
Projector Torture Test: LCD versus DLP 247
An anonymous reader writes "A ten month torture test of five LCD and two DLP projectors shows LCD images deteriorate during extended use." Not surprisingly, if you run an LCD projector for 4000 hours, it deteriorates... of course, if you're staring at a projecter 8 hours a day, for 500 straight days, maybe you should go outside ;)
Projector (Score:3, Funny)
most materials react in unplesant ways when exposed to 4000 hours of consistant bright light.
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From Ape to Man: Evolution [turnpike.net]
Here's a crazy idea... (Score:5, Funny)
yep (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Here's a crazy idea... (Score:2)
Well (Score:2)
Re:Here's a crazy idea... (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and the LCD and DLP projectors both use the same type of lamps, with the same lifespans and problems.
Extended use (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Extended use (Score:3, Insightful)
Monitors? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Monitors? (Score:4, Insightful)
--matt
Re:Monitors? (Score:3, Funny)
This monitor is about 8 months old.
The burn-in effect is barely visible when I pick up the invisibility ring in Quake 1, of all things. It's completely unnoticeable under any other conditions.
So, presumably the FETs in an LCD are subject to uneven aging effects. Unlike the effects mentioned in the article, this definitely isn't a backlighting issue.
The real world (Score:5, Funny)
Projector shows the Blue Room (Score:2)
.
.
(Are we supposed to add "you insensitive clod" now that somebody else is running the polls?)
hmmmm (Score:2)
You know, if I ran a research company, this would be the kind of thing I gave to interns.
"Don't worry, interns don't have feelings, they're made of rubber!"
Torture (Score:2)
Dude! That's why they call it a "torture" test!
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Re:Torture (Score:2)
What if the projecter is displaying a picture of a sun?
Long life is often needed. (Score:5, Insightful)
But there are plenty of applications for these things where the display is permenantly turned on - think of a store display - or an airport information system - or high end adverts. In those cases, running 24 hours a day is very likely - and having the damned thing fail after a mere 166 days would suck badly!
It would have been nice to see the lifetime of large plasma panels in the survey too.
Maybe not so bad... (Score:2)
...
having the damned thing fail after a mere 166 days would suck badly!
Well, it might not suck so badly. At least this may curb the intrusion of certain types [slashdot.org] of advertisements into real-life.
Re:Long life is often needed. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Long life is often needed. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Long life is often needed. (Score:2, Informative)
Oh please, stop with the outdated facts. They [Plasmas] are rated for 30,000 till half brightness.
Burn-in is *OVER-RATED* on a plasma. Check avsforums. Out of the 60,000 people posting there, only *1* had serious burn-in, and that's because his wife left the Plasma on for a *week*.
If you don't know jack about a technology, don't comment on it, especially if you don't own one.
NOC (Score:2)
Now the LCD is only used on weekends to display the most important thing in a NOC...movies!
Re:Long life is often needed. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Long life is often needed. (Score:2, Informative)
I wouldn't go near an LCD now that DLPs are available. Reflective rather than transmissive==good thing.
Re:Long life is often needed. (Score:3, Interesting)
Based on my earlier experiences, I would not have considered a DLP projector for home theater, though if the li
Re:Long life is often needed. (Score:2)
And, since I won't be buying one for a couple years, and I expect DLPs to climb the quality curve really fast, I think it's the way to go (for me).
I also don't like the idea of all the waste heat generated by the LCD. Theoretically, a DLP can use a cooler bulb. Don't know if that is actually borne out in t
Schools (Score:2, Insightful)
Then again, anything that displays gets a bit.. dirty after a few years of use..
Re:Schools (Score:2)
1) Improper handling, by students and staff,
2) Insufficient or non-existent maintenance,
3) Poor environmental conditions (dusty, sunlight, too hot, whatever),
4) Heavy usage,
5) Tendency towards abuse,
6) Insufficient training for end users.
