Large screen projectors bring back fond memories of my days as a customer service engineer with Rediffusion Malaya.

Back then those Electrohome ECP 2000 and ECP 3000 projectors which our Special Systems Division sold in the 1980s had three cathode ray tubes (CRT) as the projection element, and we sold the ECP 3000 for around RM80,000 to RM90,000 apiece in 1980s ringgits.

Hence, they were mostly affordable to government agencies, universities, big corporations and perhaps a few millionaire pioneers of home cinema, while lower end competitors' three-gun CRT offerings were used in karaoke lounges.

One of our customers was Maybank which used two ECP 2000 units in its conference hall at the top of its towering headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.

These big behemoths which weighed around 50 kg or more had to be lifted by two persons, wheeled around on a custom-built trolley or hung on sturdy metal brackets attached to the ceiling or wall.

We also regularly rented them out for events and functions for about RM1,000 per day and each projector required a technician to set it up by manually focusing each of its three tubes individually and to manually adjust the converge its red, green and blue primary colours into a single white colour on the screen and the technician had to be on standby throughout the event should anything go wrong.

They also required the correct video module be inserted to match their source before they could be used.

With a light projection intensity of 650 Lumens those big CRT projectors could be used in cinemas, meeting halls and karaoke lounges.

Our main competitor in the Malaysian large screen projector market was Barco.

Now a phone-sized projector

In the intervening years, we’ve seen the proliferation of desktop LCD (liquid crystal display) projectors costing a 10th of the price of those big behemoths or even less today, and that tiny-fication process has culminated today in the Aiptek Pocket Cinema V10 and some prototype mobile phone/projectors which take miniaturization even further.

The Pocket Cinema V10 dispenses with power hungry CRTs and projection bulbs used in LCD projectors, and instead employs the evolving high-intensity light-emitting diode (LED) technology.

Dubbed as the world’s first pocket-sized large-screen projector by its Malaysian exclusive distributor, Unisoft, the Pocket Cinema V10 made its debut in Malaysia with a big bang at the Sunway Pyramid shopping mall in Petaling Jaya on 10 February, after it had been available worldwide about four months earlier.

Measuring 125 x 55 x 23 mm and weighing 160 g with its battery, the V10 is roughly the size of a large mobile phone or one of those big behemoths’ remote control units. It easily fits into a shirt pocket, can be mounted on a tripod and also comes with a remote control too.

The Pocket Cinema V10 employs Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) display technology, uses 10 Lumens high-intensity white LEDs as its light source and projects at up to 50 inch diagonal, 640 x 480 pixels image on a screen or a wall at a distance of up to 70 inches (1.8 m), which certainly is no match for those Electrohome or Barco CRT units, well for now at least

However, the V10 is ideal for showing videos with stereo sound, displaying pictures, presentation graphics, games and animation to audiences, family and friends while on the go and all you have to do is to manually adjust its focus and zoom.

It displays images from notebook PCs, media players, mobile phones, camcorders and digital cameras using its 3-in-one audio-visual input/mini USB port and its 1GB internal memory, augmented by up to 8GB SD, SDHC, MMC or MS Pro external memory card lets users project MPEG-4, H.264 & Mobile-JPEG videos or JPEG pictures on a large screen or wall on a stand-alone basis, while it also plays MP3 music files through its in-built stereo speakers.

Being powered by a compact Lithoum-Ion battery similar to those used in mobile phones, the V10 is also highly mobile and frees you from having to be always connected to a mains power source.

The V10 retails for RM1,799 – about the monthly salary of one our technicians or engineers in 1980s ringgit.

Furthermore, the its projection LED has a lifespan of 10,000 hours or nine years based on three hours per day average daily usage, which not only helps reduce your electricity bill but also saves you on expensive CRT or bulb replacement costs.

Further information about the Pocket Cinema V10 is available through www.aiptek2u.com.my

Endnote

Rediffusion Special Systems was closed down in 1989, soon after the company was acquired by Tan Sri Dato' Azman Hashim, who at the time was apparently more interested in the hire-purchase, sound and video recording, production and post-production business.

Several years later, James Leong, senior executive director of O'Connor's Trading expressed his wonder to me over lunch as to where his sturdy competitor Rediffusion had vanished to.

However large screen projectors played a role in helping my former colleagues Martin Wong, a marketing executive and Wong Cheong Yee (C.Y. Wong), a technician to respectively establish their highly successful audio-visual and multimedia rental companies AV Image Systems (www.avimage.com.my) and Acygoe (www.acygoe.com), and both have set up and managed the sound and video systems at many of the media events I've attended over the past nearly 14 years.

These two gentlemen are fine examples of unsung entrepreneurs who braved it on their own with their own funds or a bank loan back in the old days without all that hype, hullbaloo and hoohah frequentlly encountered today over seed money, angle funding, venture capital and so on -- all of which seem to be great excuses to have a thanni (drinking) session in one of those hip, hype and happening watering holes in places like Bangsar or Mont Kiara.

By the way: Cheong Yee just said he wants to meet me to discuss a reunion of ex-Rediffusion colleagues. Well our thanni session will likely involve plenty of "YAM SENGs" with premium XO brandy in a five-star hotel.