Big screen, small phone

Texas Instruments DLP - Digital Light Processor - technology has been one of the nicer things to come out of Dallas of late. Otherwise known as mirrorchip, the tech is an array of millions of tiny hinged mirrors etched out of silicon in a single device no bigger than a large postage stamp. Shine a light and pump the right pattern of voltages through it, and the reflection makes a pretty good video picture.

So far, mirrorchips have found their way into mainstream projectors. Now, however, TI has built one "small enough to fit on your fingertips" and designed to fit into mobile phones and the like. Throwing an image about the size of a piece of paper, the idea is that you can share media between two or three people without having to lug around a big projector or forcing them to go blind.

TI says that it's demonstrating this at a trade fair in New York right now. I'm on the wrong side of the continent, preparing to listen to lots of people talk about the details of systems management. So we'll have to take TI's word for it - at least, until I can persuade them to disgorge a prototype in my direction.

Product? Two years or so - and when it comes to image quality, resolution, brightness, battery life and so on, your guess is as good as mine. Lots of good sign, though - LED lighting is progressing apace, and the basic mirrorchip idea has proven itself to be a match for anything.