Patent ID: 8866977

Claim:
A projector comprising: an illumination optical system; an incident-side polarizing plate which is disposed at a position at which light emitted from the illumination optical system is incident; a wire grid element which is disposed at a position at which the light passing through the incident-side polarizing plate is incident; a liquid crystal panel which is disposed at a position at which the light passing through the wire grid element is incident; and an exit-side polarizing plate which is disposed at a position at which light reflected by the wire grid element in the light modulated by the liquid crystal panel and incident on the wire grid element is incident, wherein a reference surface is perpendicular to the thickness direction of a liquid crystal layer of the liquid crystal panel, a reference direction is parallel to the reference surface, a rotational angle φ 0 is an angle between an alignment axis of the liquid crystal layer projected to the reference surface and the reference direction, a rotational angle φ 1 is an angle between a transmission axis of the incident-side polarizing plate projected to the reference surface and the reference direction, a rotational angle φ 2 is an angle between a transmission axis of the wire grid element projected to the reference surface and the reference direction, a rotational angle φ 3 is an angle between the reference direction and a transmission axis of the exit-side polarizing plate projected to the wire grid element and further projected to the reference surface, a lightness Tw is a lightness of the liquid crystal panel at a lightest display, a lightness T W — MAX is a lightness of the liquid crystal panel at a lightest display when the rotational angle φ 0 is 45°, the rotational angle φ 1 is 0°, the rotational angle φ 2 is 0°, and the rotational angle φ 3 is 90°, and all Equations (1) to (3) below are satisfied: 44°≦φ 0 -φ 2 <45° or 45°<φ 0 -φ 2 ≦45° (1) f1≦φ 1 ≦f2 (2), where f 1 =0.191×φ 2 2 +0.986×φ 2 −14.435 and f 2 =0.191×φ 2 2 +0.986×φ 2 +14.435, and 0.95 ×T W — MAX ≦T W <T W — Max (3).