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This article generates more, well lets just call it, "negative feedback" than anything else on this site. I think part of the problem is that people come directly to this main page and therefore miss the heading above. Even so you'd think the Introduction section below would add some context to the article, but for some people apparently not. Oh, and if you can't see the heading or a menu to the left then scroll down to the bottom of the page, read the blurb, click on the link, etc.

The title of this article is "Projection Systems (for a normal lounge room)" and for people living outside Australia, a lounge room is the basic living area of a house, the main living area where the family gets together to talk, relax, watch TV. It usually has light coloured walls and furnishings, perhaps even a white ceiling, often open plan with lots of windows and lots of light, probably even at night.

It is not a light controlled environment such as you would find in a dedicated home theatre and therefore not really ideal for any type of projector but certainly more suitable for a high light output device such as a LCD and some of the better DLP projectors. It is not a place that you would want to use a CRT projector, let alone think that it could ever outperform a digital projector.

This is more or less what this article is about, admittedly I do digress a bit and also point out some of the other limitations a CRT projector has but it would be an injustice to write an article such as this and gloss over the facts:-). I've also taken this opportunity to clean up some of the text and expand some sections, such as the one on Resolution which is an important topic.

Originally written late 2003 and first published in the February 2004 edition of the Melbourne Audio News the journal of the Melbourne Audio Club, Inc. and whilst it could no doubt be updated to reflect current developments, there really isn't much point is there as digital projectors have come a very long way since this was written and CRT's are still much the same. I still think it's a humorous read though, as it was originally intended to be.

Introduction

Over the last month or so there has been a bit of, at times friendly discussion on the MAC Mail List about projectors and the benefits or otherwise of analog (CRT) and digital (LCD, DLP, etc.) technologies. It was suggested that we should combine our thoughts and produce a single article for the MAN and the wider club membership. Sadly collaboration did not go well and we were soon back to writing separate articles putting forward our own points of view.

On that basis and assuming that the companion article(s) to this one will be telling you about how great CRT projectors are and how flawed LCD and DLP's are by comparison, here is my article putting forward the expected and by this stage slightly exaggerated differing view. Oh, and apologies in advance to everyone I know that uses a CRT but I am approaching this topic from the point of view of real World usage as per the articles title as well as having a bit of fun with a subject that some people would appear to take very seriously indeed.

During the Mail List discussion reference was made of the material on my web site. I think the implication being that it favoured digital projectors but the only other article on the site related to projectors is Does Size Matter and this is about screen size/seating distance and the ability of a projector to put enough light on the screen to produce an acceptable picture. This applies to all types of projectors. The fact that CRT projectors struggle to put enough light on a screen in an almost dark room and fail completely to produce a bright enough picture in a room with normal ambient light isn't a biased criticism of CRT's, its just a fact of life.

So on that happy note and before telling you what's great about digital projectors I'll first mention a few things that are good about CRT projectors.

Several good things about a CRT projector

1CRT's are really heavy so if you have it sitting on the floor then thieves will think twice before walking off with it. Or they'll at least go away and come back later with some extra help and then steal it. Chances are though that they'll be more likely to steal other things in the house that they have a better chance of selling.

Floor mounting also allows its use as a conversation piece because being so large and requiring central placement, usually where the coffee table would go and therefore surrounded by seating. You and your friends will have to peer over and around it in order to see each other. So its bound to get talked about at some stage or if you're fans of Monty Python, perhaps not even mentioned at all.

If you hang CRT's from the ceiling, a major challenge in itself, then there's always the opportunity to get rid of an unwanted family member, visiting friend or acquaintance, as well as the chance to attend a Coroners Inquest.

"I don't know what happened Your Honour, it just fell".

And apologies to anyone that may have had the misfortune to have a CRT fall from a ceiling and condolences to anyone who may have suffered from serious injury or death of a family member or friend. It does happen as CRT's do break their mounts or the ceiling and fall, not to mention mishaps during installation or servicing. Digital's are a whole lot safer.

2CRT's are rather large and menacing and look strange, in an attractive sort of way I must admit, with those three big "eyes" on the front like some sort of squat cyclopean bug. So when your non audio/videophile friends come around, you have immediate high impact value as they stop in their tracks and say things like "What the f... is that?" as they mill around it trying to get a better look.

