More properly I should say is the LCD transmissive projection technology finished and will be superseded by LCos and/or DLP?
This seems like a foolish question considering the tremendous strides that LCD projectors from Panasonic and Mitsubishi have made this last year with relatively low cost 1080p capabilities. As everyone here knows DLP technology based projectors are available from Optoma and Mitsubishi at under $1K. These models dominate that market nitche. Yet at approximately $4K and 1080p all the top models are LCD.
I think its clear that 480p is finished for HT. No manufacturer will spend a lot of engineering effort on developing new models for this market segment. Its easy to project the same future for 720p projectors. A few years from now the salesman will sneer when he shows you one of the cheaper, older 720p models. He will imply that you aren't really much of a man if you will settle for 720p. A few years after that and the 720p models won't even get shelf space.
Predicting the future is tough. Watch Back to the Future II . In the world of 2015 no one has a cell phone and no one has HT.
Nevertheless I boldly predict:
LCD projectors (both front and rear) will fade from the marketplace.
This insight came to me when I read all the glowing reviews of the new JVC RS1 and HD-1 LCos projectors.
Color Mixing
A few years ago the principal disadvantage of 1 chip DLPs were rain bows. One disadvantage of LCDs was missconvergence. If people would be satisfied with Black and White neither problem would exist.
I call this the "Orange Problem". To get orange or any other besides Red, Green, or Blue you have to mix colors. LCDs make the color orange by mixing proportions of RGB light from each of the three LCD panels. This is color mixing in the spatial dimension. DLPs can make orange by mixing RGB light sequentially from a color wheel. This is color mixing in the temporal dimension.
An LCD projector can make an error in color mixing if the three panels aren't well aligned. A 1 chip DLP can make a color mixing error if its color wheel doesn't spin fast enough. You pays your money and you chooses your poison.
Color wheels also throw away a lot of light.
The biggest failure of all front projectors is coming to an end soon - the expensive, delicate, and fading mercury bulb will soon be obsolete. There will soon be LEDs in RGB colors that solve all these problems. This technology will help all types of projectors but DLPs most of all. A 1 chip DLP projector with LEDs should be cheap, reliable, and bright. LCD and LCos projectors will benefit also but not as dramatically.
LCD Problems
LCDs have had a number of disadvantages compared to DLPs or CRTs. These include higher black levels, thermal degradation, less contrast, and the screen door effect.
Blacks CRTs, of course, achieved black the old fashion way - they pull the plug. A cathode gun simply doesn't send a signal for a black pixel. It can do this because it processes the pixels sequentially (I know this is a technically inelegant statement).
An LCD projector has a bulb that is always on. It relies on the tiny pixel sized shutters to completely close to create black. Transmissive LCDs are certainly better than they used to be with black but even the best, newest C2Fine LCD panels let too much light through.
Reflective technologies have an easier time with blacks. They too have a light that is always on but they can aim the mirrors so as to show nearly nothing when the video signal calls for black.
In the last year or so the LCD manufacturers have developed a sophisticated dynamic iris that goes some way toward closing the gap with the reflective technologies on dark scenes. Some purists call this cheating but it seems to be a real advance that will be adopted soon on DLP and LCos machines too. Given equal DIs the reflective projectors should still have better blacks.
It may come to pass that DLPs with LEDs will win the blackness battle. A DLP achieves a gray scale by turning off and on incredibly fast in various patterns from 100% On to 0% On. LCos can't do it this way because even the fastest liquid crystals are many times slower than the DLP micro mirrors.
When there is an orange pixel on the screen of a DLP projector, it got there by cycling the mirrors on when the Red segment is in front of the light path, cycling the mirrors a little less on when the Green segment is in front and so forth. When the wrong color for a particular pixel's orange is in front of the light path that pixel's mirror tilts away. That's why a 1 chip DLP with a mercury bulb wastes light.
With a DLP using a set of three LEDs it may be possible to turn them all off when black is called for. LEDs cycle very fast but maybe not fast enough for this. If it is possible, then 1 chip DLPs will have invincible blacks.
I don't see how LCDs or LCos machines can utilize the LED speed advantages because liquid crystals won't be fast enough. An LED driven LCD projector will have to have the three LEDs on all the time. The same is true for LCos.
Thermal degradation - TI claims LCDs degrade. Many users of this forum have reported problems. The new inorganic liquid crystals are said to have solved this problem. It's too soon to tell. In any case DLP and LCos as reflective technologies don't have this defect.
