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Enormous feats of shrinkage like that don’t come along very often, though. So when they do, you sit up and take notice — as you will the first time you see the Optoma Pico Projector ($430 list price). It’s a long-awaited, much-rumored projector about the size of a cellphone: 2 by 4.1 by 0.7 inches, weighing 4.2 ounces.A pocket projector? Are you kidding? This isn’t just a new product — it’s a whole new product category.
You’d have to be a jaded gizmophile indeed not to be impressed the first time you turn on this tiny, shiny black box. In the center of the short end, there’s a very bright light-emitting-diode lamp. Inside, there’s a miniaturized Texas Instruments digital-light-processing (D.L.P.) chip, similar in principle to the ones that drive some full-size HDTV sets. Together, they produce an astonishingly bright, clear, vivid video or still image. That’s right — from a projector you’ve pulled from your jeans pocket.