Which is better: LCD or DLP Projectors?

Technology:

The data video projectors that you normally use in a board room/ auditorium for a presentation/video etc. primarily come in two versions – LCD Projector(Liquid Crystal Display) and the more recent DLP Projector (Digital Light Processing). While the LCD projector uses three separate LCD panels (One each for R,G,B) in the optical engine which consists of these LCD’s, Di-Chroic mirrors, prisms and low wattage lamp, the DLP projector has a DMD (Digital Micro-mirror Device) chip with a separate mirror for each pixel at the heart of the engine and the colours are formed when the light travels through the colour wheel which keeps rotating at about 7200 RPM. The input and output for both of them are the same.

While there has been some confusion about DLP projectors being new and digital, and LCD projectors being analog, there is nothing like that in actuality as LCD projectors are also digital and the screen resolution is measured in pixels for both of them (digital output). That being clear, we will look at the following factors and examine which is better for each of them.

What you want to watch and where:

This is an important consideration. What do you want to watch? If your presentations are predominantly excel sheets and word documents DLP projector might be better as the images are more sharper and clearer. If your presentations contain lot of colour and photography kind of stuff, then an LCD projector might be better as they have better colour reproduction capability. The second factor is where – If it is a board room where there will be few participants and the size is smaller, LCD projectors might be better as even though the images are not sharp, they would still be visible. If you are projecting in an auditorium with a huge display and a lot of audience is going to watch the presentation, DLP projectors might be better, as even the last participant might want to be able to read the contents.

Portability:

In case you want very portable projectors, DLP Projectors are better as they are smaller in size and very light weight (Some models weigh less than one Kg!). So, if you would be carrying the projector around to make presentations at client places, DLP projectors might be better. But that said, since they are small, they tend to generate more heat and hence the life (especially of the lamp) might be reduced. But there are some DLP projectors that are made for board rooms that are much bigger and have more cooling fans. LCD Projectors are slightly bigger in comparison.

Colour Reproduction/Contrast:

LCD Projectors are better at reproducing colours. So, if you look at your original source (See that in computer monitors (CRT) and not in the LCD panels or laptops as these too don’t have original colours) and then see the projected image in the board, there would be some difference in the colours. LCD projectors give more natural colour reproduction in spite of the fact that DLP Projectors have a better contrast ratio on the brochure (Don’t get confused with this as they measure contrast ratio’s differently in LCD and DLP). Always ask the vendor to give the contrast ratio in ANSI Lumens, which is a standard but even then the number doesn’t say much about the actual image and you would want to see the picture output to decide which is better. DLP projector images are more sharper, though.

Brightness,Uniformity and Longevity:

Brightness for LCD and DLP projectors are measured in ANSI Lumens. That is the standard for measurement of light and its brightness. The normal convention is, the brighter the lamp, the better the display. This is especially true for auditoriums etc. Most of the entry level projectors come with a minimum of 1200/1400 Lumens and that should suffice the enterprise board room requirements. There is one factor that you might want to take a note here: As the time progresses, the brightness levels of both LCD and DLP Projectors come down. But the brightness of LCD projectors comes down more than that of DLP projectors. But LCD projectors generally have a longer life (relatively). When it comes to uniformity, there are contrasting views. Some say that since DLP projectors can manipulate individual pixels, the uniformity is better with DLP. But some say that LCD projectors have a 90% uniformity and DLP ones have lesser uniformity. But these things are claims and maybe you would want to see for yourselves. Uniformity is the difference in brightness from the centre of the projected image to the corners of the projected image. Both LCD projectors and DLP projectors give a lamp life of 1500 hours to 2000 hours contrary to what ever is written on the brochure and lamp warranty is for a limited period (like 3 months) only.

Pixel Density:

The resolution of a LCD/DLP projector is measured in SVGA, XGA (native resolution). This is same for both LCD and DLP Projectors and XGA projectors are highly recommended as SVGA projectors sometimes break the characters or a shadow of the images are formed behind the characters (for smaller characters and this effect is predominantly found in LCD projectors than DLP projectors). The higher the resolution, the better the image quality.

Inputs:

Computer inputs (VGA) and the DVD/VCD inputs (RGB) are found in both LCD and DLP projectors. In addition to this, we have seen more DLP projectors supporting YCrPb input format (which is high definition display) and could be useful if you are playing from a HD source which supports such a format as the picture quality is better.

Cost:

This strictly depends on the vendor and not on the technology. So, if some DLP Projectors are cheaper, it could be but only because they can be manufactured easily on a mass scale and their cost of manufacturing is less. But there are some DLP projectors which are costlier than their LCD counterparts. But in the entry level segment, DLP projectors are slightly cheaper than their LCD counterparts.

excITingIP.com

You could stay up to date on the various computer networking technologies by subscribing to this blog with your email address in the sidebar box mentioned as “Get email updates when new articles are published”