Unless of course if its hanging from the ceiling in which case they'll all avoid standing under it, especially after you've told them what it weighs. You can have a bit of fun with this by suggesting to the first person who asks "Is it safe?" that they take the best seat in the house and sit underneath the thing.

3CRT's are stress free when it comes to positioning them in relation to the screen as there is only one fixed correct screen to projector distance and therefore only one place in the room that you can mount the thing. Whether in fact the final position suits you doesn't really matter as its where the projector has to be. But this is a good thing because you decide where the screen should go, usually on the wall, mount the projector where it needs to go and then design the rest of the room around the projector, thus reducing the number of options and decisions you need to make.

4CRT's are noisy so you don't have to worry about hearing the film soundtrack over the noise of people talking or other distractions in the room as the noise from the multiple fans that a typical CRT contains will drown them all out. Also a bonus for films set in jet aeroplanes where you get that annoying whining background noise that the sound editor usually removes so you can hear everything else, like the dialog, is that the projector will put that noise back in for you.

5CRT's need constant adjustment so if you're a tweaker or just like to fiddle or dare I say, play with things then there's lots of things to fiddle with on a CRT projector. And as the picture is never quite right everywhere on the screen at the same time, you can spend endless hours of untold fun and enjoyment as you try in vain to get it right. There's also the mandatory pre-use tune up that you need to go through each time before watching anything for people that like rituals.

6The use of a CRT also allows you to spend extra time, effort and money on all sorts of additional accessories to make the thing more usable. Items such as expensive external video processors to try and improve the picture by getting rid of those visible scan lines. Or the construction of nearly sound proof boxes to put the thing in, in an attempt to cut down the noise from all those cooling fans. It may even extend to major structural work on the house (see previously mentioned point 1.), and of course the obligatory black out drapes, door seals and possibly an air conditioning system to cope with the now closed, stuffy room.

7Used CRT's are reasonably cheap and so most of them should be after being bounced around in an aeroplane for several thousand hours taking care of the in flight entertainment. Not that any of the used ones available for purchase were ever in a plane. No seriously, they all came out of corporate boardrooms and had minimal use or from early adopter home theatre enthusiasts who have seen the light and upgraded to something better.

Which just about wraps up all the good points of a CRT and before moving on to why modern digital projectors in terms of aesthetics, convenience and image quality are far superior I'd first better address what some people say is wrong with digital projectors and that would be, "The blacks aren't black", "I can see pixels", "Its like looking through fly wire" and "DLP's give me a headache".

Perceived problems with Digital projectors

Now I will admit that CRT's do have very black "blacks", due no doubt in some small way to the fact that they don't have very white "whites", that is they don't put out much light. If required a CRT can put out no light at all which is something that a digital projector will struggle to do except when its turned off. While black levels are important its probably overrated as a reason given for CRT's being better than digital projectors because there is always a trade off and in this case its contrast ratio, colour saturation and overall brightness.

Contrast ratio which is the ratio between the darkest and brightest part of the picture can for a good CRT exceed 15,000:1. Good digital projectors can achieve 3,000:1 and a not so good digital such as the cheaper LCD's can struggle to manage 400:1. I should point out that the difference between 3,000:1 and 15,000:1 isn't 11,000:1 or the quickly arrived at by simple arithmetic 5:1 but in fact closer to 4:1.

The other thing to remember with contrast ratios is not so much the law of diminishing returns but the fact that improvements at the lower end of the range are much more noticeable than at the higher end. For example, going from 400:1 to 1600:1 which is an increase in contrast ratio of 4 times is a major improvement and a lot more noticeable than going from 1600:1 to 6400:1 again an increase of four times.

So how are contrast ratio, brightness and black levels not only related to each other but to the room and the screen as well? They're related because putting it as simply as possible, a projector cannot project black. The darkest black visible on the screen is whatever colour the screen is when the room is lit as it will be when you'll be projecting an image. This not only includes any ambient light in the room but any light that bounces back from the room after bouncing of the screen after coming out of the projector and so on. Dark coloured, non light reflecting walls and furnishings and in particular a very dark ceiling, preferably matt black or very dark grey will do a lot more to improve your on screen image than buying a projector with a nominally better contrast ratio.

