October 30, 2006

Just a warning that this will probably be a very long blog entry. Decided to post about the research I did for the TV room I put together at the house. Maybe it'll help somebody else interested in the same sort of thing as I am. From an earlier post I stated how I wanted to turn the back room in the new house into a full blown theater room. That idea has since changed. I thought it would happen because we are finally at a point where the technology that I've been waiting for is here and available to the consumer. However, the technology is still brand new and in my opinion... still about at least a years away from where I'd like it to be.

The goal of the back room in the new house was to set up a front projector. The front projector has to be able to support the latest technologies that I believe will be around for a long time. Here are a couple of those technologies:

• Full 1080p Video output - which just means outputting 1080 lines of resolution (as opposed to just 480 - which is what regular standard TV output is) in progressive mode. The "p" which stands for progressive mode describes how frames are outputted to the screen. The other letter you’ve seen is "i" which stands for interlace mode. In interlace mode, every other line on a screen is produced in a single frame... and then filled in on the next frame. With progressive mode, every line is produced in a single frame from top to bottom. Hence, more flicker in interlace mode and a more sharp fuller picture in progressive mode.

• HDMI - the new cable connections between different components. Now that almost everything is digital, HDMI solves the problem of having that nest of cables behind your TV. HDMI is able to transfer digitally all video and audio content - and it's just one cable. Component video used to be the previous "best" - and that was only capable of transferring video content. Component video also uses three separate connections - 1 each for the main colors (Red, Blue, and Green).

Believe it or not, these projectors exist to us right now and can output a screen size to a little over 100". They will even accept multiple connections from different sources. The problem is that it really hasn't caught up like everything else has. The front projector technology is slightly behind the curve. Sure these projectors are available today but you can hardly find them (with the specs above) at stores right now... and if you do, the cheapest one in the market right now is $4500. Still very pricey. You can, however, find front projectors that output 720p... for a very decent price. You can find them for less than $1000 now. But why would you buy one... seriously. 1080p just seems like the technology that we've all been waiting for... the goal that all the different components have been trying to reach. So I've decided to pass on the front projector for now and will take a look at the market about a year from now.

So what did I end up doing... While front projector technology is still slightly behind the curve... everything else isn't. There are a bunch of TV technologies out right now that, for the most part, all support 1080p. Here's a breakdown of the different TV technologies and what I ended up getting:

• Old Fashion Tube TV - yea, this is pretty much a no. If you're looking for something really cheap that has a small screen size... then definitely this is the way to go. Otherwise, on to the next

• Flat-panel TVs - arguably the best technology. Not only are these amazing space savers... the video quality is amazing. The downside is that these are pretty expensive and you have the potential for screen burn-in. Flat-panels come in two flavors - Plasma or LCD. Plasma having better video quality but more potential for screen burn-in. LCD having less chance of burn-in but not as good as Plasma in terms of video quality

• Rear-projection TVs - these have gone through the biggest change in my opinion. Rear-projection TVs have been around for so long... but if you go back and look at one from back in the day... those things sucked. The Rear-projection TVs of today are affordable and have great picture quality. Three main flavors of this category - DLP (Digital Light Processing), LCD (Liquid Crystal Display), and LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon).

I ended up going with rear-projection technology mainly for its affordable price and great image quality. It was just a matter of deciding on the type of Rear-projection. LCD rear-projection was already off the list as there are no 1080p models yet. Blacks are not as deep on them anyway and not as bright as DLPs. So it was down to DLP versus LCoS. I narrowed down to two actual rear-projection sets. A 61” DLP from Samsung and a 60” SXRD (rebranded name for its LCoS chip) from Sony. The only downsides to the Sony model is that it is more expensive (about $600 more than the DLP Samsung) and has slight (if any) uniformity issues (which just means slight discoloration with flat fields). There are two main downsides to the DLP technology – Rainbow effect and wobulation. Rainbow effect describes brief streaks of color caused by the color wheel that DLP sets use. Wobulation is a bit more complicated but basically describes the technique used to create the full native resolution. DLP chips actually have half as many physical pixels as stated. For example, a 1920x1080 resolution actually uses DLP chips that have 960x1080 pixels. Wobulation describes the process of tiny mirrord/lens that moves rapidly back and forth to alternately create the first and second halves of an image and create that 1920x1080 resolution. LCoS sets use chips that physically have all 1920x1080 pixels. Wobulation isn’t necessarily bad… and in some cases is actually better. It really depends on the TV at this point. In some TVs, wobulation causes a softer image and/or low-level noise. On other TVs, none of the downsides are present… which is the reason why I went with the Samsung DLP. The Samsung has a fast color wheel, so the rainbow effect is not even present. In addition it uses 2 additional colors (in addition to the red, blue, and green) – cyan and yellow. The wobulation is also negated by faster DLP chips that have mirrors that switch on and off at more than 15,000 or more times a second. Total price for this set is roughly around $2600. Fairly decent price with great video quality... next up... choosing a DVD Player!