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Which TV is Best:
LCD, Plasma, DLP, LCoS or LCD Rear Projection?

DLP Front or Rear Projection TV

Let's start off with DLP, a very popular technology. Digital Light Processing is found widely in both front and rear projection televisions. DLP was developed by Texas Instruments. At its heart is the Digital Micromirror Device (DMD chip) which contains a rectangular array of up to 1.3 million hinge-mounted microscopic mirrors.

The mirrors on a DLP chip can either tilt toward the light, creating a pixel of light, or swing away from the light, creating a dark pixel. These mirrors can do this several thousand times per second. The frequency of these on or off cycles result in shades of gray. If it is tilted to reflect light most of the time, then it creates a light gray pixel. If it is off most of the time then it creates a dark gray pixel. They are capable of creating 1,024 different shades of gray.

Most DLP TVs and projectors use a one-chip design. In order to generate a color image on a one-chip television, the light passes through a spinning color wheel containing red, blue and green filters. This enables a one-chip DLP TV to display 16.7 million different colors. Three-chip models are available on higher-end models and professional equipment. They eliminate the need for a color wheel and instead the white light is divided into three colors through a prism. Each beam is focused onto one dedicated chip for each color. This results in a very bright, rich color picture.

Because the mirrors can be turned off, DLP does a very good job of rendering deep blacks in dark elements of an image. This is an element of the contrast ratio, the difference from its whitest white to its blackest black. DLP has excellent contrast ratios.

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Home Theater Basics

What is HDTV? ... EDTV? ... DTV? ... SDTV?

Aspect Ratios Explained: What's the difference between 4:3 and 16:9

Section 1: DLP Rear Projection

Section 2: LCD Rear Projection

Section 3: LCoS Rear Projection

Section 4: LCD Flat Panel

Section 5: Plasma Flat Panel












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