My torture tests (Score:2, Funny)
My old goldstar has yet to be beaten, but the MAGs have generally held a strong 2nd place.
-If you would like to report a giant panda sighting, press 9, and give the name of the laundromat
Re:My torture tests (Score:2)
Dude, after it's been dipped in raw sewage, I don't freakin' CARE if it still works or not...
LCD is still better (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with DLP projectors like the one my roomate bought is the "screendoor" effect that makes it look like you are viewing the image through a screendoor: little black boxes around every single pixel. This is an effect that is there from day-one and never goes away!
Will my LCD eventually get permanent burn-in? Perhaps. Still it's better than the screendoor.
Re:LCD is still better (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you're just looking at a DLP projector that has a very low resolution, or you're projecting it onto an area larger than it is designed for. We have one of these [dwin.com] and it looks beautiful. No "screendoor" effect at all.
Re:LCD is still better (Score:2)
This is odd, since one of the sellings points of DLP is that it has far less of a 'screen door' effect than LCD.
Of course if you blow up the image large enough, you'll always have some of this - but it's less with DLP than it is with LCD.
A.
(who owns a DLP projector)
Re:LCD is still better (Score:5, Informative)
DLP usually has as good or better fill ratio than LCD, where the average DLP is about 85% fill ratio, LCD is typically around 60%. Go ask AVS Forum. If you see bigger "screen door" on a DLP, check to make sure that you are comparing the same resolution on the same projected area. When people complain about screen door, it is usually from the LCD crowd.
Now, DLPs do have a "rainbow" effect because all units below $10,000 new are single-chip and operate under the principle of flashing an entire screen full of one color before flashing the next screen full of the next color. In short, it is a very, very fast RGB strobe sequence that has no equivalent that I know of in any other display technology. DLPs also have some sort of flutter noise because the micromirrors flash on and off sequences to imitate brightnesses in between. But the thing is, not very many people really notice or complain about either problem.
Early color movie film (Score:2, Informative)
In short, it is a very, very fast RGB strobe sequence that has no equivalent that I know of in any other display technology.
Some early color movies (filmed with the Kinemacolor system [widescreenmuseum.com], before the Technicolor sandwich approach became feasible) had the same sort of strobe effect, except it was RG not RGB.
Bulb costs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ink jet printers have very different running costs due to different costs for replacement ink cartridges. Does anyone know of a breakdown of running costs for different projectors or at least can share some experiences?
Re:Bulb costs? (Score:4, Informative)
After 2000 hours your projector tells you to replace the bulb, you can still use it, but run the theoretical risk of damaging the projector when the bulb blows.
Bulbs in the UK cost £2-300 approx to replace, which is one years use at 8 hours a day 5 days a week.
So while they are a cool toy, you could buy 2 CRTs or one large LCD a year, or a wide screen TV every couple of years for the cost of one bulb.
Plasma screens are interesting, but in my experience you need graphics cards with plasma screen modes otherwise they are unviewable other than in 800x600 large icon and super large text mode.
Hmm this is actually very interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
we also have a DLP project or aswell.
the company, actually the whole industry would like to switch from film to digital projection to save cost.
Guess who is pretty much the only player in HIGH powere digital technology, you guessed it TI. TI makes the DLP projectors we all enjoyed watching StarWars/Disney animation on. Now you say that some project running for more than 5000 hrs is never going to happen at your housse, or maybe at your office but consider this.
our current project with bulbs, can go for about 8000-10,000 hours before the bulbs needs replacement. so we got through about 2/3 bulb a years per projector.
but only switch the bulb.
now the problem is that if after 8000 hours we have to switch more than just the bulb
(which is the case when a digital project goes bad if you ever owned one)
then this could really hurt TI in getting the theathres to switch over.
Re:Hmm this is actually very interesting (Score:2)
Re:Hmm this is actually very interesting (Score:2)
What do you need to switch? What happens at 8000 hours that you need to switch more than just the bulb? What is damaged?