Low output/brightness projectors such as CRT's need a pure white screen and often one with gain in order to try to produce an acceptably bright image. White screens tend to turn, well, white as soon as any ambient light falls on them and this washes out any image that's on the screen. A screen with gain exasperates this problem. This is why you have to use a CRT projector in a completely dark room. If you try and use them in a room with any ambient light at all, such as a typical lounge room then the effective contrast ratio drops so much that you not only get a dull washed out picture but all the blacks will be grey.

Which is where the use of a grey screen saves the day. In a typical room with ambient light, the grey screen is much darker than a white one because it doesn't reflect as much light and so maintain black level and contrast ratio. The problem with grey screens is exactly the same thing in that they obviously don't reflect as much light. So you have to use a projector with a high light output and that rules out most CRT's.

There are also usage patterns and type of material viewed to be considered because not everyone that buys a projector does so to watch movies. Some people never watch movies at all but like to watch sport on a big screen. More often than not in a well lit room. Most sport is usually played during the day or if at night its well lit such as with night cricket or football. Sporting programs look great using a digital projector of only modest contrast ratio in a normally lit room which if you're sitting around with a few friends watching the footy or cricket is the environment you want to be in. Not in a closed in, blacked out and really dark room.

As for the "I can see pixels/flywire" problem I could bore you with how many pixels there are on various digital panels, what that means in terms of dot pitch at the screen, your eyes resolving power or whatever but I won't. I'll just simply point out that if you get the screen size to seating distance right (see previously mentioned web site article) then with even the lowest resolution digital projector you can barely see individual pixels or the grid that surrounds them and with a decent resolution panel you won't see them at all. All this of course only applies to LCD's anyway as DLP projectors don't have discreet square pixels but rather circular dots that blend smoothly into each other. Although some people think that they have a slightly dimpled appearance.

The problems with CRT's and what Digital projectors do well

Having gotten the perceived minor negatives out of the way, time to move onto what digital projectors do better than CRT's and I'll start with linearity. That is, the ability to produce a perfectly straight line anywhere on the screen which is something few CRT's can do. Or produce an image that's the same size and shape anywhere on a screen or move that image around and not have it change its size or shape or colour.

CRT's are also notoriously non linear when it comes to light output and the brightness, or lack of it at the centre of the screen will usually be 30% brighter than near the edges. Digital projectors have no more than a 10% difference and most are better than 5% or even less.

Aligning the three guns of a CRT is easy in the centre of the screen but difficult to sustain across the full width and height so those non straight lines mentioned earlier may also blur as you move away from the centre of the screen and if they started out as white they may well be turning into multiple red, blue or green lines or a blurry combination of colours as the focus of the three guns diverge.

Digital projectors have the rather nice ability of being able to put a single dot of any colour on a screen and not affect anything surrounding it. CRT's however suffer from flaring, spillover, haloing or whatever you want to call it much like normal TV sets do, so a bright spot on a dark screen will often have an annoying glow around it. Try and show two bright lines a short distance apart on a dark background and you won't see two lines with a dark space between them but just a single blurry one.

CRT projectors are an interlaced display device similar to old fashioned TV sets and computer monitors that flicker. Or rather did before we threw them in the scrap bin years ago and replaced them with non-interlaced ones. An interlaced device shows a single frame as two separate screens each made up of half the alternate scan lines at half the nominal scan rate which for us in Australia is half of 50hz or 25hz which is almost enough to stop us seeing flicker. And yes I did say almost.

You can nearly get away with this on a CRT screen, such as a TV because the screen has a phosphor layer which causes the previous screen of scan lines to stick around for a while as the next screen of lines are being drawn. A CRT projector doesn't do this so if you feed it with a non-interlaced signal which is what analogue TV and most digital TV is, as well as what comes of a DVD then you end up with a picture with visible scan lines running across the picture. To get rid of these annoying lines you need to buy an additional deinterlacer or line doubler.

Digital projectors are a non-interlaced or progressive scan display device. The deinterlacer is built in and in current digital projectors its something like a Faroudja DCD-i (Directional Correlational Deinterlacing) otherwise known as Motion Adaptive Deinterlacing which doesn't just copy scan lines and slot them into the gaps like a line doubler does for a CRT projector but creates new scan lines based on what's either side and allowing for movement, that will provide greater detail, reduce jagged edges and smooth the picture for a more cinema like presentation.

