Get the big picture for your home cinema...

What's a projection TV?

A projection TV is a TV set with a built-in projector. The picture is projected on the built-in screen instead of projecting it on a wall. The TV itself is quite the same as a conventional TV, but much bigger. You get a TV tuner, various inputs, lots of channels to switch through and of course a remote to do so.

 

A projector on the other hand is able to produce a very large picture and it is ideal for a big home cinema experience. But watching TV is not possible without a TV tuner. And projectors usually don't come with a built-in TV tuner. So if you opt for a projector, you'll have to connect it with a TV tuner to see the news or to watch your favorite soap.

What's the difference between a LCD and CRT projection TV?

Some projection TVs do have a crt projector (in fact 3 little crt tubes, one for every color: red, green, blue). Some come with an lcd projector made up with three lcd panels, one for the colors blue, red and green. Some projection TVs are equipped with a single lcd panel. This picture is an example of a Sony LCD projector using 3 colored lcd panels (used in the Sony LCD Projection Wide TVs). More information on this item can be found here (follow the term LCD Projection Wide, but be aware: Sony messed up with the numbers in the picture and the corresponding description. My description is more accurate. )

What's in the picture on the left? On top of the picture you see the three LCD panels, each responsible to reproduce one of the needed colors red, green and blue. Each one of these panels has 512880 pixels. This projection unit is capable to reproduce pictures at a resolution of 1068 x 480 pixels (if you divide 512880 by 480 then you'll get the horizontal resolution of 1068). The anamorphic wide screen DVD picture resolution is 768 x 480.   Dichronic prism to combine the colored LCD panel information and Optical projection unit Lens array to produce a uniformly bright picture High intensity discharge lamp LCD panels, one for each color

 

Advantages of LCD projection TVs

• the picture does not pump
• convergence problems are a thing from the past
• big picture diameters don't usually add up great depth to the unit
• the TV picture itself is flicker free
• light
• not very high because the LCD projector does not require much space

Disadvantages of LCD projection TVs

• you can't play Sony Playstation or Sega Dreamcast video games that do require a light gun
• on a single LCD panel TV you may notice the pixel structure if you're standing very close to the unit
• if it's very quiet you may notice the noise of the built-in cooling fans
• the replacement high discharge lamp for the projector may be expensive
• you have to clean the dust filters regularly
• dust could sit on the LCD panel covering a few pixels
• more expensive than CRT projection TVs
• HDTV compability may add up to the price and is very rare, because this would require LCD panels with much higher resolutions
• no built-in Dolby Digital amp models
• conventional 4:3 screen format units are hard to find (almost any LCD projection TV has the 16:9 screen format)

Advantages of CRT projection TVs

• you may be able to use a light gun connected to your playstation or dreamcast console
• the picture should be free of visible pixels and the picture resolution can be very high
• Pictures may be much brighter than on a LCD projection TV
• Bigger sizes available compared to LCD projection TVs
• various HDTV capable models available, at least in the United States
• TV sets with built-in Dolby Digital amps available

Disadvantages of CRT projection TVs

• the picture does pump quite always and quite heavily
• convergence problems are always visible, even if the TV set can be adjusted (some models do this automatically by pressing a button on the remote)
• convergence adjustment may become necessary after the TV set has been moved
• the TV picture may flicker if the TV set is not equipped with 100Hz technology
• heavy, but usually they 're standing on little wheels so it's quite easy to move them around
• big picture diameters can add great depth to the unit
• if the same picture is displayed for a very long time, the picture itself can be burned into the crt tubes and therefore traces of the picture are visible all the time (that's one reason, why you should not play the same video game for hours and why some video game consoles or DVD players do have a screen saver built-in.)
• because of the very large projection unit, these models are especially high and can't be put on a table

My own two cents

I'd prefer a LCD projection TV over the ones with CRT tubes because it's light and can be moved easily, it does not have convergence problems and the picture itself does not pump. A pumping picture is very annoying, because this pumping effect is visible every time a bright after a dark picture is displayed.

A good possibility to check for convergence problems is to display some teletext pages and watch closely for color bleeding surrounding the teletext characters. You may have to check the teletext text display using several different TV channels, because sometimes text is displayed on a black background and sometimes the text background is white.

The table below contains some LCD projection TV (Year 2000 production models, picture aspect ratios are misleading, because these pictures do come from different sources and I did resize them a little to fit in more easily into the table cells). These models are available in Europe and do come with one or two (the Sony ones) PAL TV tuners. Of course they can be used together with NTSC equipment.

What about plasma screens?

These screens do get bigger and bigger and prices are coming down, too. But the technology has some serious flaws: Plasma screens tend to burn in, they get worse over time (less bright), they consume a lot of energy (350w/h and even more) and they often com with an external and sometimes even optional tv tuner box. Some of them do have noisy fans to cool the cabinet. This can become very annoying, too.

Large widescreen LCD TVs - the next hot thing around the corner!

The best alternative to plasma and rear projection tv sets will be an LCD tv set. Bright colors, no color bleeding nor burn in problems, moderate power consumption: This is the future of the ordinary tv set as we know it. If sizes go up to 1.2m or even more in diameter, it will really become interesting owning such a display. Samsung has one of these displays ready to the market. It's called LW40A13W in Europe and the diameter size of the screen is 1m! The price is hot, too. Some info about this technology can be found here.

Toshiba 40 PL 93 G 102 cm / 16:9 (case color daylight-silver) Single Panel LCD	Toshiba 44 PL 93 G 112 cm / 4:3 (case color daylight-silver, black contrast filter) Single Panel LCD	Sony KL-37W2/2 94 cm / 16:9 (also available in case color dark gray (KL-37W2) 3-Panel LCD	Sony KL-50W2/2 127 cm / 16:9, also available in case color dark gray (KL-50W2) 3-Panel LCD

Links to companies with an ongoing tradition in building projection TVs

Sony Corporation Europe

Toshiba Corporation Europe (UK Website) or via this direct link: Toshiba Germany (Large TV set site)

Thomson

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