ExtremeTech Slashvertisement (Score:2)
From the article (Score:3, Insightful)
Annoying eh Jimbo ? whatever TI's motives, maybe you expected to grab marketshare with slightly crummy cheap projectors, not telling anyone about the flaws, then sell everybody new projectors after the old ones have become obviously tainted, pretending you didn't know about the defects in the first generation ?
It almost sounds like what a certain OS manufacturer has done years back.
Re:From the article (Score:2)
I think that there is propably no cover-up of known flaws on Epson's part. They're just annoyed that the maker of DLPs is using the results as a marketing tool. That said, it is probably completely ethical on TI's part (assuming they didn't fund the study) to point out the supposed advantages of DLP, although I wouldn't personally switch based on the results mentioned.
Definition (Score:2, Funny)
'Nuff said (Score:3, Interesting)
More a stress-test than longevity-test (Score:5, Insightful)
According the to article, "TI and Munsell ran the projectors continuously 24/7, replacing bulbs as needed. Each projector was stressed continuously for thousands of hours."
There really wasn't much information provided on the methodology in this article. Did they leave just the one image or did it shift thru? Were any of the projectors shut off at any point (besides changing bulbs)? What were the conditions of the room/area in which the projectors were stored - ventilation, sunlight, etc.?
How many purchasers of projectors are going to use them non-stop? Just imagine such a stress-test of your Intel or AMD processor - 8000 straight hours of 100% CPU activity. I'm sure that could burn out a processor that would survive 8000 hours of activity without a hitch. The longevity of the LCD monitors may be much better than this implies -- which could be better tested under "normal" conditions.
My last thought is that I don't completely trust a "scientific" test done by a company to show the advantages of their own system.
Re:More a stress-test than longevity-test (Score:2, Funny)
Never mind the processor - you find me an OS that will run for 8000 hours at 100% CPU utilisation!
Bugger - I've just remembered - Netware 3.12.
Oh well...
Re:More a stress-test than longevity-test (Score:2)
Actually, nearly every CPU would either fail within the first few days or not fail for years, so long as it has decent cooling.
Re:More a stress-test than longevity-test (Score:3, Interesting)
Before windows 2000, almost everyone ran windows 98, which didn't halt the processor during the idle loop. It literally just sat and executed one loop over and over again. Obviously it wasn't a problem. CPUs are designed to run continuously forever.
Re:More a stress-test than longevity-test (Score:3, Interesting)
Good point! A DLP chip is basically just a bunch of reflectors on swivels. On a still image, the reflectors never swivel, thus theoretically the DLP chip will last 'forever.'
Being a
Re:More a stress-test than longevity-test (Score:3, Informative)
Re:More a stress-test than longevity-test (Score:2)
Now I don't say they don't have a point, but unless we know the exact way this test was conducted, the results are not really useful.
Colleges? (Score:2, Interesting)
So these projectors are used all the time. 4-5 days a week for a school day.
Any ideas?
-Grump
OT: Microsoft DVD standard? (Score:2)
Re:OT: Microsoft DVD standard? (Score:3, Funny)
OMG! Are you saying they actually took down a dupe?!
1080i? (Score:2)
Re:1080i? yeah... (Score:2)
Re:1080i? (Score:2)
Home Use? (Score:2)
Has anyone here used any of these high res projectors to put movies and TV in their homes?
[I'm not talking about rear projection TV's, but rather where you hang one of these down from the ceiling, point it at the wall/screen, and get a big picture.]
My brother had a friend that said it works great, but had two drawbacks: price was still kind of high, and you had to tolerate the low ambient lighting necessary for the projected image not to appear washed out.
Re:Home Use? (Score:3, Interesting)
I do this. I have a DLP projector which has a resolution of 852 x 480 in 16:9 mode (using TI's original dual-mode chip). This happens to match the native resolution of DVDs (which are 720 x 480 - remember that DV to PC conversion factor).
The recommended maximum screen size for the projector is 80" (diagonal). I therefore used a 100" screen.
