Darkchip4 Technology

The DLP booth showed off some incredible new technology from Texas Instruments today including a new DarkChip4 DLP projector from SIM2. This was a 3 chip, 1080p DLP projector featuring the new chipset producing trillions of colors combined with a native contrast ratio of 15,000:1. Additionally, there was a static demonstration of a DLP HDTV with DarkChip 4 and LED illumination with a stated contrast performance of 100,000 to 1. DarkChip 4 makes modest improvement to Darkchip3 such as a darker wafer that is reported to deliver a 30% higher contrast ratio "depending upon the application" (is that vague enough for everybody?) All DLP product lines, including DLP HDTVs, DLP 1-chip projectors and DLP 3-chip projectors currently feature products with various chipset iterations of DarkChip technology. The new DarkChip4 will be available in a number of products in 2008. Among the companies taking advantage of the new technology are SIM2 and Samsung, though more are certain to come.

The DarkChip 4 process was originally developed for the high brightness and contrast picture quality requirements of the digital cinema industry. The contrast improvements from DarkChip 4 are achieved by advances in mirror design lithography and other proprietary process changes. The mirror tilt ratios are the same as DarkChip3.

For more information, please visit www.dlp.com.