Patent ID: 6909473

Claim:
A display apparatus comprising: (a) a light source for forming a beam of light; (b) a pre-polarizer for polarizing said beam of light to provide a polarized beam of light; (c) a wire grid polarization beamsplitter for receiving said polarized beam of light, for transmitting said polarized beam of light having a first polarization, and for reflecting said polarized beam of light having a second polarization, wherein sub-wavelength wires on said wire grid polarization beamsplitter face a reflective liquid crystal device; (d) wherein said reflective liquid crystal device selectively modulates said polarized beam of light having a first polarization to encode image data thereon in order to form a modulated beam, and then reflects said modulated beam back to said wire grid polarization beamsplitter; (e) a compensator, located between said wire grid polarization beamsplitter and said reflective liquid crystal device, for conditioning the polarization states of oblique and skew rays of said modulated beam to provide a compensated modulated beam; (f) wherein said wire grid polarization beamsplitter reflects said compensated modulated beam; (g) a polarization analyzer which removes residual light of an opposite polarization; and (h) image-forming optics for forming an image from said compensated modulated beam.