DLP®technology is a revolutionary display solution that uses an optical semiconductor to manipulate light digitally. It is a highly reliable, all-digital display chip that delivers the best picture across a broad range of products, including large screen digital TVs, and projectors for business, home, professional venue and digital cinema (DLP Cinema™).
At the heart of every DLP® projection system is an optical semiconductor known as the Digital Micromirror Device, or DLP® chip, which was invented by Dr. Larry Hornbeck of Texas Instruments in 1987.
The DLP® chip is probably the world's most sophisticated light switch. It contains a rectangular array of up to 2 million hinge-mounted microscopic mirrors; each of these micromirrors measures less than one-fifth the width of a human hair.
When a DLP® chip is coordinated with a digital video or graphic signal, a light source, and a projection lens, its mirrors can reflect an all-digital image onto a screen or other surface. The DLP® chip and the sophisticated electronics that surround it are what we call Digital Light Processing™ technology.
A DLP® chip's micromirrors are mounted on tiny hinges that enable them to tilt either toward the light source in a DLP® projection system (ON) or away from it (OFF)-creating a light or dark pixel on the projection surface.
The bit-streamed image code entering the semiconductor directs each mirror to switch on and off up to several thousand times per second. When a mirror is switched on more frequently than off, it reflects a light gray pixel; a mirror that's switched off more frequently reflects a darker gray pixel.
In this way, the mirrors in a DLP® projection system can reflect pixels in up to 1,024 shades of gray to convert the video or graphic signal entering the DLP® chip into a highly detailed grayscale image.
The white light generated by the lamp in a DLP® projection system passes through a color wheel as it travels to the surface of the DLP® chip. The color wheel filters the light into red, green, and blue, from which a single-chip DLP® projection system can create at least 16.7 million colors.
The switching of the mirrors, and the proportion of time they are 'on' or 'off' is coordinated according to the color shining on them. The human visual system integrates the sequential color and sees a full-color image.