Other than the fact that DLP is a reflectivetechnology, it sounds an awful lot like LCD projection in many ways -doesnвЂ™t it? Throw in a projection lens and somesignal processing and youвЂ™ve got a digital light projector, or DLPprojection monitor. The last step is to add color, accomplished with either color wheels ordichroic mirrors and combining prisms. Move those mirrors fast enough so that a newpicture can be refreshed 60 times per second, and you can now reproducefull-motion black and white video. Using thousands ofmirrors, a grayscale image starts to appear, resembling the individual dotsin a screened photograph. Depending onthe degree of tilt, individual mirrors reflect a greater or lesser amountof light from the projection lamp.Д«ecause the degree of reflection varies from 100% white to black вЂ“ and allsteps in between вЂ“ a wide grayscale can be created. Each of these tiny mirrors tilts in response tovarying electrical charges on the mirrorвЂ™s mounting substrate.

THE MIRROR HAS MANY FACESAt the heart of a digital light processing projector is TIвЂ™s patentedDigital MicroMirror (DMD) device, a small RAM chip with an array of mirrorsmounted on its surface. Maybe this would be a good time to cut through some of thehype and take a closer look at DLP. If we were to believe everything we have heard to date about digital lightprocessing, we should be dumping 3-gun CRT projectors in dumpsters andtossing out our LCD projectors with yesterdayвЂ™s newspapers. Industry publications have waxedpoetic about DLP being the only true digital imaging process on the market.Even TI officials have jumped on the bandwagon, making claims about theimminent doom of CRT-based imaging systems as DLP light engines take theirplace.

Full-pageadvertisements in leading business magazines have trumpeted the superiorimage quality of this all-digital system. Of all the current large-screen display technologies being peddled today,none has gotten more press coverage and вЂњbuzzвЂќ than Texas InstrumentsвЂ™Digital Light Processing, or DLP as it is commonly known.

Digital Light Processing:Behind The Hoopla

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