Patent ID: 7535435

Claim:
A projector to project and display an image, comprising: a light source; a liquid crystal light valve; a light quantity adjusting portion having elements in a one-to-one correspondence with respective pixels in the liquid crystal light valve, the light quantity adjusting portion being a shutter array, the elements adjusting a quantity of projected light by switching between two states for projecting and for not projecting according to time-divisional control, each element being able to individually switch to one of the two states while another element is in the other of the two states; a modulation control portion that modulates light emitted from the light source by controlling the liquid crystal light valve and the light quantity adjusting portion in accordance with image signal representing the image; the modulation control portion controlling the light quantity adjusting portion by referring to a shutter look up table, the shutter look up table defining a light transmittance of the shutter array according to gray-scale values of colors specified by the image signal, the shutter look up table having at least one gray-scale value at which the light transmittance changes discontinuously, the light transmittance having a first constant value for gray-scale values less than the at least one gray-scale value, the light transmittance having a second constant value for gray-scale values more than the at least one gray-scale value, and the second constant value being greater than the first constant value; a projection portion that projects the modulated light.