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International Projection TV Statistics

Europe never really bought into the big-screen TV story. It takes a combination of NASCAR, NFL and NBA to sell millions of big screens. In Europe, the market has always been about 10% of the size of the North American big-screen TV market.

Japan, likewise, has always been a tiny market since flat-panel displays are more in line with their small-home lifestyles.

China has been a surprisingly strong market for big screen TVs, although it is extremely price sensitive, and there is confusion as to whether it is a consumer market or an infrastructure build-out (education, government and hotels) market.

The total worldwide market for rear-projection TVs has been pegged at about 6 million units, so a disproportionately large number are sold in the U.S.

Projection Television

While flat-panel plasma TVs are busy hogging the press, reviews say the best value in a big-screen TV is a projection television. And while old-fashioned CRT-based models are big and bulky, newer-technology LCD, DLP and LCoS projection TVs are now crowding into the market. These microdisplay models have big screens, but they are less bulky than CRT televisions, with depths of only 15 inches or so (a couple of the newest models have a depth of only 7 inches). While 15 inches is significantly thicker than a plasma screen, a 50-inch big-screen rear-projection model costs less than half the price of a 50-inch plasma TV.

I found some good testing and reviews on projection units at Consumer Reports. Though the individual write-ups are not as detailed as reviews from Sound and Vision magazine, Home Theater magazine and Stereophile Ultimate AV.com, Consumer Reports tests the largest sampling of CRT and thinner microdisplay big-screen TVs. CNet.com is a little behind right now in keeping up with this category. There are a dozen models listed or previewed at CNet, but editors haven't gotten to fully evaluate them. I also found good, if sporadic, reviews for projection TV at computing publications like PC Magazine and PC World.

I saw some mixed reviews for the Epson Livingstation LS57P2 (*est. $3,400). This 57-inch LCD high-definition projection television sets itself apart with some unique features. The Epson HDTV comes with an integrated photo printer that spits out 4 x 6-inch photos from memory cards. You can also freeze and print images from the TV in some circumstances. In addition, the Epson comes with an external CD-burner, so you can burn image from memory cards to a CD. Reviews say that the printed photos won't win any awards, but they're not too bad overall. As a TV, however, the Epson isn't so successful. Though the big-screen image is bright, with rich color, the dark scenes are not dark enough, and blacks appear more gray than inky black. Editors at PC Magazine say this projection TV has a strong green bias which couldn't be totally corrected. While some reviews say the Livingstation shows promise as a multitasking projection TV, others say the image quality is not yet there.

Rear Projection TV- The best value per inch

Despite all the attention lavished on plasma panels, rear projection tv is still the most popular method of creating a big-screen TV experience. The foremost reason is economy, but that doesn't mean rear projection TV should be considered some sort of poor cousin to video's flashiest trendsetter. In fact, recent technology infusions have brought new excitement to this venerable category, raising performance while trimming cabinet size and weight, sometimes dramatically. (Imagine a 50-inch wide-screen tabletop HDTV that weighs less than 100 pounds!)

LCD Projection TV

The LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) Projection System
One type of rear-projection technology to consider is LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) projection (not to be confused with LCD flat panel television). Unlike a CRT projection, the LCD-based rear projection television is not based on the traditional projection tube. A rear-projection LCD television basically works by passing a powerful light source through a transparent LCD chip made up of individual pixels (which displays the moving video image) and projecting that image through a magnifying lens, to a mirror, which then reflects that image, onto a screen.

Advantages of LCD Projection TV

1. What makes the LCD projector assembly very practical is that it is compact, since the LCD chip is very small. One LCD chip is hundreds of times smaller than the three projection tubes needed in CRT-based rear-projection models. This means that LCD-based rear-projection televisions can be made a lot thinner and lighter than traditional CRT-based rear-projection sets. Although you can't hang it on the wall like you can with an LCD flat panel or Plasma Television, you can still save a lot of floor space, and spend less money than you would buying that stylish LCD flat panel or Plasma set. In addition, since these are projection sets, you can get one in larger screen sizes than you can with either LCD or Plasma flat panel types.

2. Other advantages of rear-projection LCD technology are its high contrast and brightness capability, as well as lower power consumption.

Limitations of LCD Projection TV

1. A LCD projection model can often times exhibit what is called "the screen door effect". Since the screen is made up of individual pixels, the pixels can be visible on a large screen, thus giving the appearance of viewing the image through a "screen door".

2. LCD rear-projection televisions, although appearing to be simpler in construction, due to the use of a small chip, rather than three CRT tubes, are still much more complex to produce than traditional CRT projection televisions. This is due to the higher cost of manufacturing the LCD chips themselves. Thus, LCD-based rear-projection televisions are usually several hundred dollars more than their CRT-based counterparts (with size and features being equal).

3. Since an LCD chip is made up of a panel of individual pixels, if one pixel burns out it displays an annoying black or white dot on the projected image. Individual pixels cannot be repaired, if one or more pixels burn out, the entire chip has to be replaced.

4. Since LCD chips have a finite number of pixels, signal inputs that have higher resolutions must be scaled to fit the pixel field count of the particular LCD chip. For example, a typical HDTV input format of 1080i needs a native display of 1920x1080 pixels for a one-to-one display of the HDTV image. However, if your LCD chip only has a pixel field of 1024x768, the original HDTV signal must be scaled to fit the 1024x768 pixel count on the LCD chip (in addition the image will also have to be letterboxed to reproduce the correct widescreen aspect ratio). This is where CRT-based rear-projection sets can excel over an LCD rear-projection set. Since CRTs are not limited by a fixed pixel field, they are more flexible at displaying various resolutions, due to being able to variably scan the image onto the projection tube surface.