New Technology TV

Digital Light Processing can be considered as the pinnacle in science and technology that has focused its resources on the gigantic possibilities in improving digital entertainment. You may wonder, what is Digital Light Processing, and how it will help, or better yet, change digital entertainment. Here's a sneak peak on the what’s and how’s of Digital Light Processing.

The World’s first, best and easiest to use digital video recorder – that is TiVo in a nutshell. When it was first introduced, TiVo quickly gained popularity and became a smash hit in the world of home entertainment. Millions of American households are now enjoying the convenience and freedom that TiVo offers. In a huge way, TiVo has revolutionized digital video recording and made it more accessible to the public. This article discusses what TiVo is, as well as the advantages and disadvantages it offers.

Flat screen TVs are one of the most popular and exciting TV technologies today. At only a few inches thick, flat screen TVs offer unparalleled flexibility and convenience. Older conventional TV’s, in fairness to them, did offer crisp and vibrant images. However, these TV’s, which operate through a cathode ray tube (CRT), suffered from one major drawback, they were bulky. As screen size increased, so did the bulk and weight. However, the TV of old has reached its twilight years. New television technologies have enabled TV manufacturers to create TVs with wider screen size yet still only a few inches thick. Thus, flat screen TVs usher home entertainment into the 21st century.

These days, Dolby is a household name. The infamous "DD" symbol can be found on almost every piece of modern audio equipment out there. This includes gaming consoles, HDTVs, home theaters, both home and car stereos, cinemas, and personal computers.

Have you ever watched a movie on a regular TV set, and then watched the same movie on an HDTV? If so, you would have noticed a huge difference! On the HDTV viewing, you see and notice things you've never seen before, even if you've seen the same movie several times! The colors are brighter, backgrounds are clearer, and details are better defined. HDTV is like looking out an open window, whereas in comparison, standard TV is almost like looking through a glass soda bottle. Because of CRT (cathode ray tube) technology, TV is often referred to as "the tube". After watching HDTV, watching standard TV is almost like trying to view through one!

Projection televisions have been around for quite some time now. When first introduced, the images created by these sets were fuzzy and only viewable at a distance. As great strides in TV technology have been made, projection TV images have become sharper and more comparable to those of their competitors.

For people in the market for a large screen TV, either for a home theatre system or a classroom/boardroom presentation setting, a Projection TV is the most efficient choice.
CRT or cathode ray tube set's size maxes out around 40", and at that size they are extremely heavy and bulky. Plasma displays are manageable with larger screen sizes but can be very expensive. Projection TV technology can create very large screen TVs which are not only manageable but affordable.

Projection televisions have four main components: a projector, screen, control panel, and a sound system. There are two main types of projectors used for these TVs: a transmissive projector, where light shines through the image forming element (CRT tube, LCD panel), and a reflective projector in which light is bounced off of the image forming element. In both projectors, a lens gets the image from the image forming element, magnifies the image and focuses it onto a screen. Top of the line projection TVs use primarily reflective projectors because the advances in reflective projector technology of late have been more progressive than those pertaining to transmissive projector technology.

The image forming elements used in transmissive projectors are CRTs and LCDs. TVs using a CRT for projection actually have a small (around 9" diagonal) television built in. A lens in front of this small, extremely bright CRT TV magnifies the image and projects it onto the screen. Three basic configurations are used in these sets. Transmissive projectors using an LCD for projection are substantially lighter with a higher resolution capacity than their CRT counterparts. The LCD panel used in projection TVs is very similar to that of a full sized LCD only smaller and brighter. This panel is backlit by a halogen lamp, the image on the panel is transmitted through a magnifying lens and projected onto a screen.

Reflective projectors use a small reflective chip to form the image. When light shines on this chip, it is reflected off of it, through a projection lens and onto the screen. The most exciting developments in projection TV technology have been made with reflective projectors using micro-electromechanical systems and liquid crystal on silicon.

With advances in LCD and MEM technologies, projectors will become smaller and form closer competition between projection TVs and the new plasma displays, in areas such as resolution and crispness of image detail. A relatively new application of projection TV technology is, "virtual reality", in which the viewer feels surrounded by, or as though he/she is a part of, the image being viewed. Projection TVs may not be the next big thing to hit the shelves, but we can be sure they will continue to be a viable, low priced option when shopping for your new TV.

In an LCD TV or "transmissive" display, a light source shines through a panel of liquid crystals in order to display an image. A white diffusion panel behind the LCD redirects and scatters the light evenly to provide a more uniform image than most competing technologies.

The LCD face consists of two transparent layers which polarize a liquid crystal layer sandwiched in between. The front layer of glass is etched with a grid pattern on the inside surface to form a template for the liquid crystals. Liquid crystals are rod shaped molecules that bend light in response to an electric current; the crystals align so that no light can pass through. Each crystal acts like a camera's shutter, either blocking light or allowing it to pass through. A pattern of transparent or dark crystals forms the image. This same technology has been around for a while, even in such unsophisticated items as digital watches.

LCD TVs use an "active matrix" LCD; the most advanced type of LCD. The active matrix design is based on TFT, or thin film transistors. These are tiny switching transistors and capacitors that are arranged in a matrix on a glass substrate, they switch the LCD pixels on and off. In a color TV's LCD, each color pixel is created by three sub-pixels with red, green, and blue color filters.

One of the biggest challenges for LCD TV manufacturers has been speeding up the pixel response time, (how fast an individual pixel's color can change without blurring) so that fast moving images don't exhibit motion lag or "ghosting". This is especially critical for larger-screen LCD TVs, or for LCD TVs on which much of the viewing will be HDTV, or DVD movies.

An important difference between LCD technology and Plasma is that an LCD screen doesn't have a coating of phosphor dots; LCD TVs color is created through the use of filters. This keeps image burn-in from being a problem--- which is good news in particular for people who might use a video gaming system or PC on their TV. Another benefit of owning an LCD TV is the energy efficiency of this technology. LCD TVs typically consume 60% lees power than comparably sized tube-type, direct-view TVs.

In most ways that really matter there isn't much difference between LCD TVs and Plasma TVs. Both of these highly popular types of flat panel TVs are thin enough to be placed virtually anywhere, and both produce images that are startlingly clear, sharp, and bright. The most notable difference is screen size. The majority of LCD TVs have a screen size measuring 30 inches and smaller. Plasma TVs are, for the most part, uninhibited by measurement restrictions.

Basically, LCD and Plasma TVs are different approaches to the same result because the both create superior images using radically different technology.