This article is originally created by users: Cici_whatever
Preface
Projectors are rapidly eroding the market that originally belonged to the TV sets, so that many TV manufacturers nowadays not only need to beware of competition among peers, but the thriving growth of micro-casting is also gradually swallowing up from another dimension - a bit like more than ten years ago mobile phones gradually replaced the status of MP3, and bombarded the mini player that was called trend back then into the niche culture today.
MP3 function is relatively simple, and it is very easy to determine the advantages and disadvantages. The mobile phone function is relatively complex. There are many discussions on the Internet. Some merchants even avoid the important things and make consumers wronged. Similar to the above example, while micro-investment is increasingly valued, it is not simply to determine its advantages and disadvantages. Instead, it analyzes the stacking, application technology, and durability at the corresponding price.
As the 618 Consumer Festival approaches, many friends have begun to consult with the author's micro-investment related questions, including "projection technology", which is to let you "avoid minefields". The following will mainly analyze from the aspect of "projection technology", and I hope it will be helpful to everyone.
projection technology
Currently available in the market are just these types of projection technologies: LCD projection technology, DLP projection technology , and LCoS projection technology.
Among them, LCD projection technology includes "monochial LCD" and "three-piece LCD" projection technology; DLP projection technology includes "monochial DMD" and "three-piece DMD" projection technology; LCoS cannot be used for large-scale mass production. You can ignore it.
Simply mention that there are two technologies in the above fields that have been contracted by two giants. One is the "three-piece LCD" projection technology, which is widely used in Epson projectors. Because Epson owns a large number of related patents, other manufacturers basically cannot use it. The second is the "LCoS" projection technology. Sony and JVC have the most in-depth exploration of this technology. Most of the projectors currently using this technology come from Sony and JVC (and are high-end products).
Currently, most manufacturers on the market use TI DLP technology from Texas Instruments . Since Texas Instruments, as a mature upstream semiconductor supply chain manufacturer, has always sold its own chips to the outside world, it also provides a reliable core component for the vast number of products on the market.
"Single-chip LCD" is regarded by the low-end market because of its low cost. Ninety-nine percent of the machines under 1,000 yuan in Taobao will use this technology. The disadvantages are low brightness, low color gamut, low high temperature resistance, etc., which have basically been abandoned by the mainstream market; "Three-chip LCD" is relatively high-end, but because it occupies a large space, it generally appears in Epson commercial projectors; the advantage of "Single-chip DMD" is that it consumes less brightness to the light source compared to "Single-chip LCD", which can provide higher brightness, saturation and color gamut; the application scope of "Three-chip DMD" is that it cannot be popularized among ordinary home users at present. You only need to know that most cinema projectors currently use this technology, so I won't explain it here.
After the preparation of the above, I believe you have already gained a basic understanding of the outline of projection technology. So, the following mainly talks about the possible "pits" in the current mainstream DLP projection technology.
Currently, many mid-to-high-end projectors on the market use DLP projection technology. Compared with single-chip LCD projection technology, it has achieved crushing advantages in many aspects. With the maturity of DLP technology, it has gradually become popular from cinema-level projectors to micro-projectors for home entertainment. However, it is difficult for ordinary consumers to understand even the DLP itself, not to mention that there may be cases where merchants use information asymmetry to "kill" consumers. What is the relationship between
DLP and DMD?
DLP is the projection technology name, the full name is Digital Light Processor, that is, digital optical processing. Projectors that use this projection technology must have built-in micro digital mirrors to reflect and control the light source. The name of this micro digital mirror is "Digital Micromirror Device", which is what we call DMD.
Let’s summarize it. DLP is the projection technology name, and DMD is the core component name in DLP, so don’t be confused.
By the way, let’s mention the DLP-related black technology mentioned below: DLP XPR.
In 2017, Texas Instruments launched XPR pixel displacement technology, which can enable DMD chips to achieve higher-level challenges when physical small lenses are fixed - relying on high-speed diagonal back and forth jitters can increase the original 480P and 720P resolution DMD chips to 1080P, or increase the original 1080P DMD chips to 2K or even 4K.
Note that the resolution produced by relying on high frequency jitter here is not virtual, but relying on the "visual stay" effect of the human eye to achieve a way to truly improve the resolution. The above picture is a screenshot of the Texas Instruments official website. When the micromirror array size is marked with 1080P, the actual display resolution of this DLP470TE chip can reach 4K. The emergence of this technology has greatly reduced the costs of related industries, and household projection is one of the most deeply affected industries.
It is worth mentioning that although XPR technology is beautiful, there will still be some small "sequelae" after the resolution is raised. Use the control variable method to give an example. When other configurations are the same, the picture contrast of "jitter 1080P" will decrease compared to "native 1080P"? What is the impact of
DMD on movie viewing?
