TCO Image Size – the solution when purchasing a projector

Tags: black level, colour temperature, contrast, light output, luminance uniformity, resolution, RGB colour gamut and colour gray scale, TCO Certified Projectors 1.0, TCO Image Size

Yesterday I promised all of you more information related to our latest certification TCO Certified Projectors 1.0. Today I explain the main reason to why TCO Development decided to develop TCO Certified for projectors. …..The amount of question on projectors increased– what to think about when buying a projector and how to adjust the projector to get the optimal picture were common questions. Good picture quality and low noise are key factors when choosing a projector. During our development we found:
• Product specifications presenting an extensive list of values that most people have difficulties understanding.
• Most values presented are measured with the projector set to its extreme to maximise this single value. This means that neither are the values true information nor are product specifications possible to compare.
• Trying to understand how to combine the values to choose projector for the intended use is a challenge.
We also know that some parameters need to be within a certain range to produce a high quality picture. Those are; light output, resolution, contrast, black level, luminance uniformity, colour temperature, RGB colour gamut and colour gray scale.
Another important parameter to consider when buying a projector is in what ambient lighting condition the projector will be used in. With these issues in mind we found that most users knows how big picture size they want to have and if the projector will be used for watching film or show PowerPoint’s on. The solution is TCO Image Size – the maximum area for which the projector has been tested with all important visual ergonomic criteria considered for producing a high quality picture. TCO Image Size is tested for two ambient lighting conditions office and video. With lightning condition office the room is enlightened to allow you to take notes. In lightning condition video the room is dark but not darker than you are able to get another cup of coffee without falling over you best friend.
Conclusion – when buying a projector in the future you only have to ask for TCO Image Size for office or video purpose.
Here you find more information on TCO Image Size and how TCO Certified for Projectors will support you.

Readable, sharp display with good character contrast

Tags: aspect ratio, Character, contrast, display, pixels, resolution

A common problem with LCD displays is that the character contrast might suffer form scaling problems or bad cables. When buying a new display for your home or office it is therefore very important to analyze the need of aspect ratios before choosing a display.

Some software are designed for a certain aspect ratio and as soon as they are started they force the display into this resolution. If this resolution is not supported by the display vertical or horizontal bands of bad character contrast can occur.

How to avoid this:

• Check the supported resolutions in the specifications of the display.
• Chose a resolution that is evenly scalable to the native resolution if the display.
• Use digital interface between computer and display.
• If using analogue interface use short cable < 3m  with good shielding.
• Check the connector of the graphic card to see that it’s not damaged

The native resolution is the one that corresponds to the amount of fixed pixels in the display. Every other resolution forces the display to scale the picture by merging pixels. Displays manage this with different success. The native resolution is the maximum resolution accepted by LCD displays. It is therefore recommended to use as high resolution as possible on LCD displays. If the text becomes too small to read this can be solved by adjusting the DPI settings in Windows.