Wow Wee Cinemin Swivel Is Built to Work With iPhone and iPod Content

The WowWee Cinemin Swivel ($350 as of January 11, 2010) is made to order for watching iPod videos or playing games on the ceiling. Its unique, adjustable, 90-degree hinge lets you swing the lens through a wide arc of display angles while you relax on your sofa or bed. In addition, the Cinemin Swivel can handle business presentations for a very small group in a dimly lit room.

The Cinemin Swivel permits you to deliver an iPod presentation or show an iPhone video right out of the box, thanks to the bundled iPod/iPhone 30-pin adapte. It also comes with a composite (RCA-type) A/V cable for connecting the projector to a digital camera, video game console, or other mobile device. You’ll have to pay $40 extra, however, to get the VGA-to-A/V converter accessory (Cinemin Swap) you’ll need to hook up the projector to a computer.

The Cinemin Swivel has a native resolution of 480 by 320 and is powered by Texas Instruments’ DLP (Digital Light Processing) projection technology. In addition to its swivel capability, this model has a 20,000-hour LED light life and a long enough battery life (135 minutes). At 4 feet from the screen in low ambient daylight, the Cinemin Swivel projected a viewable 29-inch-diagonal image; and at 6 feet away in a darkened room at night, it managed a 45-inch-diagonal image. In displaying text images, the projector did a good job of rendering legible text when displaying large san serif fonts–in PowerPoint slides