also project images up to 160 inches in diagonally, and it has a 2-watt built-in speaker, although it most likely won’t do the trick in a slightly larger room, so a pair of external speakers may come in handy in this case.

Of course, though, the main new feature on this palm-sized projector is the iPhone dock (using the older 30-pin connection). However, if you don’t have an iPhone, the projector offers several other ways to hook up media to the device, including plugging in a flash drive and microSD card, as well as wirelessly streaming content from another mobile device or PC.

There’s also 2GB of storage tucked inside in case a flash drive or microSD card is too much for you, although that probably won’t be enough for a couple of movies, but an album-full of photos would be the perfect fit. The internal battery is said to last 2.5 hours, which will get you through at least a movie and some, so be prepared to take the charger along with you. The GP3 is expected to ship later this month, but no pricing details have been disclosed yet.

This device holds the title of world’s first 4,000 lumens, 3LCD laster 1920 x 1200 resolution projector. It is the brightest in its market, and is designed with both schools and corporate businesses in mind. The device is designed so that it can be used for extended time spans, and so that it has a long maintenance-free duration, which is influenced by its environment and setup.

The device’s exceptional brightness is the result of lasers instead of LEDs, which most projectors in its class use. The light produced by the lasers passes through a 3LCD engine, with the resulting picture being brighter than your average projector picture, with stable colors and very crisp contrast ratios.

The projector’s design is based on the VPL-FH31 and the VPL-FH36 model projectors. According to Sony’s announcement, the device is designed so that it can be easily implemented into a variety of different environments, whether its a classroom or a board room or somewhere else altogether. It has a white finish so that it blends into its environment.

The device is slated for launch this summer.

[via Sony]

The Qumi Q7 is a LED-based projector and weighs just 3.1 pounds. It provides 800 lumens of brightness and offers over 30,000 hours of operating time. It’s also 3D-ready, thanks to Texas Instruments’ DLP Link technology, and it integrates 2D-to-3D content conversion technology for standard and Blu-Ray 3D playback.

The Qumi Q7 also features the unique touch sensitive button controls and a sleek design that’s familiar across the Qumi family of projectors. It’s already ready to be used with a variety of devices, including digital cameras, laptops, smartphones, tablets, and more.

Specifically, the Qumi Q7 outputs at 1280×800 HD, and it includes two HDMI ports, VGA-In, Composite Video, Audio-In RCA, and a USB port. There’s also 4GB of on-board storage, and Microsoft Office as well as Adobe Reader are built-in. The Qumi Q7 will be available sometime this summer at a steep price of $999.

Of course, with that low price tag, you aren’t going to be getting a lot of top-of-the-line features. The P300 has a native resolution of 1280×800, though it can upscale to 1080p resolution. The whole unit comes it at 5.9” x 3.9” x 1.6” and weighs just 1.3 pounds, so it’s quite portable, and it also features HMDI and USB ports, a microSD slot, composite video input, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

AAXA says that the P300 is capable of 300 peak lumens when its plugged in, but that goes down to 160 lumens when you’re running it off the battery. Speaking of the battery, AAXA says that we can expect 75 minutes of use from a single charge, and the triple RGB LED bulbs (which use Vibrant Color Technology) will last more than 15,000 hours. As you can see from the images in this post, the P300 comes with a color scheme of white and black.

So there you have it. The P300 certainly isn’t the best projector around, but it should get the job done for someone who is looking to pick up a projector on the cheap. You can order one now from AAXA’s website, but they won’t be shipping out to customers until October 26 – one week from today. Has the P300 caught your eye, or will you belooking elsewhere when it comes to purchasing a projector?

The recently announced P4 from AAXA is a big step up from previous models such as the AAXA P2, and many similar priced projectors from the competition. Offering extremely crisp colors, great brightness, and being fully portable with a built-in battery makes this a perfect companion for any business minded individual.

Hardware

While many competing projectors might have better battery life its the 80 lumens of brightness and array of options that sets the P4 apart from the pack. Being labeled the “worlds brightest pico projector” gives it some big shoes to fill — and it didn’t disappoint.

The AAXA P4 Pico Projector is powered by a 750 MHz Windows CE mobile processor, and is plenty bright too. It gets an 80 lumen high-contrast optical engine by way of Texas Instruments DLP. It features AAXA’s vibrant color technology and the LED should last for up to 20,000 hours. Some of the other specs that make the P4 special include: 2GB of built-in memory, 1280×800 VGA input, micro-SD slot for extra storage (up to 32GB), composite video input, 1-watt stereo speakers, 3.5mm headphone jack, and even 720p video support.