This makes for an impressive image, with some caveats. The room mus
Re:Home Use? (Score:2)
I forgot to address the mounting issue the original poster mentioned.
My projector and DVD player actually live under the couch. This requires a pretty clean room from couch to screen, as the image is about 2' off the floor at the screen.
Why is the DVD player under there too? It enabled me to have the shortest possible video run. Audio to the A/V receiver is digital over coax, so it survives the long run much better than the analog video would.
A.
(who's trying to re
i'll make you a deal... (Score:2)
I'll go outside if you get a spellchecker.
Hmm... (Score:2)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
I wonder what it'd take to get you to repeat that with your registerred nick, chicken-boy.
Universities use them for this long (Score:2)
There are probably a couple hundred or more of these projectors spread out over campus. The cost to replace these every year and a h
It's worse than that... (Score:2)
I just happen to work on LCD and DLP..... (Score:5, Informative)
The lamps degrade over time, as well as the panels.
I see so many projectors fail due to non-cleaning.
panel overheats are an issue... because no end user really owns a projector, they usually use one at work and none of these people bother to clean the units filter.
This just adds to the speed of the failure. most projectors I see have failures of the lamp and ballast units before the panels, probably because I get these downed projectors, find them filthy, clean and repair them before it kills the panels.
I have seen many, many kinds of projectors in both LCD and DLP, and the ones that seem to last longer are DLP units.
LCD units start biting the bullet after 3-4 years and usually after 2 years the image quality is starting to degrade.
My recommendation to anyone that has ant of these projectors is to clean them regularly, allow them to cool properly (another BIG problem) and, replace the lamp after the recommended usage.
some are 3,000 hours... some are 2,000...
If you do not replace the lamp after the usage limit, you risk an exploding lamp, damaged ballast, or main power supply. if its a DLP unit the color wheel can be shattered by an exploding lamp. I have had to replace quite a few of these because of this.
The projectors I find that fail the LEAST are made by Sharp and Toshiba. these are well made units that have lifespans of 10 years or more.
I see 10 year old sharps all the time. altho, the panels are about wasted.
Remember, keep the filters clean, allow the units to cool properly and change the lamps when recommended, and your unit should function for many years before needing service.
I hope that someone finds this infoarmation informative and useful.
Re:I just happen to work on LCD and DLP..... (Score:3, Informative)
This is really not news - of course DLP is better! (Score:3, Informative)
My flatmate got a DLP projector on eBay.
Before he bought it he did a little research on it, and I did too. We both came to the same conclusion - DLP is better than LCD.
If you look this up on Google I expect you'll find what we did - every retailer I checked said DLP was better (and that what small shortcomings it does have in comparison to LCD are being rapildy overcome with some new 'magical' rev 2 chipset[1] which seems to eliminate them).
I think that even after 5 min research on the web (or by asking your retailer) you'd know the answer to this question - and that all retailers and projectionists seem to be largely in complete agreement - so I don't think this article is newsworthy.
[0] That's a lie - I like to moan.
[1] The name of it escapes me.
many factors (Score:4, Insightful)
For some pretty honest feedback from projector owners and experts, check out avsforum [avsforum.com]. Check out comments from owners of dlp, crt, and lcd projectors. The folks in the forums are not afraid to either praise or pan a particular projector (or manufacturer or reseller), and they have been a great help to me in sorting out the various factors during my seemingly endless quest. (Actually, I'm just a bit too chicken to drop the $$$ right now.)
And there are quite a few factors worth noting. For instance, some people may be bothered by the "rainbow effect" that is generated by dlp projectors. Others may not be affected by that, but may be bothered by the "screendoor effect" of lcd projectors. Still others may be affected by the "pocketbook effect" of purchasing these things. I may well end up purchasing an LCD for around $2000, and then throwing it away after 4000 hours. (Which for me would be many years, since I watch less than 10hrs of TV per week.) Or I may spend around $4000 on a DLP and plan on keeping it a bit longer. In any case, I don't think I can make a bad choice since South Park will be kick-ass on 100" screen.
