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The most common question heard when acquiring a new projector for the home, office, or classroom is: do I take an LCD projector or a DLP projector? LCD, short for ‘liquid crystal device’ and DLP, which stands for ‘digital light processing’ are the two commonplace projector imaging technologies. With so many business brands and types available, it can be overwhelming for consumers to make a decision between both technologies. The fact is that LCD projectors offer superior image quality and colour accuracy. The next paragraph will tell you why DLP projectors struggle with bringing up an equal level of image quality.

Think of a set of blinds in your room covering your bedroom window. With the twist of a rod you can have the shutters open or closed, according to if you want to let light in or not. And this is exactly how an LCD projector behaves. Each pixel works like a unique shutter on a set of blinds to either allow light through or to block it. DLP on the other hand is constructed of millions of microscopic mirrors or ‘pixel elements’ as experts like to call them. Each pixel element functions to either reflect light or block it.

How the light source is processed from the point at which the projector turns on to when the image reaches your screen is absolutely significant for image quality, brightness and colour accuracy. LCD projectors shine white light from the lamp by separating it into red, blue and green components, by three mirrors which send the coloured light to 3 individual LCD panels. The 3 LCD panels make the elements of the image by turning each pixel on and off. The pixels are then combined in a glass prism to send the projector image. Something to understad about LCD projectors is that all three colours are sent onto your wall all at the same time. The way a DLP projector operates is vastly different and even the final product of how an image appears is not the same. With DLP, white light from the lamp is projected through a spinning colour wheel with transparent red, blue and green segments, at speeds up to 11,000 rpm/s. This method of making an image requires a sequence of red, blue and green light. The millions of micro mirrors mentioned above reflect the coloured light on the pixels to produce the image elements. The elements of the image are sent in sequence on the screen, one colour at a time. The viewer’s vision will then put together each coloured element of the image into a single complete image. In LCD projectors, all colours are available all the time to create high brightness and fantastic colour accuracy. In DLP, just one colour is available at once, and so resulting in lower colour brightness and accuracy. Some developers have included a white segment into the colour wheel to improve overall brightness, but this further damages colour accuracy.

I read in forums all the time that DLP gives a higher contrast ratio and as such must be better. For those who don’t know, the contrast ratio is a measure of a display system defined as the ratio of the luminance of the brightest white to that of the darkest black that the system is capable of producing. DLP projectors do provide high contrast specifications in comparison to the majority of LCD projectors. At first glance, this must be an advantage, however, in truth, the true black level is determined by the ambient light in the room in which the projector is in use. Do not be hoodwinked by contrast specifications on websites and in brochures.

When the content you wish to project includes moving images, DLP projection technology can also have image imperfections, or ‘artifacts’. The most often seen artifact that a DLP projector forms with moving images is colour break up. Colour break up is to be expected in DLP systems because moving images change up between the time red, blue and green colours are shone. LCD projectors do not have this problem because every colour is processed at once. DLP builders have come up with 3DLP solutions using 3 chips to solve the colour break up artifacts, but the price tag of these projectors make them impractical for the majority of businesses and consumers.

Another point of difference between LCD and DLP is how they compensate for the refractive qualities of light. Think back to high school science, and recall how the different colours of light refract different amounts when passing through the same lens. The downfall with DLP projectors is that they utilise the one same panel for the same lens to project Red, Blue and Green. All 3 colours are not the same and refract light differently. Generally with a DLP projector, some yellow colour will come through above and a spill of blue will appear below an image as simple as a single black line. In building LCD projectors can be adapted to reduce these effects on the projected image, because each colour is refracted on separate LCD panels.

The isolated veritable buy point (excluding price) with buying a DLP projector is its overall smaller size and weight. However, this is only relevant for transporting the device and has to be traded off against the image advantages of LCD projectors. If the result of the picture quality is vital to you, then the solution is no-brainer. Take an LCD projector! LCD projectors will always produce bright, colourful images with fewer image imperfections. If you need to know more about LCD technology in more detail, have a gander at this fantastic resource website: Explore 3LCD. If you have any further questions, jump onto Projector Central and send me an email.

Jonathan King is the sales and marketing manager with Projector Central, Australia’s premier online retailer for projectors. Brisbane-based, Projector Central has been serving Australia for 15 years. For data projectors in Brisbane and Interactive Whiteboards, contact Projector Central today.