Intel Extreme Masters at the Taiwan Game Show has kicked off featuring the Microvision PicoP gaming application and you can follow all the action here: http://scoop.intel.com/. YouTube sensation and Microvision gaming guru Andrew Rosen files the following report:
It’s been real busy, especially over the weekend with the line running as long as 90mins to get into our area. Responses have been great, with many many people coming out with big grins after playing the new OFP:DR [Operation FlashPoint: Dragon Rising] level we did just for Taipei. Also the new graphics and video showing on our area look great!
Show is very different from Edmonton as it’s a dedicated gaming show with Blizzard WoW, Xbox 360 and many other stands - lots more people and lots more noise!
Hi all, our first annual SHOWWX Film Festival at Sundance is in the books! It was a great event where the SHOWWX was used to display a couple dozen edgy and eye-opening films from several up-and-coming and established independent film directors, including Rodrigo Gudiño and Floria Sigismondi. It was a packed house, and people experienced the unique relaxation of watching movies projected on the ceiling, while lounging around on a bed of pillows, among other environments.
The SHOWWX Film Festival was written up in a great story in Wired: Pico Projector Film Fest Turns Ice Sculpture Into Screen. It was exciting to bring the SHOWWX to people outside of the usual traditional tradeshow type of environment, and to allow the artistic community to experience and discuss a totally new way to bring their visual creations to audiences. For me, it’s been great to get immersed in the independent film atmosphere (not to mention the mountain air!) for a couple of days and to see the genuine excitement and interest on the part of these artists, and fans of independent media.
All in all, it was a great event that brought us a lot closer to the independent film community. We think we can expand on this type of experience to make it possible for independent film makers and audiences all around the world to participate in ongoing personal film festivals of their own making.
It’s great to be in Park City for the first annual SHOWWX Film Festival. Microvision is sponsoring this independent film festival to demonstrate and promote SHOWWX as a platform for independent artists to display their creations to new audiences.
As independent film makers look to distribute and share their films, they are often limited by the available distribution outlets since they must compete with large studios for placement in theaters. We believe that SHOWWX offers indie film makers a new and unique, grass-roots way to share their work. As you can see with new applications on iPhone like Gigaplex that make independent content available, artists from around the world can upload their work and share it with audiences without depending on traditional movie theaters.
The SHOWWX, when paired with an iPod and a portable speaker, becomes a movie theater in your pocket. We expect that independent artists will be able to use this portable theater capability to share their movies in informal ‘mini-theater’ modes anywhere, anytime, with all the benefits of PicoP that you all know well. We’re excited to bring together some really great independent film makers to show their movies on SHOWWX during Sundance and be a part of this revolution in big-screen entertainment!
Visit cloudzero for the full program of great indie films that we’ll be showing over the next two days, and stay tuned for more updates from the show!
Hi all, here’s a fun clip of SHOWWX in action at CES from Hand Held Hollywood, a blog about how to use iPhones for film and video production. After I figure out where I am, I can demo the product…!
At times, it felt like little video gnomes had snuck into CES, and stashed tiny iPhone compatible projectors all over the place!
…and most of them sucked — out of focus, colors from hell and the luminance of a black hole. But then I found the Microvision Show WX, and my faith in video gnomes was restored.
The Show WX boasts some decent specs: WVGA (848×480) resolution, 120 minute battery life, and sharp images from 6 inches (or less) to 16 feet (or more). And since it’s laser based, there’s no need for a focus knob. It’s always in focus.
We have just finished up today at CES. It was a great show, and I want to thank all my team mates for their outstanding 20 hour days to make this event successful. Here’s a quick recap of the key highlights.
We are totally jazzed to win the CES Honoree Innovations Award in the “Best in Mobile Accessory” category. PLUS…we were the winner in “Last Gadget Standing” on-line vote. The press coverage from this win alone translates to a very significant awareness boost. Expect to see some additional TV press coverage around the world from many stations/programs that shot stories at our booth, and plan to broadcast following CES. We will post all the buzz we find on our Buzz page over the coming days.
We are now focused on gearing up for our U.S. launch of SHOWWX, and after thousands of demonstrations of the product here, we are ecstatic to finally bring it to the U.S. It is still quite amazing to hear visitor after visitor say “That’s Awesome!”. We are really feeling good about this direct validation from actual end users about the product’s performance and functionality with a variety of devices including the iPod.
