3D Projector Reviews

Epson’s latest promotional material makes much of a new concept called color brightness. It notes that while competing projectors may match or even exceed Epson’s competitive models in overall white brightness, they might well produce colors that, by measurement and often by eye, are significantly compromised.

How might this be? Consider a single-chip DLP projector with a color wheel of red, green, blue, and white elements. The white element will boost the overall brightness specification and bring joy to the marketing department. But if a projector, either Epson’s or anyone else’s, has only red, green, and blue imaging elements (true of most LCD and LCOS/SXRD designs), its color brightness and total brightness specs will generally be the same—and often less than specs pumped up by that added white element.

This issue is important to Epson because all of its projectors are three-chip LCD designs. Most of its sales are in the business projector market where much of the competition consists of single-chip DLPs, many of which add white elements to their color wheels or use similar techniques to increase their overall brightness. This may sacrifice color brightness but will enhance their market clout among buyers who make purchasing decisions based on price and specs, in that order.

Overall brightness may well be more significant than vivid color for reading spreadsheets and text in a meeting room with iffy light control. But if the business has a need to project color materials (evaluating an advertising campaign, for example), color brightness might be just as significant as it is in the home theater market.

For more in-depth information on color brightness, check the following links. But as noted earlier, most home theater projectors, particularly LCD or LCOS/SXRD models, should by design have equal color and overall brightness since they use only red, green, and blue imaging chips. The projectors in the first link all appear to be business models, many of which are DLP.

• colorlightoutput.com

• youtube.com/watch?v=73JF4tYnHrk

• cis.rit.edu/fairchild/PDFs/PRO24.pdf

• nist.gov/customfc/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=901354

• icdm-sid.org/downloads

• lumita.com/site_media/work/whitepapers/files/Color_Illuminance_CIC_R1.pdf