Digital Light Processing (DLP®) technology works by reflecting light off microscopic mirrored panels called Digital Micro-Mirror Devices (DMD). Each DMD consists of millions of tiny mirrors, each acting as a single reflective pixel in the resolution of the projected image.

A native HD resolution image is made up of 1080 horizontal lines each containing 1920 pixels. By the same measure, a DLP projector with HD resolution would use either 1 or 3 DMD chips (higher-quality projectors use three chips, one each for the Red, Green and Blue color signals) made up of 1080 rows of mirrors, with each row containing 1920 microscopic mirrors.