DLP: Digital Light Processing Televisions
Digital Light Processing - Another brain child of Texas Instruments
DLP TV is the name for displays based on the Digital Light Processing technology. DLP uses a small chip called a DMD, or Digital Micromirror Device, developed by Texas Instruments back in 1996. The DMD is a tiny chip with over 750,000 separate mirrors that can be switched to an on or off position, individually controlled by a separate transistor. Each separate mirror is approximately 13.8 microns square, spaced just 0.8 microns apart. Each mirror represents a single pixel in the display and used in a similar manner to liquid crystal.
For the DLP TV, the DMD chip has a powerful lamp shone upon it causing the individual mirrors to reflect into a color wheel which is made up of red, green or blue. It's the reaction of the pixel of light and the color wheel that creates the high-resolution images in the DLP display. The display technology has been particularly refined as a projector technology and can be found in many of the world's finest digital movie theaters. Home projectors both rear and front also use the DLP. There are those that employ a single DMD chip but more expensive DLP TVs will employ a three-chip design.
DLP TV Pluses- Low energy, low heat display.
- DLP TV has no screen-door effect found on LCD.
- Rear-projection DLP TVs are smaller and lighter than CRT.
- Lower cost method of digital display than Plasma.
- DLP viewers may see the "rainbow effect" resulting from refracting light.
- DLP may display motion artifacts that appear around high-contrast moving images.
DLP is very comparable to LCD's rear-projector models. The two display types compete for attention at the local retailers and LCD has gained converts from serious players in the video market. Samsung sees DLP as the future of rear-projection displays and has invested a lot of research and development into fine tuning their line of DLP TVs. The results are some of the finest big-screen HDTVs on the market.
DLP doesn't suffer the screen-door effect of LCD projectors because the pixels are literally closer together with a DLP TV. However, DLP is not without its own technical drawbacks. Notably is the rainbow effect, which only a certain segment of the population can even see at all. Those who can see the "rainbow" in a DLP TV claim to get headaches from extended viewing. Most don't see it at all and this is probably thanks to a lot of proprietary processes developed by the likes of Samsung to use lenses that filter out any of the adverse effects. Although DLP is a much newer display technology than LCD, it's made strides since its development and is here to stay for the foreseeable future.
