Week in Geek: Inside the Society of Information Display show

Small projectors and flexible panels were the big stories at the Society for
Information Display show that just ended this week. A lot of consumers (and
perhaps a lot of TV industry people as well) don’t care about what an
engineer does with light emitting diodes or plasma gas or quantum physics to
make TVs better. People only care when a new, cheaper set shows up at Best Buy.
We think that is a mistake. With the pace of development in televisions getting
faster, it’s worth keeping an eye on the latest in screen developments
. Here’s what we thought was worth noting at
this year’s SID show:

A company called Explay showed their Nano-Projector. This tiny little
projector, the size of a large pack of cards, is capable of rendering a decent
image. Jack one into a video iPod and think how cool that would be.

Samsung showed a liquid crystal display TV that was backlit with LED. The
company claimed a 10,000:1 contrast ratio, which was amazing.

Uni-Pixel had a neat idea in cheaper displays, the time multiplexed optical
shutter. It offers the potential of plasma-like image quality at a fraction of
the power and cost.

Liquivista showed some neat work for better watch faces. Really cool stuff.

In other tech news, Verizon readies its iPhone competitor, which has no chance whatsoever …
Electronic paper from E Ink … Nintendo plans to sell 35 million Wii
consoles in U.S. in five years … Senator says thumbs down on XM-Sirius
deal … Verizon has live TV in several markets … Dell ships
yet more open source computers.

And finally … Bo knows football.
Or Tecmo Bowl at least.

For more consumer news visit www.blumsday.com