[MadSoup]

Question:


Does increasing the brightness, contrast ratio, or degamma on a DLP projector affect the lamp life? If this has already been answered on the forum, please excuse this post-- I searched and found no posts regarding this subject.


With my understanding of how DLP projectors work it seems to me that the bulb brightness never changes (unless put into an economy mode of some sort) and that the project varies brightness much in the same way that it produces grayscale. When it wants a brighter pixel to show up it simply increases the amount of time that the respective micro mirror is reflecting light towards the lense and not away.


If this is the case, then i can crank up the brightness as much as I fancy with little fear of degrading lamp life. But, if the projector increases brightness by varying lamp bulb current and not by the aforementioned method then indeed increasing brightness should lessen the lamp life.


I do not know enough about how my Dell mp2200 projector works, and it is not clear from the manual about whether or not this affects lamp life.


-MadSoup

 

[Kevin Korom]

You're correct, the bulb is unaffected by changes in contrast & brightness settings. Although there is a correct point to set them at to get maximum performance, you can adjust them to anything you like w/o fear or shortening bulb life.

 

[mgithens]

get one of those DVDs like Digital Video Essentials, it will show you how to setup correctly... imagine scaling the darkest black in a movie to the whitest white... the Brightness setting moves both of those up/down the scale at the same time... so blacks become gray and whites bleed into other colors... the contrast changes the relationship between the two, creating more difference between the two... more contrast (setting) is not necessarily better, and more brightness (setting) is not necessarily better... you can overrun the limits of the machine and get a lower quality image... the tweaks that a setup DVD will walk you through are really helpful...