Included with the projector AAXA has provided a mini tripod as well as your usual charging and USB cables. The box also provides a mini to full-sized USB, VGA and AV input and more. The included remote (as seen in the video below) is a nice touch but is extremely cheap and gives off a bad impression.

The actual projector itself is very durable and feels great. It’s covered in a soft-coat matte black design and all the ports and buttons are extremely durable. Nothing feels cheap about this premium projector — and it shouldn’t for $399. The buttons on top make navigation easy and simple but the remote is a much better option. I would love to have a better included remote but that’s just me.

AAXA P4 Pico Projector unboxing

Software

Now the software side of things will be completely based on the buyers overall needs and usage. With Windows CE 6.0 on board we have plenty of options with mobile applications. With Office Mobile, Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, and tons of Windows CE based games the options are fairly open. With the P4 AAXA doesn’t recommend you enter Windows too much unless needed and has a basic overlay to keep things straightforward and simple.

Setup is basically non existent unless you need to use Windows CE apps. The standard media player for pictures, and video is simple to navigate — although is pretty bland. From the start screen you can stream any movies from internal or external storage within seconds, the input settings are easy to access and dead simple. Those needing to start presentations will need to launch Windows CE and that takes a bit longer with a warning you must agree to on every start-up seems extreme.

Performance

While I’ve only used a few cheaper and much dimmer projectors in the past, everything about this projector was impressive in terms of performance. The 80 lumen engine is extremely powerful and is by far the brightest portable projector I’ve seen to date. the 750 MHz processor churns out 720p video with ease and my demo shows some impressive output watching AVATAR on a good 40″ size. Fast forwarding through videos or presentations is extremely fluid and there seems to be zero stutter or lag. The only downside to the performance is only about 75 minutes of battery life. To make things worse there isn’t a notification or indicator and once the battery is up you get lights out — no warning.

I can explain performance but instead I’ll just let you all watch the hands-on video demonstration. I start off showing the basic UI in a fully lit room before turning out the lights. The 80 lumens keeps things bright enough that a dark room isn’t required — but sure makes it nice. You’ll be able to use in a lit room with zero problems should the situation present itself.

AAXA P4 video demonstration with light/dark room

As you can see from the video preview the output is extremely bright and impressive, even from a good 6 ft away from the wall. The manual focus makes things very easy for quick adjustments and changes. From the AVATAR scenes in the clip to my Modern Warfare 3 trailer screenshot below you can clearly see just how great the colors are. Thanks to AAXA’s vibrant color technology the colors are exactly that — vibrant.

Wrap-Up

I’ve seen this projector in action for over 2 weeks now. I used it to stream a few clips while visiting family for my extended holiday vacation and everyone was pleasantly surprised by the sound and image output. With 1 watt stereo sound its nothing special but gets the job done. You wouldn’t expect such an incredible bright and vivid picture from this small pocket-able unit — but it does impress.

Battery life is rated for 75 minutes of usage but while outputting 720p video that time dropped significantly and it lasted around 60 minutes for me. While that isn’t very long, completely battery powered is the key here. Being small and weighing under a pound, being fully portable and battery powered makes this perfect for business situations where a full fledged projector isn’t possible. To conduct a full presentation with this quality all on the go with no wires is what sets this apart from the others. For those needing a bigger, longer lasting device for those weekly earnings reports AAXA also has some larger micro projectors to suite all needs.

For a fun toy the pricing is a bit steep but for the on-the-go businessman or professional it should find a place easily in your laptop bag of gear.

The AAXA P4 Pico Projector runs for a pretty penny at around $399 but it’s currently on sale for $339 for a limited time. Get your own today by clicking here.

The video itself starts with a big fat Zach Morris phone and rolls right on into Android, hitting the first color (or colour, I suppose, you Brits,) screen and GPS-carrying mobile phone. The entire video takes place within a 2.5 minute span, and it IS quite the entertaining display. The question is – when will I get to project these images with my Vodafone-carried device?

Here’s my question for you, the community – do you find this sort of “viral” video engaging, or would you rather have one of Vodafone’s device-specific ads like the following one showing the Xperia Arc? I prefer clarity – but DO love the little Andy peeking out at the very end!

It’s supplied with a pair of active shutter glasses and uses three separate Silicon X-tal Reflective Display (SXRD) panels that split up the red, green and blue picture. There’s also 1,000 ANSI brightness and Advanced Iris3 automatic iris control, along with a 24p film mode. Yours for $9,999.99.