Screen Door Transmissive LCDs have to have the addressing circuitry in a ring around each pixel window. Reflective technologies like DLP and LCos have this circuitry behind the pixel. Reflective technologies have an intrinsic fill factor advantage.
Price
When LED based projectors arrive the initial cost becomes more important. Currently if you buy a $1K projector and keep it for 3 bulbs you will have spent about the same money on the bulbs as on the initial price. Today a nominally $1K projector really costs $2K. With LEDs a $1K projector really costs $1K.
Soon ethnic humor will also suffer. The answer to the question "How many Poles does it take to change a light bulb?" will be "Why change a light bulb?" or "Can you change a light bulb?" or even "What's a light bulb?".
Moore's law works on all micro electronics not just CPUs. Faroudja chips used to cost a fortune. Today equivalents are built into entry level machines. Now people pay a premium for Gennum chips but quite soon all projectors will have that level of processing. The silicon video processing in projector will come to be an incidental cost.
When every projector is 1080p, and operating costs are all low, and the video processing is sophisticated in all of them, the DLP machines could dominate because of price.
Right now the big LCD advantage is lens shift. LCos machines (JVC, Sony) also have lens shift at about the same price.
Predictions
I expect a couple LCD projector manufacturers to try to license LCos technology from Sony or JVC. I expect LCD sales to slowly decline at the expense of LCos and DLP.
I expect 1080p DLP prices to drop like a rock. Optoma and Benq 1080p projectors should be at or near $3K by next Labor Day. When the first LED DLP projectors arrive in early 2008 they will come in at about $8K. They will drop to about $4K by Labor Day 2008. In 2009 1 chip 1080p DLP projectors will sell for less than $1K.
Increasingly price pressure on HT projectors will come not from other projectors but from flat panels (plasma, LCD, and DLP). It will be hard to sell a projector to create a 100" screen at $6k and up when you can buy a 100" TV that is cheaper, easier to install, and to accommodate to domestic architecture and furniture.
There will always be projectors for the really big screens but the "sweet spot" in HT is somewhere around a 16:9 screen that is 8 feet wide. That size is within reach of affordable hang-it-on-the-wall technologies within a year or two. Projectors are going to become the low cost alternative for a big screen.
This seems like a foolish question considering the tremendous strides that LCD projectors from Panasonic and Mitsubishi have made this last year with relatively low cost 1080p capabilities. As everyone here knows DLP technology based projectors are available from Optoma and Mitsubishi at under $1K. These models dominate that market nitche. Yet at approximately $4K and 1080p all the top models are LCD.
I think its clear that 480p is finished for HT. No manufacturer will spend a lot of engineering effort on developing new models for this market segment. Its easy to project the same future for 720p projectors. A few years from now the salesman will sneer when he shows you one of the cheaper, older 720p models. He will imply that you aren't really much of a man if you will settle for 720p. A few years after that and the 720p models won't even get shelf space.
Predicting the future is tough. Watch Back to the Future II . In the world of 2015 no one has a cell phone and no one has HT.
Nevertheless I boldly predict:
LCD projectors (both front and rear) will fade from the marketplace.
This insight came to me when I read all the glowing reviews of the new JVC RS1 and HD-1 LCos projectors.
Color Mixing
A few years ago the principal disadvantage of 1 chip DLPs were rain bows. One disadvantage of LCDs was missconvergence. If people would be satisfied with Black and White neither problem would exist.
I call this the "Orange Problem". To get orange or any other besides Red, Green, or Blue you have to mix colors. LCDs make the color orange by mixing proportions of RGB light from each of the three LCD panels. This is color mixing in the spatial dimension. DLPs can make orange by mixing RGB light sequentially from a color wheel. This is color mixing in the temporal dimension.
An LCD projector can make an error in color mixing if the three panels aren't well aligned. A 1 chip DLP can make a color mixing error if its color wheel doesn't spin fast enough. You pays your money and you chooses your poison.
Color wheels also throw away a lot of light.
The biggest failure of all front projectors is coming to an end soon - the expensive, delicate, and fading mercury bulb will soon be obsolete. There will soon be LEDs in RGB colors that solve all these problems. This technology will help all types of projectors but DLPs most of all. A 1 chip DLP projector with LEDs should be cheap, reliable, and bright. LCD and LCos projectors will benefit also but not as dramatically.
