Presentation Technology Reviews for News, Technology Guides and Reviews of High Definition LCD and DLP data projectors, LCD, LCOS and Plasma HDTV, Rear Projection TVs (RPTV) and Interactive Whiteboards.









Editor's HDTV Pick

HP 47 inch MediaSmart 1080p LCD HDTV "Out of the box" digital media platform. Enjoy videos, pictures and music from home network + digital media delivered over your broadband Internet connection + 3 x HDMI







                        

technology guides


Judder and Anti-judder
HDTV Tuners
1080p vs 720p or Full HD vs HD Resolution
Samsung’s Digital Natural Image Engine (DNIe) Video Processing
Philips VIDI Digital Projection Technology
BrilliantColor
LCD Display Response Time
LED Backlighting - the Advantages
LCD Motion Blur Reduction
NICTA’s 5GB/s Wireless Chip to Transform Home Entertainment Industry
WCG-CCFL (Wide Color Gamut - CCFL) Backlight Technology
Deep Color
xvYCC Color Standard
DLP (Digital Light Processing) Rainbow Effect
DLP (Digital Light Processing) by Texas Instruments - Overview
LCD - Liquid Crystal Display - Technology Overview
8 Tips for Money Saving, Longer Projector Lamp Life
Replacement Projector Lamps and Bulbs
Philips WOWvx 3D Display Technology
HP EX470 and EX475 MediaSmart Servers Running Windows Home Server Review
HP SL4778N and SL4278N MediaSmart 1080p High Definition LCD TVs Review
DisplayPort Video Interface Equipped LCD Monitor – a Samsung World First
Projection Cluster System by Mitsubishi Precision
Photosynth - New Social Networking Tool for Images
OSRAM Unishape – High Performance DLP
26 Point Checklist for Professional Slide Presentations
Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) or HDMI-CEC allows Global Remote Control of AV Systems
Hitachi - Matsushita 30 inch OLED Television
Breakthrough Magneto Photonic Crystal Microdisplay for Flat Panel TVs
Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) Microdisplay Panels
Fifteen Tips for Selecting a Portable Digital Projector
Perspecta 3D Display Technology by Actuality Systems
Qualcomm’s iMoD Display Technology
Motorola’s Nano Emissive Display Technology
HDMI 1.3 (High-Definition Multimedia Interface Version 1.3)
3LCD Microdisplay Technology
Datacolor SpyderTV PRO Television Calibration System Review
Gamma Correction Demystified
Projector Lumens Guide
Contrast Ratio Secrets Uncovered
High Definition TV (HDTV) Defined
Microdisplay chips for rear projection televisions
Interactive Whiteboards - an Overview
LCD vs Plasma
Audio and Video Connectors
Projector Keystone Correction - the Facts
LCD vs DLP - and the Winner is?
Five Keys to Projector Screen Selection

May 5, 2008

Judder and Anti-judder

Movies for the cinema shot on 35mm or 70mm film capture 24 individual images (frames) per second which are projected at 48 frames per second to reduce flicker. To achieve 48 frames per second each frame is projected twice.

Television broadcast systems are field based. For example, NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) Video is interlaced with each frame being constructed from two consecutive fields of video containing 50% of the 480 horizontal scan lines containing picture information. NTSC video displays at 29.97 frames or 59.94 fields per second.
(read more..)

April 11, 2008

HDTV Tuners

ATSC

An ATSC tuner (also referred to as an ATSC receiver) allows reception and decoding of ATSC digital television (DTV) signals broadcast over the air by television stations. ATSC tuners perform a number of tasks to fit the television signal received to the particular television display including: (read more..)

March 28, 2008

1080p vs 720p or Full HD vs HD Resolution

In deciding between 1080p (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) Full High Definition (HD) resolution and 720p (1,280 x 720) High Definition (HD) there should be an appreciation that resolution is not the only factor contributing to picture quality. In fact, resolution comes fourth in a recent SMPTE (Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers) study which ranked contrast ratio, color saturation, color temperature or greyscale ahead of it in ranking picture aspects the human eye sees in order of importance.

Two factors influence which resolution is more appropriate namely,

Screen size and
Viewing distance.

In general terms, the closer you sit to the on-screen image the more detail you can see as the image fills more of your field of vision. So the closer you are getting to the display/screen the higher the resolution should be getting to maintain picture quality. Moving away from the display/screen reduces the discernible difference between resolutions eg. 1080p vs 720p.
(read more..)

March 27, 2008

Samsung’s Digital Natural Image Engine (DNIe) Video Processing

Video processing is becoming more important for improvement of overall picture quality, especially with larger high definition displays which magnify any image defects. Video processing can optimize contrast levels, adjust color levels, reduce unwanted signal noise and remove image artefacts.

Samsung DNIe Diagram

Samsung’s Digital Natural Image (DNle) engine combines a set of four image processors and a six-times density enhancer to deliver an optimized on-screen image. Samsung’s DNIe that can process video signals from any source including high-definition digital broadcasting, DVD, video camera, PC and game consoles.
(read more..)

March 21, 2008

Philips VIDI Digital Projection Technology

Philips VIDI is an enabling lamp technology for both micro and front projection equipment. VIDI is referred to as an enabling technology as it resides in the lamp electronics. It offers increased brightness and enhanced contrast for significant improvement of picture quality for end users.

VIDI electronics turn the light from a projection lamp into a two pulse system; a brilliant pulse and dark pulse. The dark pulse enables enables enhance contrast delivering smoother more vivid pictures. On the other hand, the brilliant pulse boosts projection bulb brightness by up to 25% to 30% putting more lumens of brightness on the projection screen.