Our teammates Dave Lashmet and Andrew Rosen also did a great job of presenting the PicoP enabled application for first person gaming. While this is still a prototype, here’s an enthusastic review by gaming guru, Devin Coldewey, from Crunch Gear.
Off in our private meeting space, we had numerous meetings with companies interested in embedding our PicoP display engine into their next generation products. Customers who have already purchased our PicoP Evaluation Kit during 2009 are now getting in line for samples which are expected to be available at the end of the first quarter/early second quarter.
Finally, at our booth in the iLounge area we had a wonderful time delighting visitors with fun and humor from our Dr. Evil and Austin Powers look-a-like. The synergy between the world’s leading evil ‘laser’ villain, and his arch nemesis ‘groovy baby’ character was a big hit! Check it out Y’all!
BY MELISSA ARSENIUK, CANWEST NEWS SERVICE JANUARY 8, 2010
The annual Consumer Electronics Show has taken Las Vegas by storm and the wide array of gadgets being showcases has tech lovers drooling across the city.
There’s no shortage of exciting new electronics being fawned over on the show floor — from high-res flat screen TVs and iPhone and BlackBerry accessories to the latest innovations in laptop and computer technology and video games and beyond. Walking the CES show floor is like walking though a shiny, nerdy wonderland.
Another product attracting a lot of attention at CES is a Microvision portable projector ($500, available March 2010). It allows users to share images from their cellphones, iPods, computers and cameras by projecting them onto the nearest flat surface.
The projector follows the hype generated by AT&T last month when the cellphone giant released the LG eXpo, its first cellphone with built-in video projection capabilities.
While the Microvision device is an external product, it blows the LG eXpo out of the water in terms of resolution and versatility.
Microvision’s projector doesn’t need to be positioned directly in front of whatever surface you want to display your image on: the slim lilac-coloured device projects the images in startlingly sharp focus from virtually any angle.
Walls would be the surface of choice, here, but curtains, tables and the backs of people’s heads also work (some better than others).
Its versatility plays onto its cool factor: You can use it to show video from your phone, share pictures from your camera, display vodcasts from your iPod and make presentations from your PC.
It’s the close of Day 1 on the show floor at CES. The Microvision booth in the iLounge was constantly busy, and we had a lot of activity in our ‘Dr. Evil lair’ where we highlighted the key advantages of the SHOWWX.
We’ve also garnered a lot of press coverage since we’ve been at CES—from CNET’s First Looks, to accolades from The Cult of Mac, Hardware Zone, Tidbits Tech News, IDG News Service and Wired.com to name a few. Most media give us high marks, but not every reviewer will see us in the same light. Such is the case with today’s review in PC Magazine. While written by someone we greatly respect, we don’t agree with all of his comments and opinions, especially his view on image quality. We have been in touch with the reviewer questioning and challenging both testing criteria/tools used as well as the rationale for the seemingly harsh words about performance and price. We know it’s a big wide world out there and despite our disappointment in this one review we take great encouragement from the positive feedback we’ve received both from the media and from the many people who have experienced first-hand other pico projectors—and who have consistently told us that our image quality is the best.
I have talked with a number of investors and followers of Microvision in the last several weeks and the most popular questions that I have received are “When can I get a SHOWWX?” followed closely by “What are you showing at CES?”
Today I had a chance to talk with Microvision CEO Alex Tokman about our participation in the Consumer Electronics Show which begins tomorrow in Las Vegas, and about our SHOWWX laser pico projector product (including when we are targeting our U.S. launch).
I am heading to CES tomorrow so stay tuned for updates from the show!
Hey everyone, here’s a quick update on CES activities:
We issued a press release this morning from Las Vegas highlighting our planned exhibition activities. We also started our week at CES last night at the media only event called CES Unveiled. Over 800 media attended to get their first peak at some of the top innovations being exhibited at CES. SHOWWX was awarded a 2010 CES Innovations Honoree Award in the mobile accessories category, and as a result we garnered a lot of attention from the press. At times we were twenty people deep in front of our demo area. According to CES there are over 6000 registered media coming to CES, so on the media front we’ll be busy. Today we’re finishing the build of our trade show booth and preparing the final touches on our presentations for the week. We’ll capture both video and photos and post them along with our observations and commentary during the week. Have a great day!
Hey Guys!
