Rear Projection Televisions
Rear projection television is a television technology for large screens. Until the year 2000, the majority of large television sets were using rear projection technology. Another alternative is the video projector that is uning the same kind of technology, and projects the image onto a screen.
Originally, rear projection television started back in the 1970; of course the image quality could not come even close of the standard CRT television screens. Nowdays the available models are vastly improved, and provide a low budget HDTV large screen display. They are still thicker than the standard LCD and plasma, they have a much smaller footprint than their ansestors. It is so small that they can even become wall-mounted.
There are mainly three types of projection systems. The CRT rear projection television sets were the pioneering technology; they were the first to overtake the 40-inch barrier. They were also very bulky, and viewing quality at close range was simply impossible.
The latest technologies-other than the CRT- make use of DLP, Liquid Crystal and Liquid Crystal Os, all of which are capable of reaching 1080 pixels viewing quality
In the beginning of the 2000s, rear projection televisions were a viable alternative to the more expensive LCD televisions; but as LCD improved and became cheaper, the television manufacturers were slowly focusing more on the latter technology rather than producing rear projection models.
Currently there are models from Mitsubishi, Samsung, Toshiba, Sony and Panasonic; they are basically for a market of consumers who are not interested in hanging their television on the wall, as this is considered a key selling point.
It seems that Sony rear projection tv models as well as the Toshiba rear projection tv models are harder to find; companies are less enthusiastic in continuing their range of rear projection televisions.