[via 3D-Display-info]

The Edge Overlap feature on Matrox’s PowerDesk suite lets the user adjust the pixels that are overlapping and blend them into one image. The combination with affordable blending enabled projctors creates an attractive solutioin to users who don’t want to use custom projection hardware and software or ultra high-end projectors.

“AV professionals and integrators should be eager to add the Matrox M-Series cards to their list of video sources to use when edge blending with Panasonic PT-D6000 series, PT-DZ8700 series, and PT-DZ12000 series projectors. The Matrox graphics card’s image overlap feature, coupled with our projector’s edge blending and picture-in-picture feature will enable them to easily produce sophisticated yet cost effective seamless imagery suited for small, medium, and even some large-scale projection environments,” said John Meehan, Engineering Manager of Panasonic Solutions Company.

The combination would work well in boardrooms, digital signage applications, classrooms, and presentation environments. The application will work for up to eight projectors.

[Via Matrox Press Release]

The WK2500 has a 16:10 aspect ratio with a contrast ratio of 3000:1 and 2500 lumens of brightness. The XK3010 has a XGA resolution with a 2000:1 contrast ratio and 3000 lumens of brightness. The XK2600 and XK2200 both have XGA resolution and 2000:1 contrast ratios. The difference between the two is that the 2600 has 2600 lumens of brightness with the 2200 getting 2200 lumens.

The projectors can all throw an image ranging from 40″ to 300″ depending on how far it is from the projection surface. Inputs for the range include VGA and RCA. The projectors have mini stereo inputs and LAN ports for control. The line is all the same size as well measuring 13.1″ W x 4″ H x 9.7″ D and weighing in at 6.4 pounds. The WK2500 will ship this month for $995 with the others coming in December at $1145 for the 3010, $995 for the 2600, and $845 for the 2200.

YouTube Play is what they call “A Biennial of Creative Video.” Last month the initial list of 23,000 was parred down to 125, which was then reduced to 25 (five more than they originally intended due to the excellent nature of the submissions), announced at a celebration at the Guggenheim on October 21, 2010. The videos were then presented at the Guggenheim Museums in New York, Bilbao, Berlin, and Venice on October 22-24, 2010, and are of course available online basically forever.

The Judges Panel is a who’s who of AWESOME PEOPLE, I assure you: Laurie Anderson
Animal Collective, featuring Deakin (Josh Dibb), Geologist (Brian Weitz), and Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), Darren Aronofsky, Douglas Gordon, Ryan McGinley, Marilyn Minter, Takashi Murakami, Shirin Neshat, Stefan Sagmeister, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Nancy Spector, Jury Chair.

Highlights from the event in New York:

Below we’ve got those videos for you! You lucky doggy. Now all you’ve got to do is use these next two years *this even takes place every other year* to make the greatest video ever and submit! If that’s too long a time for you to wait, you can of course participate in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011, complete with interactive webcam/paper instrument.

Behold! YouTube Play 2010!

AUSPICE, 2010
Bryce Kretschmann (b. 1974, California; lives in Newark, New Jersey)

BEAR UNTITLED – D.O. EDIT, 2010
Christen Bach (b. 1978, Kolding, Denmark; lives in Berlin)

BATHTUB IV, 2009
Keith Loutit (b. 1973, Melbourne; lives in Coogee, Australia)

BIRDS ON THE WIRES, 2009
Jarbas Agnelli (b. 1963, São Paulo)

BIRDY NAM NAM – THE PARACHUTE ENDINGS, 2009
Steve Scott (Director) and Will Sweeney (Art Director and Illustration)

DEUCE, 2010
Monica Cook (b. 1974, Dalton, Georgia; lives in Brooklyn, New York)

DIE ANTWOORD – ZEF SIDE, 2009
Sean Metelerkamp (b. 1984, Knysna, South Africa; lives in Cape Town, South Africa)

GARDYN, 2010
Pogo (b. 1988, Cape Town, South Africa; lives in Perth, Australia)

I MET THE WALRUS
Josh Raskin (Director and Animator), James Braithwaite (Drawings), Alex Kurina (Computer illustration), Jerry Levitan (Producer, Story and Voice)

LADYBIRDS’ REQUIEUM, 2005–06/2010
Akino Kondoh(b. 1980, Chiba Prefecture, Japan; lives in New York)