Current digital projectors also feature DVI and some even HDMI inputs that allows you to keep the signal in digital form all the way to the screen without having to degrade it by converting to an inferior analogue signal just so your antiquated projector can use it. Making full use of these formats was previously limited to HTPC users but current DVD players not only offer these outputs but some even the facility to upsample the outputs to 720p or 1080i to take full advantage of a fixed pixel display.

A summary of CRT and Digital Projector features
Feature CRT Digital
Small footprint No Yes
Light weight No Yes
Spouse friendly No Yes
Easy to mount No Yes
Easy to demount/transport (for service) No Yes
Adjustable screen distance (zoom lens) No Yes
Low fan noise No Yes
Easy to set up No Yes
Set up once and forget No Yes
Enough brightness in a completely dark room Yes Yes
Enough brightness for some ambient light Maybe Yes
Enough brightness for high ambient light No Yes
Enough contrast for acceptable blacks Yes Yes
Enough contrast for good blacks Yes Yes
Enough contrast for very good blacks Yes Probably
Linear light output over entire screen No Yes
Linear geometry over entire screen No Yes
High resolution and fine detail No Yes
Freedom from "halos" and "ghosting" No Yes
Freedom from colour bleed and inaccuracies No Yes
Freedom from visible scan lines No Yes
Bad Acceptable Good

Now you can apply any weighting you like to the above table based on what you consider to be important. The CRT fanatics will tell you that none of these other aspects make any difference to the outcome and they'll simply site "superior image quality" based solely on black levels when used in perfect viewing conditions. I tend to look at things from a wider perspective so whilst I've already conceded that CRT's do have very good blacks, I think you'll have to agree with me and conclude that in every other aspect of practicality and image quality that they are inferior to current digital projectors.

The really BIG SCREEN and film

As this is a discussion of projection systems we really should mention film which is what you watch on the big screen when you go to your local picture theatre. Film is very nice indeed, it has excellent definition, brightness, contrast, beautifully saturated colours and just about everything else that makes it beautiful to watch. Film however is currently being replaced by electronic projection methods and you would think that in the near perfect dark conditions of a picture theatre that the obvious choice to replace film would be a CRT projector.

But you would be wrong as all these new theatres will be using DLP projectors which strangely use the same illumination source as film does which is. A light globe!

Why would they do this if CRT's are the best projectors, you may well ask. And the obvious answer to this question is that CRT's are not the best. They have been superseded by better technology. This probably also explains why very few manufactures are making them these days and why you will have a hard time finding new CRT's in even high end Home Theatre retailers.

You will however find a great deal of secondhand ones on the market!

What to look for when buying a Digital projector

There are a lot of things to consider when buying a digital projector. Especially when you start comparing different models in the same price range and then comparing them to what you can buy in the next higher price range. Rather than get into brands and models, some general information on what to look for when buying a LCD or DLP projector as well as covering the differences between the two types and the perceived advantages either type may offer.

Resolution

First up is resolution and in general like most digital devices, the higher the resolution the better. It applies to audio as well as to video which is why DTS is better than Dolby Digtal and SACD is better than CD. For LCD projectors you should avoid SVGA (800x600) and likewise for DLP projectors avoid the HD1?(852x480) machines as they are designed for the American market which uses 525 line (480 visible) NTSC system and neither of them have enough vertical resolution for analog PAL free to air TV, or what comes off PAL DVD's, or for Standard Definition Digital TV or Foxtel Digital signals that we view in this country.

PAL analog is 625 vertical lines of which we get to see 576 of them and SD Digital, both free to air and Foxtel is 576 vertical pixels (or lines if you prefer) but being 16x9 format is 1024 pixels wide. While a 4x3 format SVGA panel can display a 4x3 576 line signal, it has no chance of displaying 16x9 format wide screen material because in order to do so it must turn off 1/4 of the panel. That is it loses 25% of its vertical lines, leaving only 450 of them and that's not nearly enough to display a PAL or SD digital signal.

