How to choose a true 4K home projector

Friends who are concerned about the projector industry should know that with the increase of 4K film sources, more and more manufacturers have also launched 4K Home Projector. However, in the eyes of many people, there has always been a debate about "what is true 4K" for 4K projectors, which means that the projector supports 4K resolution natively from the display chip to the lens, or that no matter what the process is, as long as the final projection of 4K resolution rate screen on the line? However, considering the cost and viewing experience, the author can't help but think about what kind of products consumers need, do people really care about "true and false 4K", and whether there is a big gap between the two Can everyone feel it? This article will take you to find out.

An important component of the projector - the display chip

The reason for the above debate is that the main controversy at present is whether the display chip is native 4K resolution. As we all know, almost all mainstream smart projectors in China use the DLP solution. After adopting this solution, the key factor affecting the resolution is the size of the DMD chip. It is worth mentioning that the smart projectors we can see using the DLP solution basically use DMD chips provided by Texas Instruments.

If the DMD chip is to be capable of native 4K resolution, the size needs to be a whopping 1.38 inches. A DMD chip of this size not only puts forward higher requirements on the internal structure and heat dissipation of the projection, but more importantly, its cost is too high! Therefore, it is rare to see a smart projector with such a large-sized DMD chip on the market.

Some people may say that since everyone does not have such a large-sized DMD chip, are the models on the market that claim to be 4K projectors false propaganda? The author does not think so. The reason is, what exactly do we want in 4K? According to the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), as long as the projected picture reaches 8.3 million pixels, it is true 4K.

And this allows the upstream manufacturer Texas Instruments to have a new solution - XPR (pixel shift technology). Because of the existence of XPR technology, we can find that most of the DMD chips on the market known as the best 4K projectors are 0.47 inches in size. This is because the chip can be horizontal and vertical in four directions clockwise at 240Hz. The pixels are shifted, so that the effective pixels reach 8.3 million, and 4K display is realized. For example, the latest RS Pro released by XGIMI uses a 0.47-inch DMD chip. Therefore, in one sentence, as long as the projected picture has 8.3 million pixels, we can identify it as a Full Hd Projector.