A couple years back, LG came out with a quirky commercial advertising a novel little gadget with almost no utility called the LG eXpo, a smartphone that had a bulky attachment that could project an image or movie on a wall in a dark room.  It’s convenient if you have a dark room and a white wall, but that’s about it (especially since any videos you would be watching you would have to listen through a 2009-era cellphone speaker.

NC State has now worked with the same projector manufacturer to produce a more practical device using liquid crystal technology that is far more efficient than other pic projectors.  An article by Laser Focus World pretty much sums it all up…

“The commercial implications are broad reaching,” says Michael Escuti, co-author of a paper describing the research and an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State. “Projectors that rely on batteries will be able to run for almost twice as long. And LC projectors of all kinds can be made twice as bright but use the same amount of power that they do now. However, we can’t promise that this will make classes and meetings twice as exciting.” (link)

Still getting pissed off by having presentations in rooms where the projector doesn’t work or isn’t available?  Maybe in the near future that frustration will become a thing of the past.