Mobile Entertainment

The jury is still out on mobile full-length movies – and it’s been considering its verdict since Sony Pictures and Carphone Warehouse put Spiderman 2 on a memory card in 2005.

Although anyone with an N95 or an iPhone will know that movie-viewing can be a perfectly acceptable experience on mobile, this doesn’t make it a commercially viable market. The screen size always gets in the way – in a manner of speaking.

But what if screen dimensions were no longer an issue? Well, if Texas Instruments has its way, this just might be the case. Last October, TI demonstrated its second-generation Pico-projector prototype and confirmed that three manufacturers – Foxconn, Sypro Optics, Optoma/ Young Optics – would build mobile products based on it.

Frank J. Moizio, manager of emerging markets at TI DLP Front Projection, clearly sees mobile as a huge opportunity. He says: “Today there are approximately 1.4 billion mobile devices with screens that are less than 3.5 inches; our innovation opens the opportunity to have information and video displayed in a much more compelling way, without compromise to the size of current mobile devices.”

Optoma looks set to be first into the market. Its Pico-based product is slated to hit shelves in Europe and Asia by the end of this year. It will be a stand-alone projector – a small unit that connects to a phone with a wire rather than being embedded inside it – and will project onto a slightly larger than A4 sized screen. The Taiwanese company aims to ship one million projectors in 2010.

TI is not alone in the rush to develop a properly mobile projector. The US company Microvision is also planning to put its technology into handsets by 2009, and 3M is in the race too. The latter previewed its LED prototype (with Taiwanese manufacturer Himax Technologies) in January.

Clearly the holy grail for these companies is making the projection technology small enough to ship inside a phone. Indeed, Microvision has already suggested it will work with Samsung to put projectors in handsets next year. Samsung would be an enthusiastic partner, having previously highlighted the TV-out display properties of devices such as its D600 in consumer advertising.

But maybe they’ve all been trumped by a Chinese company known as CKING. I say ‘maybe’ because no one’s too sure how reliable are the web reports of its candy-bar handset with built-in projector and rear speakers. The device was unveiled at the Tianjin Exhibition in June.

Whoever is first to market, there’s no doubt that 3G, smartphones and high capacity memory cards are combining to make mobile a genuine medium for film and TV. It’s why Sony Pictures ran trials with operators to offer streamed movies that could be rented over days and paused on demand, and Motorola launched a full movie download store with Paramount in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and France, charging up to £8.99 per movie to download direct PC, and then sideload them to mobile.

Then there’s French company Actimagine, whose Mobiclip storefront lets users stream or download DVD-quality video content via sideload, wi-fi or 3G. Such services could be dramatically improved if the mobile could project to 60 inches – as long as battery life can be sustained.

And if it came with popcorn and a beer, even better.