The LCD projector was created by New Yorker Gene Dolgoff. He began plugging away on it in 1968 while still at university as a way to produce a multimedia projector that would be brighter and ultimately less bulky than the 3-CRT projectors obtainable at the time. The idea was to use a light valve to control the amount of light that passes through. This would allow the use of a very bright external light source. He finally decided to use Liquid Crystals in 1971 after attempting to use many different materials. It took him until 1984 to get an working liquid crystal display (LCD), which he then used to create the world's first LCD projector. After creating it, he saw many issues that had to be corrected including very noticeable pixels and major light losses. He then discovered new optical methods to create an efficient and bright projector and created depixelization to eliminate the appearance of the pixels. With patents all around the globe, he started Projectavision, Inc. in 1988, the world's first LCD projector company, which he took made on Nasdaq in 1990. He licensed the technology to other companies such as Panasonic and Samsung. In 1989 he received the first Darpa contract ($1 million) for contending that the US HDTV standard should use digital processing and projection. As a member of the National Association of Photographic Manufacturers (NAPM) Standards Subcommittee, IT7-3, Dolgoff along with Leon Shapiro, co-developed the worldwide ANSI standard for measurement of brightness, contrast, and resolution of electronic projectors. Presently the only manufacturer of the LCDs included in LCD projectors are Epson and Sony and Epson is the only brand reselling these to others.
Early LCD systems were used with existing overhead projectors. The LCD system did not have its own source of light rather it was built on a large disc that sat on top of the projector in the old location of the transparencies. This provided a universal solution in the era when the computer was not yet the commonly used form of display medium, creating a market for LCD projectors before their current main use became mainstream.
An advantage of using this LCD projection system in large TV sets is to allow better image quality compared to a single 50 inch television. A typical rule of thumb is that an LCD's image quality will decrease with a size increase. A way around this issue is to use a small LCD panel (or panels) and shoot them through a lens onto a rear projection screen to give a larger screen size and a decreased contrast ratio, but without the quality losses seen otherwise.
