21st Century Classroom
Interesting Developments
- By Andy McDonough
- 11/01/08
New projector technologies and features offer improved picture
quality, reductions in operation and installation costs, and
challenge our ideas about where and how projectors can be used.
WHAT'S NEW IN PROJECTOR TECH? July 2008 figures
from Pacific Media Associates reveal that two leading technologies, LCD
(the current choice of most professional A/V installers) and
DLP (which grew out of digital cinema), now control better
than 95 percent of the education market. Both camps have
developments to report.
The Lowdown on DLP
As the projector industry anticipated, more DLP projectors
are now employing Texas Instruments' BrilliantColor
technology, designed to improve color performance.
According to Bob Wudeck, business development
manager for TI's pro A/V group, the system "enhances both
color brightness and accuracy by adding additional primary
colors [yellow, cyan, and magenta] to the normal red, green,
and blue primaries." TI spokespeople-- and a horde of projector
vendors incorporating this technology into
their products-- claim that the innovative
use of "multiprimary" colors
allows vendors to build color
systems that can dramatically
enhance color performance
without paying a penalty in
brightness. Since the price
point for entry-level models used
by much of the education industry
has dropped into the $500 range for
projectors delivering 2,000 lumens at
SVGA resolution, both DLP and LCD technologies
exist in offerings that are more color-accurate, brighter,
and more affordable than previous generations.
In addition, because most DLP projectors have sealed
imaging chips, they are filter-free, which helps guarantee
continued good performance, and can lower maintenance
and support costs. Especially in the case of ceiling-mounted
projectors, regular servicing to clean and replace filters
can be expensive, difficult to schedule and, depending
upon your institution's liability policies, may require outside
contractors. Filter-free projectors can eliminate that
expense. What's more, portable projectors that rely on filters
are harder to track for regular maintenance and can
suffer from poor performance or damage before the need
for filter cleaning is discovered.