If you've been thinking about buying a home theater projector, perhaps to read a connection to an HDTV tuner, and have reviews or done a little research, you will be aware that there are two competing technologies for the contents of the wallet .

Both LCD and DLP projectors are used for home theaters, but they work in very different ways and produce slightly different results. If you ask around, especially in electronics stores, you are likely to beequipped with a mass of information which is confusing and often plain wrong. Here, then, in an effort to clear the fog around projectors, is our guide for LCD-DLP-v.

LCD

LCD projectors have three separate LCD panels, one for red, one green and one for processing for blue components of the image through the projector. Like the light through the LCD panels passess) can individual pixels (or picture elements that are either open or closed, eitherallow the light to pass through or filtered out. In this way the light is modulated and an image projected on the screen.

LCD projectors have always been three main advantages over DLP. They produce more accurate colors (due to the three separate LCD panels), they produce a slightly sharper image (although) it virtually undetectable when watching movies and they are more light-efficient, which means they produce brighter images with less energy.

However,LCD projectors also have some disadvantages, even though the technology improves this will be less and less and less relevant. The first of these is pixelation, or what is known as the screen door effect. This means that sometimes you can see the individual pixels and it looks as if you look at the picture with a "mosquito." The second historic disadvantage of LCD v DLP is that LCD is not to produce absolute black, however, means that less than youwith DLP.

But the introduction of higher resoltion LCD projectors (particularly 'HD-ready projectors, which means a horizontal resolution of 768 pixels or larger) that pixelation is less a problem than before. And the improved ability of LCDs to produce high-contrast images is also so that they are more seriously by home theater enthusiasts accepted.

DLP

Digital Light Processing (DLP) is a technology developed by Texas Instruments and works byProjection light from the lamp, the projector on a DLP chip, made up of thousands of tiny mirrors. Each mirror is a single pixel and directs the light projected onto it either into the lens path to the pixels, or turn away from him to turn it. Most DLP projectors have only one chip, so in order to reproduce the color, a color wheel, comprising use of red, green, blue and sometimes white filters. The wheel spins between the lamp and the chip and make changes the color of lightthe chip from red, green, blue. Each mirror on the DLP chip tilts towards or away away from the lens, depending on how much light a certain color is needed for this pixel at a given moment.

The main advantages of DLP has in the LCD v DLP debate is that DLP projectors are smaller and easier to do rather better, however, not have the same pixelation problems as LCD projectors. It is a problem that some users one report with DLP projectors, although itseems only a very small number of people affected. Because of the way DLP works, at a given moment, the image on the screen is either red, green or blue. However, the images change so quickly that the human eye does not recognize this, and the brain puts together the red, green and blue images to get a complete picture of the video. Unfortunately, some people can see the individual colors, and others can recognize them, enough to cause eye-strain and headaches. However, the technology has improvedsignificantly with the introduction of six-color wheels and faster speeds. The rainbow effect should be no problem for even fewer people. The best way to find out whether you are affected, an attempt to buy a DLP projector, perhaps by setting before you.

Technology in both LCD and DLP projectors is improving all the time. However, at the time of writing DLP still has a slight lead in the home theater market.

Kenny Hemphill is the editor and publisher of theThe HDTV Tuner, a site offering through the confusion surrounding HDTV editing and surfers with up to date, accurate and easy to read information on HDTV.

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