But you know what? Pixels are overrated. Nobody will complain about the sharpness of the Pico’s image, especially after you find just the right spot on its little Focus dial. Over all, the Pico does surprisingly well.

So what can you watch on this thing?

It comes with a special composite cable. On one end, there’s a special, tiny audio-video pin that goes into the projector. On the other end, you’ll find the familiar three-headed, red-white-yellow RCA cables. These are female jacks, made to mate with the male composite cables that come with just about every DVD player, VCR, game console, digital camera and camcorder ever sold.

So in a pinch, the Pico projector could replace a TV set when you’re using full-size gear like DVD players or game consoles.

But the true mission of the Pico’s miraculous miniaturization is connecting to fellow micro-gadgets: digital cameras, cellphones, iPods or iPhones, for example.

The necessary adapter for the iPod or iPhone comes with the projector. Old video iPods require only the short black cable, which goes into the iPod’s headphone jack but carries both audio and video. You also get a plastic nub that snaps onto the bottom of the iPhone or more recent iPods; the short black cable connects the nub to the projector. (The projector produces an image only when videos are playing. It doesn’t show, for example, the iPhone’s Web browser, e-mail program or other applications -- a shame for instructors or anyone else who might like a way to demonstrate the iPhone’s workings to more than one audience member at a time.)

To connect a digital camera, so you can show off your stills or your videos, or to connect your camcorder, you use the composite TV cable that came with it. Optoma plans to make adapter cables available for other smartphones in the coming months, starting with a Nokia cable for $10.

The Pico projector does so much so well with so little, it might sound ungrateful to bring up its one really embarrassing shortfall. But somebody has to say it: What about the sound?