The company displayed its DLP chip at the Mobile World Congress, being held in Barcelona, Spain, on February 15-18, 2010.

According to Frank Moizio, manager (DLP Emerging Markets business) of Texas Instruments, the company’s new nHD chipset for DLP pico projectors will allow even the thin-flip mobile phones to build in a projector.

It was Texas Instruments that pioneered the micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) technique of creating millions of movable micromirrors on a chip, which reflect the light projected onto them, thereby forming images on any projection screen. These screens range from the screen at the digital cinema, to home projection-TV sets, to hand-held pico projectors.

Texas Instruments says the nHD format (640-by-360 pixels) enables DVDs to be viewed at almost their full resolution for sharp images even when they are projected at sizes over 50-inch-diagonal.

The company claims that its micromirrored chip reflects light from the source supplied by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM), which is usually 3 LEDs – red, green and blue – with which contrast ratios can be better than 1,000:1. A new, low-power Pico DPP2601/2607 ASIC/Processor handles all the internal management functions for the micromirrors, including power management.

Over one dozen manufacturers already use the DLP chipsets of for free-standing pico projectors, including Hewlett Packard and Optoma.