DLP TVs are based on the concept of DLP technology, which essentially has every pixel position displayed on the screen. Due to the very small distance between the micro-mirrors, the pixels remain invisible to the eye and thus the picture display in these TVs render a smooth viewing, having no or little effect on the ambient light. The new display technology in TV display has begun to catch the headlines. In 1970, Larry Hornbeck, of Texas Instruments (TI), developed the first version of the DLP technology, which was made available for commercial use in the year 1996. Since that time DLP TV has been meeting increasing demand in the market, being less expensive, though no less capable, large screen TVs. After having experimented for years, with micro-chips, that hold millions of mirrors, TI finally came out with the product, which has been growing in demand. The DLP is now the heart of many DLP TVs manufactured by well known manufacturers like RCA, RCA, Samsung, LG, Toshiba, Zenith, and Panasonic, to name a few. With so many manufacturers taking on the DLP technology, DLP TV is expected to account for quite a substantial share in the whole of the TV market. The basic technology of the DLP YV lies with the rear-projection unit. These manipulate light and create the picture. This light originates from a centralised source and is projected on to a screen. DLP TV monitors work by deflecting light, in which they utilise a complex system of mirrors, which is used to reflect or deflect red, green, and/or blue light through a optical projection lens, which goes on to the screen in front of you. In order to reflect the light fully, the mirrors switch on and switch off when the light needs to be deflected. By switching on and off with great speed, the DLP technology is able to reproduce gray scale at a staggering accuracy. The micro-mirrors are called Digital Micro-mirror Device (DMD) and the functional base of the DLP technology is these mirrors, which is referred to as the Binary Spatial Light Modulator. These mirrors are arranged into square grids, which depend on the DMD's aspect ratio. With this 1 mm being invisible to the eye, the complete assembly looks like a solid thumb-nail sized of a mirror, containing millions of micro-mirrors arranged in a grid pattern. The micro-mirrors on a DMD is independent of its neighbour on the grid and is capable of reflecting light in two directions, viz., either 10 deg toward or 10 deg away from a lens. The light gets reflected on an optical lens, which projects that light on to a screen at a definite pixel. When the micro-mirrors deflect light away from the levs, a light absorber absorbs the light. Hence light does not reach the screen and instead, it produces a dark square pixel image at that particular pixel. The DLP technology assigns a series of Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) cells within, to hold the data input to the system. This data is fed to the micro-mirror modules, which enables tilting of the mirrors in the desired directions. These signals are in the form of binary digits. where 1 would signify a +10 def tilt and a 0 would make the mirror tilt -10 deg. These are termed as ON and OFF switching. If the light is reflected by the mirror, it is directed towards a projection lens, where it is amplified, and then cast on to the back of the screen. If the light gets deflected, it gets absorbed and that pixel part of the screen remains dark. In this fashion, each pixel position of the screen gets mapped directly corresponding to the micro-mirror behaviour, A coloured wheel is used in DLP composed of red, green, and blue filters, which direct individual pulses of colored light toward the DMD. This is utilised for gray-scale processing. This would mean that at any one time only one primary colour is hitting the DMD and as the filter system, within DLP, spins fast enough, approximately at the rate of 120 rpm, the colours appear blended into a full colour digital image. What is the advantage of owning a DLP TV? First of all DLP TV is pleasant to watch. Since it is a reflective technology, the TVs are brighter than other display technologies. The DLP technology features higher-than-average light efficiency, and as such a DLP TV will perform exceedingly well under most ambient light conditions. Brightly lit rooms will never make the display dull. Due to its reflecting and deflecting technology, DLP TV can achieve deeper, more realistic shadows and blacks than other fixed-pixel display technologies. One of the disadvantages of DLP TV is that, while it can be watched with shifts of 70 to 75 degrees in the horizontal plane, any such shift in the vertical plane makes the viewing very dull. The TV dos not have those annoying vertical scan lines as you get in the conventional CRT display TVs. This is because the technology utilises pixel position and has its own optical equivalent in the DMD chip itself, giving you a smooth, evenly lit image through out the length and breadth of the display screen. The DMD switches on and off at the rate of 50,000 times per second and produces pictures with no moving streaks or any motion artifacts. This makes DLP TV well suited for gaming. A DLP TV monitor is capable of displaying HDTV, standard TV, and home video and accepts, which makes texts and graphics look especially sharp one or more RGB inputs from a computer. DLP TV has a very high resolution and perfect geometry of DLP and it is one of the best ways to display data, graphs and web-based contents. The DLP TV monitor has a very long life. The only element that wears off is the light source, which lasts between 8,000 to 10,000 viewing hours. This can be replaced at an approximate cost of $250, which makes the DLP TV inherently reliable. |