And as we're on the subject of 4x3 panels and the displaying of 16x9 material its probably time to mention XGA (1024x768) and a very nice coincidence. When you divide 768 by 4 you get 192 and subtracting that from 768 you get 576. Put simply it means that a 4x3 XGA panel when used in 16x9 mode is 1024x576 pixels which just happens to be exactly the same resolution as what SD digital or PAL analog is. This is also the resolution of the Matterhorn DLP panel and no doubt the reason why it was developed.

The signal and the display are matched to each other. There is no scaling of the image needed and as such the image is free of any scaling errors which is what you always get when you scale (multiply or divide) a digital image by anything other than a whole number or the reciprocal of a whole number.

The downside of using a 4x3 panel in 16x9 mode is that you not only lose 1/4 of the panels pixels, you also lose 1/4 of the total light output. So if the projector puts out 1000 ANSI Lumens you're only going to get 750 ANSI Lumens when in 16x9 mode. The other thing to watch for is that the panel will allow you to display 4x3 material properly when in 16x9 mode, that is, giving you the option of clipping or stretching the image as well as displaying it as a proper 4x3 image with black bars either side.

Panel Types and Features
Panel Type Resolution
(16 x 9 mode)
Pixels
SVGA LCD 800 x 450 270,000
HD1 DLP 852 x 480 408,960
1/4HD DLP 960 x 540 518,400
XGA DLP/LCD 1024 x 576 589,824
Matterhorn DLP 1024 x 576 589,824
HD2/HD2+ DLP/LCD 1280 x 720 921,600
WXGA LCD 1366 x 768 1,049,088
HD Other 1920 x 1080 2,073,600

As stated above I really would avoid the first two types and although the new 1/4HD (960x540) chip may be okay for HD TV because it allows the picture to be scaled simply. Both the XGA (1024x576), when used as a 16x9 and the Matterhorn do 576 line PAL / SD Digital very well and would probably do as good a job as the 1/4HD chip when it comes to HD Digital. That's if you think that "good" is losing half the resolution of a HD signal. XGA being a popular computer format means that there are also lots of XGA data projectors available and some of these are suitable for Home Theatre.

The HD2 (1280x720) panel whilst designed for the American market and 720p Digital TV (another version of HD Digital, the other being 1080i) does work well for 576 line PAL / SD Digital and HD Digital because the scaling factors are favourable. It also has 56% more pixels than an XGA / Matterhorn panel or put another way, on the same size screen the pixels are about 2/3 the size.

Sadly these machines are a bit pricey at the moment but are still probably the ones to go for even if used mainly for displaying PAL/SD material. Please note that as of July 2004 the new HD2+ chip which has higher contrast than the HD2, became available so existing HD2 model projectors will start shipping with the new chip and probably at the same price, which should mean that there are some existing HD2 models available at runout prices. If buying an HD2 machine, ask which chip it has as the update is not always reflected in the model number of the projector.

Note that it is now common practice to refer to 1280x720 panels as WXGA. Someone must have changed the definition I guess as I always took the W to mean "Wide" and as we all know XGA is 1024x768 and converting this panel to 16:9 whilst keeping the height the same at 768, gives you 1366 pixels wide. The good news is that there are now a number of LCD panels of this (1280x720) resolution with some pretty spectacular specifications.

Likewise the WXGA (1366x768) panel does SD and HD well but you're still not getting anywhere near the full resolution of HD. It does however have even more pixels than the HD2 DLP panels and as I said in the first sentance, the higher the resolution the better. Downside is that its an LCD only panel and it would appear that it is now being replaced by the more scaleable friendly 1280x720 panels.

That leaves the HD (1920x1080) panel which displays HD material as it should be shown and with over two million pixels will display SD material and everything else for that matter very nicely as well. Native HD machines of any type are expensive at the moment but like all digital technology the price will continue to fall.

Before leaving the subject of resolution a quick mention of CRT's and the perceived notion that they have much higher resolution than digital projectors. There is mistaken belief by some people that because you double or triple or even quadrupal a 576 line signal and feed it into a CRT projector that the projector is actually displaying all those lines. To display line doubled 576i, or native 720p or 1080i requires horizontal scan rates of 35-45khz and bandwidths of 50Mhz and higher. Not many CRT's can achieve this and certainly none of the older, smaller gunned, analog chassis models.

Contrast ratio and "The LCD Strikes Back: Episode V?"