Something worth noting is that Sony does not produce any DLP projectors. They do produce CRTs and LCDs. While I'm not a huge fan of Sony, they do kinda have a decent reputation in the consumer electronics field. So to me, their presence in the LCD market lends a bit of credibility. (The HS-10 is getting killer reviews, and it's only around $2500.) Also worth mentioning is the fact that DLP projectors can suffer from image burn-in, while LCD projectors do not. It doesn't mean that LCD is better than DLP. But these are some of the differences worth knowing before dropping several thousand $$$ on a projector. Again, check out avsforum for lots of insight into the different technologies.
If you are interested in purchasing a projector, do your research. You'll probably find that there isn't any one "best technology" to go with.
Re:many factors (Score:2)
unless.. (Score:3, Funny)
Unless you're playing Halo on that projector, in case it's perfectly acceptable.
Real test - will they be stolen in 1000 hours (Score:2)
Side note (Score:2)
Ok, overclocking/cooling guys, do something useful (Score:5, Interesting)
Big displays run continuously in control rooms and advertising applications. There's thus a market for long-life displays. Unlike home and conference room environments, silence isn't as critical. So aftermarket cooling solutions might actually sell.
Re:Ok, overclocking/cooling guys, do something use (Score:3, Interesting)
How many companies could easily use $200 walmart PCs, but instead, buy lower-end computers for $1000/piece from De
they do wear out (Score:2)
One thing I notice is that some of them get like pink spots on them when displaying white backgrounds. Although the most common problem is that the image just starts flickering like it can't sync to the laptops video signal. Anyone know what causes this?
How well do projectors scale from svga to xga? (Score:2)
The svga supposedly give a good compressed picture all the way to 1600x1200.
I only need xga resolution. Anyone used this projector at xga resolution? It is a dlp model.
Thank you for any info.
Only on slashdot (Score:2)
use DLP if you want stereoscopic 3D (Score:2, Informative)
If you want to experiment with using two projectors do this, you will have much better success with DLP.
I played around with it and
DLP projector for movies (Score:3, Interesting)
Any consumer who uses a projector to watch TV is, in my opinion, not focusing their monetary efforts in the right place. A substantially-sized HDTV these days is less than the cost of a projector, and will undoubtedly look better in the middle of the day.
However, when it's dark out, your friends (or
Using the XGA input is also great for parties and mp3 visualizations, displaying music videos, whatever.
Re:They didn't constantly watch the projectors (Score:3, Informative)
Re:They didn't constantly watch the projectors (Score:3, Informative)
There's a fair amount of info on DLP at dlp.com [dlp.com]. They have a rather high level "Technical overview" [dlp.com], but if you look in the right place, you can also find a small White Paper Library [dlp.com], which has a number of papers that are fairly technically detailed but (IMO) still quite understandable.
Re:They didn't constantly watch the projectors (Score:5, Informative)
Total light output is modlated by how much time the mirror is in the on position. The can each litterally flutter on and off over a thousand times a second. On dark areas of dark scenes you can see little scintelations of when individual mirrors flutter to the on position for a fraction of a second.
The fancier projetors have a light beam that's broken into red blue and green which then bounces off of three DMD panels before being recombined. The cheapie (less than $15K) ones have just one light beam that passes through a color wheel.
The color wheels typically have either RGB, RGBW (white), or RGBRGB. Better projectors have the RGBRGB wheels and spin at a higher rate. The result is that the projector winds up displaying a red image, a blue image and a green image in sequence. On fast moving items certain people (like me) are suscepible to seeing the different colors individually unless they spring for a higher speed color wheel, a triple DMD projector, or some other technology like LCD.
