DLP Displays
DLP, or Digital Light Processing, is technology used to make rear and front projectors. Although not as mature as CRT, DLP has been around for two decades and is generally considered the successor to CRT in the realm of projection. It's particularly prevalent in the world of front projectors, due in part to the unwieldy size/weight and high cost of CRT front projection units.
DLP uses an array of mirrors to reflect light to fixed (pixel) locations on the screen. Red, Green, and Blue are displayed separately, and the human eye combines them into a single color. This is because consumer DLP configurations only use a single chip. If 3 DLP chips are used - one for Red, one for Blue, and one for Green - all three could be displayed simultaneously. To reproduce black pixels, mirrors pivot on their hinges to point away from the screen. The color is provided by a color wheel placed in between the light source and the mirrors. As the color wheel rotates, the light is cycled on when the desired color (red, green, or blue) is in between the light source and the mirror. A newer technology, LED DLP, replaces the single light source and color wheel with individual colored LEDs that light up one at a time to produce a pixel.
Advantages
Compared to the CRT projectors they were originally intended to replace, DLP displays are much smaller and lighter. They also use much less power, and therefore generate much less heat. Image quality is very good, and there are many 1080p DLP HDTVs available. DLP also doesn't suffer from the "screen door" effect that many LCD displays have where the spaces between pixels are visible. Compared to other projection TVs they're reasonably slim and don't require the massive pedestal that a CRT has.
