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Are you one of the many people who are confused to which type of projector you should be buying. You will already have discovered the terms LCD and DLP and that they refer to two different kinds of projector. So which one is for you?
A projector which is LCD which stands for liquid crystal display, will usually contain three separate LCD glass panels, one each for the red, green, and blue componenents of the video signal being fed into the projector. Individual pixels open to allow light to pass or close to block the light. This helps adjust the light and produces the image which is projected on to the screen.
DLP (which stands for Digital Light Processing) is a proprietary technology developed by Texas Instruments. This technology works quite differently to the LCD. DLP works by way of a chip having a reflective surface which is made up of literally thousands of mirrors and each mirror represents a single pixel.
Using an LCD projector it was considered it would give you a better colour saturation than was possible from a DLP projector. That was because in most single-chip DLP projectors built for the commercial presentation market, a clear white panel is included in the colour wheel along with red, green and blue in order to boost light output. Though the image is brighter than it would otherwise be, this tends to reduce colour saturation, making the DLP picture appear not quite as rich and vibrant. The colours for data display are normally considered vibrant enough with a data signal. If you are planning to use your projector for high quality video display this is something you need to consider.
Many DLP projectors today being made for the home theatre or high quality video applications have six segment colour wheels that feature two sets of red, green, and blue filters. The white segment has been eliminated. Light output has been sacrificed to help boost the colour accuracy. A high image contrast on the screen allows for a good video performance. A dark environment is preferable which allows for a low lumen output.
Sharpness of image differs between DLP and LCD being most noticeable in the commercial area if a detailed financial spreadsheet is required. LCD will deliver a slightly sharper image than DLP. However, there is no visable difference in sharpness with video.