I've been a proponent of DLP over other display technologies like CRT, plasma, and LCD (direct view and projection) for a while.  I've gotten to the point where I can somewhat easily tell the technology from a glance at the screen alone. All the current technologies have distinguishing characteristics:

• CRT
  • Direct view - The screen is obviously the front of a CRT
  • Rear Projection - The image is more fuzzy and floor models usually have horrible convergence issues
• Plasma - Beautiful, bright image.  Super thin
• DLP - Beautiful bright image, but rainbow effect if you shake your eyeballs really fast on high-contrast images (caused by the color wheel)
• LCD
  • Direct View - Thin, but not as thin as plasma, and duller than plasma.  Backlit
  • Rear projection - No convergence issues, no rainbow effect, not as bright as DLP

I was browsing in Best Buy the other day and ran into a JVC set whose technology I could not place.  It was obviously rear-projection and it was as beautiful and bright as DLP and plasma, but had no rainbow effect.  I was stumped.  I felt better when I examined it further and found it was a technology I was not familiar with.  It was HD-ILA.  It's based on what they call a direct-drive image light amplifier chip.  It's a reflective technology like DLP, but they use a 3-color process rather than a color wheel, which explains the missing rainbow effect.  It also has a price that's comparable to the DLP sets. Obviously, you could acheive the same results with 3 DLP chips, but at a higher cost.  A further benefit is that they can pack the pixels' reflective surfaces closer together, so more of the lamp light is reflected, so the image can be brighter.

There are a few things I'm still trying to figure out.  They are only using one lamp for all three colors, which may be possible as a result of using the lamp's brightness more efficiently, but I'd still like to break one open and take a look.  JVC's presentations don't have a picture of the insides.  From the presentation, it sounds like they are not using hinges, but perhaps controlling the reflective properties of the pixels themselves to turn pixels on and off. I'm still learning about the technology, but it seems this new player may be the way to go on a new set, which may be closer than I would like, given the problems I've been having with my old Toshiba set lately.

[UPDATE 1:42pm] The technology behind this is LCOS, which is a variant of LCD that has evidently become more manufacturable recently. So, the RGB sub-pixels are on the surface itself and a single lamp simply reflects off of the surface and is focused onto the screen.  This means it avoids convergence issues entirely, which was a concern of mine.  Another perk is that, if the subpixels are aligned the same as LCD, ClearType should work with this technology.

[UPDATE 1:57pm] Here's a review of the set I saw.  Pretty good and fairly humorous.

[UDPATE 1/5/2005 12:19pm] After some more reviews and research, it appears that JVC's D-ILA implementation of LCOS uses three chips, and I would think that eliminates my excitement about ClearType and a convergence problem free set. I'd still like to see the physical configuration. Most reviews recommend it, but the numbers seem to indicate that the current line is targetted at the average consumer rather than at videophiles (super-bright, high black levels, etc).  Unfortunately, I always would like videophile performance at average consumer budget.