Design and engineering company SCRAM Technologies (www.scramtech.com) demonstrated a pair of prototype laser-based projectors during the Projection Summit 2007 conference preceding InfoComm, following up on their January 2007 announcement of a consortium comprising SpatiaLight (imager chip provider) and Korea-based SI InfoComm (overall designer and system integrator). According to SCRAM, those prototypes consumed about 5 watts and yielded about 10 lumens, using a 0.3" SVGA LCoS imager.

But more recently, SCRAM has indicated that they are developing a family of tiny projectors, using both lasers and LEDs, and a variety of LCoS and MEMS imagers. Their June demonstrators would fall into the mid-range (dubbed "micro") of their family, which they expect to implement with a combination of laser and MEMS technology, to produce a target brightness of 30-50 lumens (suitable for a projected size of 16" diagonal) in a volume of 40 cc and with a power requirement of 5 watts or less. Their high-end product ("mini") will combine LEDs and MEMS, to produce a target brightness of 80-100 lumens (suitable for a projected size of 25" diagonal) in a volume of under 350 cc and with a power requirement of 10-15 watts. And their low-end product ("pico") will combine LED and LCoS technology, to produce a target brightness of 2-4 lumens (suitable for a projected size of 7" diagonal) in a volume of 1 cc (wow!) and with a power requirement of 1 watt or less. These are some interesting combinations, which are making us re-think our expected future technology roadmap.