07.22.2007 — There are a couple of features that make projectiondesign's Action M20 so remarkable —it is the first and only 720p DLP projector with TI's BrilliantColor, and it comes in so many brilliant colors.

The compact unit matches so many home theaters … and racing cars for that matter. It is sold in Maranello Blue, British Racing Green (not to be confused with the Italian shade) and Vanquish Grey. Not surprisingly, the company's Norwegian design firm, Eker Design, also designs million-dollar Koenigsegg cars. (So where's the Koenigsegg Yellow?)

On the inside, the M20 features BrilliantColor, a Texas Instrument technology that yields more realistic color reproduction. projectiondesign says it worked closely with TI to be the only company to offer this technology with true HD2+ DC3 DLP displays. DC3 (DarkChip3) technology enhances contrast; HD2+ is a 720p chip with higher contrast and black levels.

The M20 is a home cinema projector that builds on projectiondesign's pricier Action! Model II HDTV projector. Borrowing from the company's high-end projectors, the M20 has a fully decoupled sub chassis. All moving and mechanical parts are physically decoupled from the main chassis for shock and vibration absorption, keeping operating noise to a minimum.



The Action! M20 takes full advantage of projectiondesign's exclusive RealColor color management suite. Each unit is uniquely characterized and calibrated as it leaves the production line, ensuring it can reproduce a true D65 white point when switched on. RealColor has been developed by projectiondesign to "perfectly track gray scale throughout the dynamic range, and to result in perfect video color reproduction," according to the company.

The M20 uses a high precision color wheel with six segments: red, green, blue, cyan, magenta and yellow. The higher rotation speed of the color wheel, combined with greatly increased data rates in image processing, reduce visible artifacts.

UPDATE

Kevivoe at AVSforum.com writes that Mitsubishi's HC3000 is a 720p projector with BrilliantColor that came out long before PD's. But wait...

Sources tell us that indeed the HC3000 was the first projector to be marketed as a 720p with BrilliantColor, but in fact the product came out way before TI's enabling chipset, the TI3020, was available. It would indeed be challenging to ship a true BrilliantColor projector without the color processing technology that is available only with that chip.

Mitsubishi did integrate a color wheel that had both primary and secondary color segments on it -- a hallmark of BrilliantColor -- but technically (I'm told), the solution was not the integrated solution that TI has trademarked as BrilliantColor.