A digital projector.
The advances in digital home theater projectors have reduced the costs of owning one to within the range of most consumers. When deciding on a projector most people want to know how the technology works and its benefits over competitors. Digital projectors are one of the most popular kinds of projectors and use a fairly simple method in a complicated way to produce images on a screen.
History
The technology used by the digital light projector (DLP), essentially a very complex light switch, was developed in 1987 by Texas Instrument's Dr. Larry Hornbeck, according to GizmoHighway. In addition to developing the DLP, Texas Instruments also holds the patent to it, making them the only company able to license the technology.
Types
All types of digital light projectors use the same principle to display a picture, but there are three variations on the DLP---home and business single chip DLP and three chip DLP---that take a slightly different approach to digital projection, according to ProjectorPros. Each of these has some advantages and disadvantages, depending on their intended use.
Function
All DLP projectors shine light from a lamp onto chips that contain thousands of tiny mirrors, which then reflect that light into a lens, or away from it to produce black, according to ProjectorCentral. A three chip DLP uses a different chip for red, green and blue based color. One chip DLP has a single chip used for all of these colors. When the DLP needs to produce a color, it contains a color wheel (with primary and usually some secondary colors) that spins to filter the color of light for the chips. The chips then lean forward or backward to moderate how much color it reflects into the lens.
Considerations
The business version of the single chip DLP uses a white filter to increase the brightness of the digital projection, but this also produces lower color saturation compared to the home theater version. Three chip models are preferable to a single chip because their color wheels do not have to constantly rotate between colors, but three chip models are also extremely expensive (more than $20,000 on average), according to ProjectorPros.
Benefits
Aside from the differences between the types of DLP projectors, DLP technology has several benefits over the competing Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) projector format. DLP projectors do not use an organic substance that can break down like LCD displays, so they theoretically last nearly forever with maintenance, according to ProjectorCentral. DLP projectors are also highly resistant to pixel failure, a problem common in LCD projectors.
Tags: single chip, three chip, according ProjectorCentral, according ProjectorPros, benefits over, chip models