Different sizes of DMD chips are densely arranged with 800,000 to 8 million small mirrors (each small mirror is a pixel point), and each small mirror can be flipped independently in the positive and negative directions at different angles, and can be flipped tens of thousands of times per second. These also directly affect the projection's native resolution, light transmittance, refresh rate, etc. The larger the DMD chip size, the higher the cost.
DMD chip is similar to the sensor CMOS in the camera. From the current perspective, it is considered "the larger the area, the better". The common DMD areas on the market are 0.33 inches, 0.47 inches and 0.65 inches. They provide different original resolutions, refresh rate and brightness typical values, and the cost price between the two can reach up to 2 times! You should be clear that resolution, refresh rate and brightness have a direct impact on our movie viewing experience, which is why DMD is so critical in projection.
I believe that you can also guess the problem after seeing this. Some merchants are likely to use 0.33-inch DMD chip products to increase their "resolution" through XPR technology and sell them to the mainstream price of 0.47-inch, and use information asymmetry to make huge profits.
Nut J7S falsely "upgrade"
Currently, many electronic consumer products like to follow the iPhone's naming method, and add "S" to the suffix name of the product with little appearance changes to express that the product is indeed upgraded. But compared with the previous generation of Nut J7, Nut J7, it is undoubtedly a huge regression - especially in DMD.
In the previous generation of Nut J7, we saw that the 0.47 DMD chip was directly indicated on its official promotional page, indicating that it does use high-standard DMD, and the original physical resolution can indeed reach 1080P.
But in the Nut J7S page, you will find that the corresponding number is not marked before DMD, but from the "Specifications and Packaging" page of the E-commerce platform, we can see the display chip description of Nut J7S:
If 0.33DMD is really used, this is not just about avoiding the important thing, but is rising to false propaganda! Because the Nut J7S product details page clearly states "2.07 million real micro lenses", this is impossible to achieve in 0.33DMD.
You should know that the current prices of J7S and J7 are almost the same, and even the price of J7S is several hundred yuan higher. The price difference between the 0.33-inch DMD and 0.47-inch DMD is more than US$40. The single electronic component alone leads to a difference in the unit price of the product being close to RMB 300.
Nut J7S has regressed in key technologies but the price has increased instead. 0.33DMD has many shortcomings in imaging compared to 0.47DMD. The 1080P display is achieved through the XPR driver mentioned above. Although the physical resolution is indeed improved, other functional points in physical characteristics will decrease accordingly: such as reduced contrast, reduced light uniformity, unstable color gamut, etc.
000 price selection
At this price, you can already choose many micro-casting products that use DLP projection technology, including Panasonic and LG. There are also many choices in domestic Xgimi, Acer , etc.
LG-PF50KG
First talk about LG-PF50KG, this is a projector that is positioned as "portable". Here is a popular knowledge point: once positioned as portable, there are many places that micro-investment needs to compromise, including LG-PF50KG. It uses LED light source, has a physical resolution of 1080P and a 2.5-hour battery life. What's rare about
LG-PF50KG is that the portable projector in this price range still provides 1080P resolution, which is very rare among similar first-tier brands. Of course, although LG-PF50KG uses DLP projection technology, the DMD area is not listed. I don’t know whether it is generated by 0.33DMD “jitter” or 0.47DMD native.
XXI H2
XXI H2 is almost hard to have competitors among similar positioning products within the 4000 price range, 1350ANSI lumens, 0.47DMD native 1080P resolution, global motion compensation MEMC, Harman Katon speaker support, intelligent assisted correction, autofocus, etc.
Acer (acer) H6517ABD
acer uses 0.65DMD in this product, which is the DMD size that only one thousand yuan flagship will see. Thanks to this super-large chip and UHP bulb, the H6517 provides excellent results of 3400ANSI lumens. But similar to Epson and Sony light brands, the projector of Acer still tends to be more business-style - it does not have a built-in system and must be connected to the host or computer. In addition, although it supports 3D film and television functions, you need to purchase 3D glasses separately. At the same time, although there is "automatic keystone correction " in the publicity, it only supports automatic vertical keystone correction, and the left and right cannot be corrected, which means it can and can only be directly cast, but this is often a pain point for ordinary family users.
If you are not opposed to business-style projectors, then acer is not the best choice for this price.
Summary
I believe that you have already understood what impact DMD size has on people’s movie viewing experience when you see this? Before purchasing, you must polish your eyes and see clearly the size of the DMD to prevent bad merchants or shopping guides from taking advantage of the situation.
Before purchasing home micro-casting, you need to pay special attention to the key parameters of "light source type", "projection technology type" and "ANSI lumen value". The second is to observe whether the technologies that solve some pain points are included, such as "autofocus", "automatic keystone correction", "motion compensation", and whether the decoder adopts a new version, etc.