Philips expect VIDI technology to allow projector manufacturers to provide consumers with the flexibility to tune their projector for multiple applications eg. data vs. video projection. Philips have worked in close cooperation with Texas Instruments for combining VIDI with TI’s BrilliantColor technology.

March 19, 2008

BrilliantColor

BrilliantColor which is a Texas Instruments trademarked technology for delivering improved brightness and a wider range of colors. Traditionally, most display devices render images using a combination of the three primary colors red, green and blue. The full gamut of colors visible to the human eye cannot be reproduced using this approach, with the color space subset covered not including vivid colors such as yellow and cyan commonly seen in nature.

By processing up to six color channels BrilliantColor projector manufacturers to create multi-primary color systems by adding colors such as yellow, cyan and magenta colors for color rendering. As well as increasing the color space which can be rendered with the added color filters the system also utilizes the light source more efficiently with a 50% increase of 50% brightness.

A further benefit of BrilliantColor technology derives from its use of floating point arithmetic for more accurate rendering calculations. According to Texas Instruments, this results in less noise and more accurate colors at the display with over 200 trillion color shades being possible.

March 13, 2008

LCD Display Response Time

For clear action images without motion blurring an LCD display needs a fast response time (minimal latency). Response time is more critical for motion-intensive applications such as gaming. The faster the response time, the faster the screen can be refreshed and the less chance there is of the motion blurring or ghosting that LCD displays are suspect to. The blurring is a result of a display not being able to keep up with the output from the video processor.

Unlike LCD displays, plasma and CRT displays have a virtually instantaneous response time and are not prone to motion blurring.

The two most common measurement methods are “rise-and-fall” and “gray-to-gray”. A technical specification for rise-and-fall is available from VESA (the Video Electronics Standards Association). Rise-and-fall is measured as the time taken for a pixel to change from black to white (rise) and back to black again (fall). Gray-to-gray is the time to change from one shade of gray to another. Transitions between the fine graduations of gray-to-gray can be 3 to 4 times slower than those of rise-and-fall because of the lower driving signal for the transition.

Consumers can easily become misled if they are not aware response times quoted may be for different measurement techniques. As next to all video images displayed contain grayscale images, the gray-to-gray response rate gives a better idea of the real world response rate of a display.

It should be noted that LCD manufacturers are making excellent headway in closing the response time performance gap with plasma and CRT displays with LCD response times being some three times faster than a couple of years ago. An 8 ms or less response time is not hard to find. Faster response times have also given manufacturers the option of utilizing another LCD blurring reduction techniques including a faster frame rate through interpolated frames or inserted black frames.

A response time lowering technology also worth mentioning is Viewsonic’s Amplified Impulse Technology which delivers LCD displays with a 4ms response time. The technique used is the application of a short, higher drive signal to jump-start LCD pixels in their transition.

March 7, 2008

LED Backlighting - the Advantages

LED backlighting technology has numerous advantages over the conventional mercury-arc lamps CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent tube). Advantages include:

LCD Blur Reduction

LCD displays have a greater motion blur effect primarily because an LCD pixel remains lit, unlike the CRT phosphor screens which are strobed for a very short time. LCD manufacturers have combated motion blur by increasing the refresh rate to 120Hz. Mitsubishi have called their technology Smooth120Hz, Sony have Motion Flow, Toshiba has ClearFrame, LG – TruMotion Drive and JVC call it Clear Motion Drive II. The televisions video processor creates an interpolated frame between each existing frame to achieve 120Hz and make motion appear smoother for the viewer.
(read more..)

February 25, 2008

LCD Motion Blur Reduction

LCD display technology is inherently prone to motion blur primarily due to LCD pixels remaining lit between frames (referred to as sample-and-hold) unlike the rise and fall of pixel lighting with other display technologies eg. plasma. Another possible cause is a response time which is insufficient for the speed required by the frame rate of the display.

LCD manufacturers have moved to combat motion blur through faster response times and doubling of the refresh rate to 120Hz. Faster frame rates (refresh rate) smooths out motion improving the image sequence the eye perceives. To produce the faster refresh rates the video processor interpolates a frame between each existing frame. The faster frame rate makes motion appear smoother to the viewer. Bravia XBR5 models have Sony’s version of the technology, Motionflow, while Mitsubishi has Smooth120Hz, Toshiba - ClearFrame, LG – TruMotion Drive and JVC call it Clear Motion Drive II.
(read more..)

February 23, 2008

NICTA’s 5GB/s Wireless Chip to Transform Home Entertainment Industry

Australia’s Information and Communications Technology Research Centre of Excellence (NICTA), has developed low cost, very high speed wireless technology integrated into a single chip. The integrated transceiver is extremely small, making it simple to embed into devices. Five (5) gigabits per second wireless transfer of audio and video files will be possible - ten (10) times the current maximum wireless transfer rate. While transfer speed has increased, cost has dropped to 10% of current costs. These are numbers which will transform home entertainment systems to wireless networks.

Consider the scenario posed by NICTA Chief Technology Officer, Embedded Systems, Dr Chris Nicol , “For example, consumers will be able to download a high definition DVD onto their personal digital assistants at a public kiosk in seconds, take it home and play it directly onto their high definition TV.” The range of the new wireless technology is 10m – a suitable distance for home entertainment systems.
(read more..)

Next Page »


  © 2006-2007 - all rights reserved. |  terms of use |  privacy
Company names, tradenames, trademarks and similar used are the property of their respective owners