What Makes LCD Projectors Tick? A Deep Dive Into Their Inner Workings
In the world of projection technology, various components have specialized purposes and roles to fulfill. These small - and big - parts all play a vital role in creating the projected image in the intended manner. As the technology advanced, these components changed over the years – becoming more efficient, affordable, and effective. Today, we expand on the concept of LCD projectors by looking closely into how they work and why they are so effective. First, let’s get a better understanding of each of the parts that make up a functional LCD projector.
The Parts of an LCD Projector
LCD projectors have evolved to harness the power of different components. Typically, an LCD projector is made up of a few essential parts.
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A Light Source: This is the main light used to create the projected image. These are usually either a lamp, LED, or type of laser. The main objective is to create a strong white light. This is because white light is made up of all different colors. Many projectors use what is known as a Metal-Halide lamp. The light source will ultimately influence the brightness and color accuracy of the image.
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Dichroic Mirrors and Regular Mirrors: An LCD projector will have at least 2 dichroic mirrors and 3 regular mirror panels inside. While a regular mirror will reflect light uniformly across a broad spectrum, a dichroic mirror only reflects specific wavelengths – or simply put, light colors in this case.
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Three RGB LCD Panels: The Liquid Crystal Display panels are naturally the main elements of an LCD projector. These panels are made up of two sheets of polarized glass panels with liquid crystals sandwiched in the middle. Each panel has its own cells – or pixels - which are each controlled by individual transistors. Each pixel’s transistor can then apply an electrical current to the liquid crystal within the cell. The liquid crystals will change their structure once an electrical charge is sent through them. By rapidly changing the alignment of these crystals, the LCD panels can create a range of colors to produce the final image. The number of pixels on an LCD panel determines the resolution of the display. Three LCD panels exist for each color used in the projection – red, green, and blue.
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The Prism or Dichroic Combiner Cube: This is the final place where the light combines to create an image. The dichroic prism will divide light into red, green, and blue then overlap the images from each LCD panel to create a final multi-colored image. The three primary colors are recombined by reflecting the red and blue light and passing through the green light.
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The Lens: There are polarizing and projection lenses for an LCD projector. A polarizing lens will concentrate the light source beam and then polarize the light to make the beam brighter. On the other hand, a projection lens will magnify the image that comes out of the combining prism and project it onto the projection screen.
Now, all these components need to work together in harmony to produce a high-quality, color-accurate image at the end. Now, let’s see how these parts do exactly that.
How Does an LCD Projector Work?
Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) projectors work with an optical light engine and use liquid crystal panels to modulate light and project an image onto a screen. First, an intense white light source is used then split through dichroic mirrors that only reflect a specific color at a specific angle away from the main light beam.
The red mirror will only reflect red light away, allowing the blue and green to pass through, then the green mirror will only reflect green light away, allowing only blue to pass through where it is also directed away – creating 3 light beams of different colors.
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After the light is split, more mirrors are used to focus each beam on a corresponding red, blue, or green LCD panel. These are glass panels filled with liquid crystals which are excited by an electrical charge sent through each pixel. Now, you might be asking why only these three colors are being used. Well, that’s because the computer system inside the projector can combine various amounts of red, green, and blue light to create any color in the spectrum.
The LCD panels act as a type of filter – only allowing certain amounts of polarized light to pass through. The filtered light beams are now almost ideal; however, a final image still needs to be formed. This is when the projector takes the three light beams in the dichroic combiner cube where the image is combined into one multicolored image that is then beamed through the lens and projected onto the screen as we see it.
Leading an Evolving LCD Projector Revolution
From the beginning, LCD projector technology has helped to create seamless image displays and has had several applications outside of entertainment alone. The technology uses an intelligent, precise, and evolving process to produce images that directly challenge traditional modern media reproductions. Even now, Formovie boasts a variety of advanced LCD projectors like the Xming Episode One and Xming Page One – both offering native 1080P full HD resolution, impeccable color accuracy, and superior brightness and quality. See a better future through better technology with us as we navigate the advanced LCD technology landscape.