As the major reason cited as to why CRT projectors are better than digital ones is contrast ratio then obviously it should be high on your list of things to consider. DLP has up to this point had an advantage in this regard, but DLP is proprietary technology developed and soley owned by Texas Instruments. Therefore there has been a far bit of effort put in by Sony and Epson who make most of the LCD panels to develop an alternative that could match its performance.

LCD technology was for a long time stuck in the one spot with contrast ratios of around 400:1 and no sign of increasing. Sadly 400:1 is not enough for watching movies, especially movies with lots of dark scenes so home theatre enthusiasts had no choice but to use DLP projectors. Recently though LCD has made some staggering advances and with the aid of dynamic aperature control they're achieving between 3000:1 and 10,000:1.

Any projector that can achieve numbers like these is capable of producing stunning home theatre with real blacks and excellent shadow detail. Combine that with light outputs of 500-1000 ANSI Lumens and you'll also get beautifully saturated colours and a system that can be used in a room with some ambient light.

Another reason for the increase in contrast ratio of LCD panels is that the gap between the pixels has been steadily reducing. This always shows up on the screen as a light grey grid and on some panels there was almost as much grid being shown as pixels. No wonder people complained about a screen door effect. It also reduced the contrast ratio but with higher resolution panels, with smaller pixels and thinner grids, LCD can match DLP for film like presentation.

DLP rainbows

A DLP projector may suffer from a problem called "rainbows" which are traces of unwanted colour on the edges of moving images. They may also be seen if you move your gaze quickly across a screen, even if its a still image and even more likely if the entire screen is a single colour. This is more of a problem for some people than others so its worth checking for by watching a DLP you're considering buying for at least an hour with a variety of material to see if its going to be a problem for you.

3 chip DLP's avoid all this but as yet are not suitably priced for the home theatre enthusiast. DLP's that most of us can afford are single chip and as such need a spinning colour wheel with Red, Green and Blue segments to create a colour picture. The higher the colour wheel speed the better and avoid projectors with colour wheels that have a clear (white) segment in them. These are added to increase light output at the expense of contrast for projectors designed more for presentation work than for home theatre. If it doesn't say in the spec sheet that it doesn't have a white segment then it probably has one.

As a general rule any colour wheel that has 3 or 6 segments + 1 more segment usually has a clear segment. Not always though as I have been told that some have a dark green segment to improve contrast so check the specification sheets. Home theatre DLP projectors these days have a six segment colour wheel made up of pairs of red, green and blue segments, spinning at five times. Cheaper ones or those designed for presentations will have a 4 segment (Red, Green, Blue + Clear) wheel spinning at only two times.

Everything else

Obviously for either type of projector you want the highest light output, coupled with long lamp life and also check what the lamp life and light output is in economy mode. A so called sealed light path will let in less dust than one that isn't sealed and is therefore preferred as there is less maintenance involved in keeping the optical path clean.

You're also after the most natural colours and colour balance as well as lowest fan noise and of course lowest price. Try to view the projector on the screen that you will be using it with, in a mixture of lighting conditions and with a variety of material. In fact take your own DVD's in and ask for a digital STB to be connected so you can view some off air material as well. Otherwise the salesman will just show you material that makes the projector look really good such as animation, bright daylight scenes, HD TV demo's, etc.

Also check how the projector is calibrated and whether its been optimised for the room and screen. It should be, but ask to see it running the factory default settings as well, especially if comparing it to another projector in the same shop. Not that any salesman would ever "tweak" a product that has a cheaper price but higher profit margin so it looks nearly as good side by side as a much more expensive product that has been slightly "detuned".

You should also find out how long the models currently for sale have been available as the current life cycle of a projector from latest model to run out model is not that long. Having said that, run out models can be a bargain. The Internet is a great place to find out what's available now and what's on the way. Like all modern consumer products they tend to get better with each new model and the new model will just about always cost less than the model it replaced. Great if you're about to buy one and sad if you've just bought one but like most things in life you have to jump in sometime otherwise you'll always be waiting for the new improved model to arrive.

Which doesn't leave much more to say except perhaps that digital projectors are just about perfect for the real World that we live in. They're compact, light, easy to mount, almost silent, easy to use, cheap to run and capable of displaying stunning video in your home and without the need to change your lifestyle or your lounge room.