LE SYNDROME DU TIMIDE, 2010
Pierre-Axel Vuillaume-Prezeau (b. 1986, Nalliers, France; lives in Paris)

LUIS, 2008
Joaquín Cociña, Cristóbal León, and Niles Atallah

MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA: THE GLOBAL REMAKE, 2007–
Perry Bard (b. 1944, Quebec City; lives in New York)

MOONWALK, 2008
Martin Kohout (b. 1984, Prague; lives in Berlin)

NOTEBOEK, 2008
Evelien Lohbeck (b. 1983, Rotterdam; lives in Tilburg, Netherlands)

POST NEWTONIANISM (WAR FOOTAGE/CALL OF DUTY 4 MODERN WARFARE FOOTAGE), 2010
Josh Bricker (b. 1980, Torrance, California; lives in New York)

SCENIC JOGGING, 2010
Jillian Mayer (b. 1984, Florida)

SEAWEED, 2010
Remi Weekes and Luke White

STRINDBERG AND HELIUM AT THE BEACH
Eun-Ha Paek (Director, Animator and Artist), Erin Perkins (Writer and Voice of Helium) and James Bewley (Voice of Strindberg)

SYNTHESIA, 2009
Terri Timely (Corey Creasey and Ian Kibbey)

TAXI III STAND UP AND CRY LIKE A MAN, 2007/2010
Lisa Byrne (b. 1973, Newry, UK; lives in London)

THE HUBER EXPERIMENTS, 2010
Erik Huber and Matthew Huber

THIS ABORTED EARTH: THE QUEST BEGINS, 2010
Michael Banowetz and Noah Sodano

WONDERLAND MAFIA, 2008
Lindsay Scoggins (b. 1985, Gainesville, Flordia; lives in Tampa)

WORDS, 2010
Everynone (Will Hoffman, Daniel Mercadante, and Julius Metoyer III)

[Via Guggenheim]

All three of the new projectors have C2fine Technology for advanced vertical alignment and deeper blacks. The offerings also have DICOM simulation Mode to reproduce medical images for training. Other features include six-axis color adjustment, and advanced sharpness as well as test patterns.

The projectors also have split screen functionality, multiple-PC projection compatibility, and monitor and control over LAN features. The projectors can also handle network content and have connectivity that includes HDMI, dual VGA ports, dual audio inputs, and USB. The new projectors will replace the three current PowerLite projectors. The G5650WNL will sell for $3599, the G5950NL will sell for $3599 and the G5550NL will be $3149. The latter will ship in January with the two other projectors shipping next month.

The 1220 has a XGA resolution and sells for $649. The 1260 is a WXGA resolution projector with a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:10. Both of the projectors have 2600 lumens of color and white light output and promise lifelike colors.

Other common features for the two projectors are automatic keystone correction, 1.2x optical zoom, direct power on and off with a wall switch for installed users, and 3LCD tech. The projectors also include carry cases and can be set up and ready to use in five seconds. A USB plug and play feature allows the projector to work with a single USB connection to a notebook and the 1260 has HDMI output as well.

The PLV-HF10000L (they need a different name) has a native 2K resolution, which means it’ll bring 2048 x 1080 images to your wall. What makes it better, though, is the fact that it can bring that resolution to work in conjunction with several units, which can then use edge blending to bring together the images they’re displaying, making one giant –and we mean giant– projection. As far as contrast ratios go, the PLV packs a 3,000:1, and utilizes QuaDrive technology together with a Color Control Device (CCD) to separately control the yellow light insdie the optical engine. Which, hopefully, should mean that the image itself is sharper, and the color should be a bit more precise and feature far more clarity.

You also get picture-in-picture, as well as picture-by-picture features, too. Just in case all of that wasn’t enough to make you want this thing. As the title suggests, Sanyo is set to launch it upon the world in November, but they don’t have any word on pricing quite yet. Though, we can probably safely say that it’s going to be expensive.

[via Pocket-Lint]

The projector modules are said to be LCoS pico-projector modules from Himax Technologies. The projector cameras will be able to connect to PCs for use as an external projector as previously reported. Another camera using a DLP micro projector developed by TI and Asia Optical is also rumored to be shipping in September.

Asia Optical is also expecting to ship similar modules for other uses reports DigiTimes. Asia Optical expects to move 200,000 to 250,000 pico projector models for Microvision SHOWWX pico projectors this year. The company will also reportedly ship 8 million handset-use pico projectors using DLP tech in 2011 and expects to grow that number to 12 million in 2012.