A visual artifact associated with single-chip DLP-based rear- and front-projection displays. Fortunately, only a few people see these momentary flashes of color, and fewer still find these "rainbows" to be distracting. For those unlucky few, rainbows typically occur when the viewer's eyes dart away from the screen. Rainbows result from DLP's use of a color wheel, which causes the three primary colors — red, green, and blue — to be projected sequentially, rather than continuously. The latest DLP-based displays incorporate improved color-wheel technology, which minimizes this effect.
On DLP projectors, the rainbow effect is created by the inability of the DLP color wheels to refresh pixels fast enough, resulting in some color separation on the edges of fast-moving objects. This results in an appearance of artifacts on the screen when watching video. Some people are more prone than others to seeing the rainbow effect.