CES: New hand-held to make you stare at the wall -- or even the ceiling

LAS VEGAS -- With many of us spicing up our lives with all the power we can fit in one hand, WowWee introduced Cinemin at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas tonight. It's a line of hand-held micro projectors that are due out this spring.

They use Texas Instruments’ DLP technology, similar to what's in high-def TVs, classroom projectors and larger-scale theaters.

What's cool about this device is that you can connect your portable video player, be it an iPod, iPhone or Flip, and project an image measuring up to 60 inches onto a surface up to 12 feet away. The bedroom blinds could be your movie screen.

The pico projectors come in three flavors:

• Cinemin Swivel, the one at right in the foreground in the picture above, sports an adjustable 90-degree hinge that lets you shoot your video to the moon -- well, at least the ceiling -- if you prefer to watch videos the way you stargaze. It costs about $300 and is roughly the size of a candy bar. The company says it has a three-hour battery life and full volume control.
• Cinemin Stick, the one on the left above, has internal memory and an expandable SD card slot. So you could take the card out of your digital camera and pop it in for a quick-draw photo slide show before your friends can politely decline watching the pics of the latest family trip.
• Cinemin Station, the one that resembles an iHome clock radio, is the big daddy of the family. The projector and controls are on top of the box, which serves as an iPod dock. It boasts a better speaker system -- and a bigger price tag: $400. 

So on that flight that no longer offers you a movie and a meal, you could pack your own movie and popcorn. The world is your screen. And this way, you're less likely to get a crick in your neck from staring down at a 2-by-4-inch screen for a couple of hours. Just hope that hyper kid in the seat in front of you actually sits still that long.

-- Michelle Maltais

Photo credit: WowWee