Audio Visual: Here comes D-ILA technology

Audio Visual: Here comes D-ILA technology

Gatot Susetyo, Contributor, Jakarta

Have you ever seen your favorite film heroes like James Bond
on a big screen in your home, or experienced life size video
gaming? That's what a portable projector can do for you.

A projector, even the portable ones, are able to deliver big
screen entertainment in your home.

As we know there are four main criteria when buying a
projector; their brightness, weight, resolution and, of course,
budget.

ScreenPlay 110 InFocus is an example of a fairly small one, so
it can be easily stored when not in use and can be moved from
room to room. Imagine if you tried that with a 300 kilogram rear
projection TV!.

Nowadays, many portable projectors offer better performance
than the rear projection large screen TVs. The image size can be
scaled up to a movie theater experience. They can also display
DVD or VHS movies, as well as computer images, digital video or
photos with equal ease.

If you visit Music Image, a home theater boutique located on
the third floor of Taman Anggrek Mall in West Jakarta, you will
find a portable home theater projector, Vivid Red made by
Christie Digital. It offers an SXGA+(1365 x 1024 line) resolution
and 1300 ANSI lumens of light output with a contrast ratio of
500:1. As we know, SXGA/UXGA is used for very high resolution
applications, typically CAD CAM and highly detailed pictures,
whereas lumens are the brightness measurement of a projector.

The greater the value, the more powerful the projector and the
less the projector will be affected by ambient light. How much
brightness a portable projector needs will depend greatly upon
its use and where the projector is to be used.

The most unique thing about the Vivid Red is that it utilizes
D-ILA LCD panel technology. This is the newest home theater
portable projector technology sold in Indonesia.

According to Ongky, the owner of the Music Image, there are
two advantages of D-ILA. First, it has a large amount of pixels.
Secondly, it has a better "fill factor" than LCD, DLP or CRT
projectors.

According to JVC which first manufactured D-ILA, D-ILA used to
provide the optimum combination of projector brightness, contrast
and resolution performance.

Resolution refers to the density of pixels (DPI 'dots per
square inch') on the screen. The greater number of pixels the
image is made up from, the clearer the image will become.

Combined with brightness, the resolution of your projector
will determine its performance. What about fill factor? Fill
Factor, also known as "aperture ratio" is the ratio between the
area of a pixels that can actually be illuminated divided by the
space that the pixel occupies. In other words, it is a
measurement of how much of the pixel is actually "lit" and how
much is "wasted". An LCD fill factor runs from 40 percent to 60
percent. DLP's fill factor gets to about 85 percent. CRT
projectors have a fill factor of 100 percent. D-ILA? It has a
fill factor of 93 percent.

If LCD projection systems are based on transmissive LCDs using
horizontal liquid-crystal alignment, the D-ILA, in contrast, is a
reflective projector using an active-matrix LCD with a vertical
LC alignment. In principle, reflective-LCD projectors have the
ability to offer images at much-higher brightness and higher
resolution.

D-ILA no longer needs CRTs for RGB input, relay lenses or an
optoelectric transfer process. This is because the D-ILA system
writes an image directly to the newly developed liquid-crystal
device.

The device sells for about US$11,000 in Indonesia. It may be
quite expensive, but this technology is likely to dominate the
home theater projector market in the future. With fewer
components, processes and required adjustments, the D-ILA devices
are easier to incorporate into a projector system. Moreover, the
overall projector becomes much more compact, and is easier to
carry around and set up for home cinema.