How a Rear Projection TV Works

If your the curious type of person who just has to know how everything works. "I know I am." Then there are lots of things out there for you to discover. Maybe you have watched your projection TV too long, and started to wonder just how it works. If this is you, your the type of person who just has to know. Then you have come to the right place.

Projection televisions work based on the principle of three light sources. Upon opening your Projection model TV, you would find inside three lenses, a mirror, a semi glazed screen, and five PCBs(printed circuit boards). An interesting find, based on the information you now have. Can you guess where each component should be and what it does?

When you turn the TV on a surge of power goes into a transformer. The transformer turns that AC into DC current. This current passes through a series of capacitors to filter out impurities, and is eventually split off into several different voltages, to feed the many components of the PCBs.

Once the power has reached your main video processor, the video processor checks what channel or line the Television is on. It then checks for a signal from the tuner, if a signal is detected it interprets that signal. that signal then is passed on to the convergence ICs.

the signal takes the form of three images, red, blue, and green. Each of these images is then sent to a separate projector. These projectors look in appearance much like a CRT tube. Once the projectors receive this signal it's displayed in brilliant white on each projectors. These projectors shoot the beam through 3 colored lenses, and each projector has it's own lens.

Based on the amount of brightness of each image it generates a color control feature. For instance, if you shine a really bright white light through a green lens, you get a bright green Right. Just the same if you shoot the same light through blue you get bright blue, and a darker light will produce a darker image.

By using light through the lenses each projector is capable of displaying a multitude of shades of the same color. Each of these projections then is shot through a magnifying lens onto a perfectly angled mirror. Since the beam increases exponentially you could skip the mirror but you would need a long straight corridor for the TV.

By angling the mirror the beam can travel further before reaching it's destination, the semi glazed screen. By the time the beam reaches the screen it has reached it's proper size, and with the screen being glazed over the light emitted isn't too strong. If you wanted to increase the size of your rear projection TV you only need increase the screen size and Depth of the box holding it, fascinating no?

Well that should satisfy your curiosity for a while at least until your TV breaks and you have an excuse to take a look without your wife/husband screaming at you for taking it apart out of nothing more then curiosity.