December 15th, 2009
A screen-door is great for keeping the bugs out but it wouldn’t have the same positive effect when placed between a client and your slideshow.
All digital projectors are susceptible to a pixelated image. It’s also known as “the screen-door effect” or “fixed-pattern noise.” This visual artifact makes the whole screen look like there’s a small rectangular or hexagonal grid of black lines running throughout the image.
Whether it’s an LCD or DLP machine, pixelation is simply a matter of how the unit shoots each dot of information at the screen. The tiny electronics that surround each pixel deep inside the projector are what block the light from shining perfectly evenly.
The first digital projectors (in the 80s) had quite a problem with fixed-pattern noise, but technology has improved, making it much less noticeable. Still, the screen-door effect can be as distracting as letting a fly in. Here are four remedies:
Go DLP: DLP projectors are much less susceptible to the tiny black grid compared to LCD models. While there will be some minor pixelation, it’s not as perceptible as with the LCD counterparts. Luckily, Projector123 only offers DLP projectors.
Choose a higher-resolution projector: Resolution is a matter of how many pixels your projector unleashes on the screen. (You can read more about resolution here.) Higher-resolution projectors (like our 3000 Lumen model), display more pixels at once. More pixels may mean more lines — but it also means that those lines are much smaller.
What if you already have the projector? Try these solutions:
Move viewers away from the screen: The farther your audience is from the screen, the less they’ll be able to see the individual pixels and the lines between them. Afterall, every digital image looks pixelated at a very close distance.
Adjust the focus: A sure-fire way to reduce the screen door artifact is by playing with the focus a bit. This will cause the lenses inside the projector to optically blend pixels together. Start with the projector perfectly focused – so that the screen effect is crisp and visible – then move the focus ring ever so slightly. You want the pixels to blend together without intersecting, which will blur out the black lines in between. Be careful, though, because this ever-so-slight blur can cause eyestrain for viewers over a long period of time.
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