Natural Black Makes a Dramatic Difference
When you watch a movie, shadows should stand out from the background, black levels should be solid even in dark scenes, and blacks should maintain their depth when the scene becomes brighter. Which is exactly what happens with Yamaha Natural Black. Because even though it’s usually the bright colors that you notice, how a video system reproduces gradations of black is extremely important. This is what determines contrast, and is very often the difference between an image that is merely good, and one that is sharp and rich at every level of brightness.
Yamaha put a great deal of effort into improving black reproduction, and with Natural Black, we’ve achieved levels of black that are about 18% “blacker” than those of conventional projectors.
DLP™ Optical System Provides Numerous Quality Benefits
Digital Light Processing™ technology, developed by Texas Instruments, has a number of advantages that caused Yamaha to choose it as the basis for this projector. Its single panel architecture allows the use of a small, lightweight optical system, and the fact that it is a reflective rather than transmissive technology provides greater efficiency. In addition, the all-digital nature of the DLP™ system, as opposed to the analog nature of other systems, means that color and motion are more accurately controlled, resulting in superior image quality.
Extra-Large DMD™ Semiconductor
The key component of the DLP™ system is the Digital Micromirror Device™ optical semiconductor chip. This DMD™ switching unit has an array of 786,432 hinged, microscopic mirrors which operate as optical switches to create a high resolution, full color image. To maximize DMD™ quality, Yamaha uses a large 0.9-inch semiconductor that generates greater light output than the smaller 0.7-inch chip used in other DLP™ projectors, so less magnification is required and greater detail is obtained.
Unique Tri-Color Wheel Optimizes Movie Images
The DPX-1 is the first home theater projector to employ a true tri-color wheel. Conventional color wheels contain a W, or white (transparent), section to brighten them for presentations via computer. The W section is not used in movie mode, but its presence reduces movie contrast because of the extra light transmission.
By eliminating the White(clear) section, the tri-color wheel provides greater area for each of the three primary colors (red-green-blue, or RGB) that create the images. This results in much higher movie image contrast, which is 40% better than that of conventional DLP™ projectors (and note that other projectors’ contrast ratios often refer to computer mode, not movie mode). In terms of color reproduction, the tri-color wheel improves the depth and solidity of images in colorful scenes which were previously difficult to capture, and Texas Instruments’ latest RGB movie sequencing further boosts color performance.
“Fine-tuning” the video signal to achieve the highest possible quality.
The Yamaha DPX-1 ensures that movies are seen at maximum quality by automatically choosing between a 3:2 Pull- Down Cinema Progressive Circuit for film and an ordinary progressive circuit for video.
A highly precise 13-Bit Digital Gamma Correction Circuit is used to realize the full potential of the excellent gradation-producing properties of the DMD™ element. The system chooses from among five gamma correction curves depending on the input format to ensure maximum image quality.
In order to decrease video noise levels without affecting sharpness, a Field-Adaptive Noise Reduction Circuit detects the changes in brightness of the images, analyzes the images to distinguish between outlines/edges and surface areas, and provides the optimum filtering for each area.
Three-Dimensional Noise Reduction decreases the noise component related to the frame memory time axis, thus helping to effectively minimize noise that causes the reproduction of coarse images.
The DPX-1 Optical System DMD™ Projection Lens Condensing Lens Shaping Lens Tri-Color Wheel Light Source Conventional Color Wheel (RGBW) DPX-1 Tri-Color Wheel (RGB)
The 0.9-inch DMD™ chip has 786,432 mirrors (picture elements) that are set at a 17 micron pitch. Each element is mechanically switched +/- 10° in 15 micro-seconds by the attractive force of static electricity. The device has a service life of more than 100,000 hours.