One last tidbit on the color wheel is that there is a new scroll color wheel coming out where at any given time there is a red, blue and green section being displayed over one third of the screen. They look like a pinwheel or one of those swirly lollypops. The trick to them is that the colors are actually dichoric mirrors so that only one given color light passes through while the other colors are then reflected back and hopefully recycled through one of the other two colors. It should more than total brighness while also lessening the effect of a slower speed colorwheel. Should be interresting.
Re:Huh... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Huh... (Score:2)
the length of the study does not have to be as long as the length of time during which a monitor might undergo "normal use".
Well then wouldn't normal use also include 16 hours of down time for every 8 hours of up time? After all, don't you think the cooling down and heating up of the lamp and everything around it would affect things? I'm not saying it would improve the stats...I'm just saying that 10 months straight does not equal 500 days of normal use. 500 days of normal use equals equals 500 days of
Re:Huh... (Score:2)
Sure, thus the quotes around normal use. Anyone truly seeking to understand should have taken the time to read the article before posting and would have seen the testing methodology on the page two. The original poster was wasting everyone's time and deserved a little public ridicule. Stupidiy should be painful.
CRTs and radiation. (Score:3, Informative)
Only if it's a color CRT (which, even with modern designs, generates a non-trivial amount of soft X-rays due to the electrons slamming into the shadow-mask).
Black-and-white monitors make much less X-rays, due to the lower accelleration voltage, lower beam current (i.e. fewer electrons) and lighter target. Meanwhile, the charge on the screen tends to suck the dust out of the air in front of the user's fa
Re:CRTs and radiation. (Score:5, Informative)
Fucking bullshit. Even if you watch TV (yes *gasp* in color) 12 hours every day, this amounts to a yearly dosage of about .5 uSv. Just for comparison, the average natural radition dosage (sun, cosmic radiation and incorporation of radionuclides) at sea level is about 2400 uSv/yr and travelling in an airplane for 50 hours a year would give you an additional dose of about 300 uSv.
Stats go better with credibility. (Score:2)
Yes, modern color monitors are a lot less "hot" than early-model color TVs. It's pretty hard to get a "deep sunburn" off 'em now. (But even the new ones are still hot enough to raise, rather than lower, your radiation exposure - even if they're now trivial compared to other sources.)
But I think people would trust your posted stats a bit more if your sig line wasn't:
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn w
Re:Stats go better with credibility. (Score:2)
To get back on topic, in case you didn't get it, there is a higher probability of you being killed by a frozen pig that fell out of a cargo plane that was hit by a meteor than being harmed in any ever so subtle way by x-rays emmitted from a TV, even if you were living and sleeping between 10 foot high stacks o
Re:CRTs and radiation. (Score:2)
The inverse-square law only applies to a point source. An infinite line source has an inverse-first-power law, and an infinite plane source doesn't fall off with distance at all.
You're close enough to a monitor at a workstation that it's closer to an infinite plane source than a point source - so it falls off
Re:If... (Score:2)
If you stare at a CRT for that long, the radiation will most likely cause an inoperable brain tumor...
If you stare at a CRT for that long, the radiation will most likely cause an inoperable brain tumor...
CRTs emit a minuscule amount of radiation compared to the sun, for example. It would never be enough to cause cancer. However, staring at a CRT for that long would get you a nice heart attack.
Re:If... (Score:2)
Re:If... (Score:2)
Re:Sitting atop my grain of salt.... (Score:2)
By the way, was your DLP a single-chip or triple-chip solution? Did a
Re:dlp/rainbows (Score:2, Informative)
Re:dlp/rainbows (Score:2)
15-20 minutes into the movie I don't notice it any longer, as I get distracted by the story, my brain adjusts, whatever.
I've talked to friends who don't even notice. (While sitting in the seat next to me at the theater, so position isn't the issue).
Some people are just more sensitive to certain visual effects.
Re:I have seen this (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, except for CRT projectors. Those things are still cherished even if the unit is 10 years old.
Re:What is DLP? (Score:5, Informative)
Basically a square of very tiny reflective mirrors with a spinning colour disc to colour the light they reflect.
DLP = Digital Light Processing.