DLP Cubes with SmoothPicture/Wobulation or native resolution?

Some manufacturers of DLP cubes use SmoothPicture or Wobulation technology and some use native resolution.

To reduce the cost of a single chip DLP® projection engine, Texas Instruments has implemented a technology called Smooth Picture. This technology, also referred to as Wobulation, takes half of the desired native resolution of a DMD chip and oscillates it back and forth to give the appearance of full native resolution.
Smooth Picture, is basically horizontal wobulation designed to produce a 1080p (1920x1080) picture with just 960x1080 mirrors; that’s half the horizontal micro-mirrors. Wobulation works under the same principle of interlacing, showing half an image at a time, but at such a fast rate that the eye is fooled into viewing the entire picture. The technology generates two sub-images, each one having half the horizontal pixels (960) of the original image (1920). The 960 micro-mirrors tilts at a rate (120 times per second) that allows each one to generate two pixels, 60 times per second. That’s how 960 micromirrors can generate 1920 pixels on the screen at 60 frames per second. Below are examples of the same image content shown on two different displays, one utilizing Smooth Picture technology and the other a native SXGA+ DMD™ chip . The SXGA+ unit utilizes one micromirror per signal pixel, matching the signal resolution and enabling a sharp and correct high resolution image. Smooth Picture processing has two pixels that share one mirror, creating a softer image with perceived high resolution.
The downside of this technology is that it reduces sharpness since the 1920x1080 image displayed on the screen is not painted by the same amount of physical micro-mirrors.
Wobulation is the humorously coined term when a single mirror is used for two pixels. The mirror spends 1/120th of a second on one pixel and then wobbles over to the adjacent pixel, and spends 1/120th of a second there. Therefore, using the same mirror to produce 2 pixels in 1/60th of a second. Once again, this rapid motion is too fast for our eyes to see. The advantage of wobulation is a reduction in manufacturing costs since only half the mirrors are needed. Some also say that the picture is smoother and flows better. The disadvantage of wobulation is lower sharpness and lower clarity levels.



Especially when displaying data the image is dramatically bad compared to native or true resolution displays.

Because the native resolution of a Smooth Picture device is smaller than the XGA and SXGA+ resolutions of most data images, these images are reproduced with only half of the information at any give instant. While the Smooth Picture process reproduces an image that the eye perceives as full resolution, this process is not able to display the full resolution all at once and has a tendency to create a soft image. This approach works well for typical video signals, but the net loss of resolution and sharpness can affect how computer data and graphics are displayed.