Projection TVs with three chips-one each for red, green and blue-deliver richer, brighter images than single-chip solutions. But all that silicon is expensive, so Sony saved money by making smaller chips, squeezing 2,074,600 pixels (enough for 1,080 lines of high-definition resolution) onto a chip that's just 0.61 inch diagonally, or 78 percent the size of those in LCD sets. Along with better color, the SXRD (Silicon X-TAL Reflective Display) chips produce an incredible contrast ratio of 5,000:1. $4,000 (50-inch), $5,000 (60-inch)

The AN110 goes where no front projector has gone before: the wall. To achieve its 3.7-inch-thick form, engineers at LG developed an L-shaped lens that shoots the picture across itself. The resulting projector can display an image of between 30 and 300 inches with a 2,500:1 contrast ratio. 1,280 x 768 DLP; HDMI output; $3,500