LCD Problems
LCDs have had a number of disadvantages compared to DLPs or CRTs. These include higher black levels, thermal degradation, less contrast, and the screen door effect.
Blacks CRTs, of course, achieved black the old fashion way - they pull the plug. A cathode gun simply doesn't send a signal for a black pixel. It can do this because it processes the pixels sequentially (I know this is a technically inelegant statement).
An LCD projector has a bulb that is always on. It relies on the tiny pixel sized shutters to completely close to create black. Transmissive LCDs are certainly better than they used to be with black but even the best, newest C2Fine LCD panels let too much light through.
Reflective technologies have an easier time with blacks. They too have a light that is always on but they can aim the mirrors so as to show nearly nothing when the video signal calls for black.
In the last year or so the LCD manufacturers have developed a sophisticated dynamic iris that goes some way toward closing the gap with the reflective technologies on dark scenes. Some purists call this cheating but it seems to be a real advance that will be adopted soon on DLP and LCos machines too. Given equal DIs the reflective projectors should still have better blacks.
It may come to pass that DLPs with LEDs will win the blackness battle. A DLP achieves a gray scale by turning off and on incredibly fast in various patterns from 100% On to 0% On. LCos can't do it this way because even the fastest liquid crystals are many times slower than the DLP micro mirrors.
When there is an orange pixel on the screen of a DLP projector, it got there by cycling the mirrors on when the Red segment is in front of the light path, cycling the mirrors a little less on when the Green segment is in front and so forth. When the wrong color for a particular pixel's orange is in front of the light path that pixel's mirror tilts away. That's why a 1 chip DLP with a mercury bulb wastes light.
With a DLP using a set of three LEDs it may be possible to turn them all off when black is called for. LEDs cycle very fast but maybe not fast enough for this. If it is possible, then 1 chip DLPs will have invincible blacks.
I don't see how LCDs or LCos machines can utilize the LED speed advantages because liquid crystals won't be fast enough. An LED driven LCD projector will have to have the three LEDs on all the time. The same is true for LCos.
Thermal degradation - TI claims LCDs degrade. Many users of this forum have reported problems. The new inorganic liquid crystals are said to have solved this problem. It's too soon to tell. In any case DLP and LCos as reflective technologies don't have this defect.
Screen Door Transmissive LCDs have to have the addressing circuitry in a ring around each pixel window. Reflective technologies like DLP and LCos have this circuitry behind the pixel. Reflective technologies have an intrinsic fill factor advantage.
Price
When LED based projectors arrive the initial cost becomes more important. Currently if you buy a $1K projector and keep it for 3 bulbs you will have spent about the same money on the bulbs as on the initial price. Today a nominally $1K projector really costs $2K. With LEDs a $1K projector really costs $1K.
Soon ethnic humor will also suffer. The answer to the question "How many Poles does it take to change a light bulb?" will be "Why change a light bulb?" or "Can you change a light bulb?" or even "What's a light bulb?".
Moore's law works on all micro electronics not just CPUs. Faroudja chips used to cost a fortune. Today equivalents are built into entry level machines. Now people pay a premium for Gennum chips but quite soon all projectors will have that level of processing. The silicon video processing in projector will come to be an incidental cost.
When every projector is 1080p, and operating costs are all low, and the video processing is sophisticated in all of them, the DLP machines could dominate because of price.
Right now the big LCD advantage is lens shift. LCos machines (JVC, Sony) also have lens shift at about the same price.
Predictions
I expect a couple LCD projector manufacturers to try to license LCos technology from Sony or JVC. I expect LCD sales to slowly decline at the expense of LCos and DLP.
I expect 1080p DLP prices to drop like a rock. Optoma and Benq 1080p projectors should be at or near $3K by next Labor Day. When the first LED DLP projectors arrive in early 2008 they will come in at about $8K. They will drop to about $4K by Labor Day 2008. In 2009 1 chip 1080p DLP projectors will sell for less than $1K.
Increasingly price pressure on HT projectors will come not from other projectors but from flat panels (plasma, LCD, and DLP). It will be hard to sell a projector to create a 100" screen at $6k and up when you can buy a 100" TV that is cheaper, easier to install, and to accommodate to domestic architecture and furniture.
There will always be projectors for the really big screens but the "sweet spot" in HT is somewhere around a 16:9 screen that is 8 feet wide. That size is within reach of affordable hang-it-on-the-wall technologies within a year or two. Projectors are going to become the low cost alternative for a big screen.
