Screen DoorYou wouldn’t try to watch your HDTV through a screen door. But that’s exactly how many lesser LCD projectors look.

The screen door effect is a sort of video distortion that can affect LCD front and rear projectors. Its effect was talked about a lot during the first generation or two of the HD projectors, but it’s almost unheard of today.

What it looks like is that you’re viewing images through a screen door. It’s caused by darkness around the edge of each pixel. The effect is most noticeable in very bright, white - on - white images and particularly when the sharpness is turned up very high.

Get to know other common HDTV defects:

• Rainbow Effect - DLP
• Dead Pixel - LCD
• Lamp Replacement - All projectors

Newer DLP and LCD projectors have been able to compensate for the effect through clever video processing. If the TV is able to fill the darkened space around each pixel with light from the adjacent pixel they can cover it up quite amicably. Although it’s not usually an issue with new gear, if you’re looking at a used LCD or DLP projector you’ll want to take a look for the screen door. Look for a bright image with lots of white such as snow-capped mountains, and stand directly in front to see if the screen door is noticeable.

Thanks to HiFi-writer.com for the screen door effect image.

Tags: TLM

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.