Patent ID: 7021769

Claim:
A rear projector in which an image projected to a rear side of a screen is viewed from a front side of said screen, said rear projector comprising: a light source for emitting an illumination light in a parallel direction with a surface of said screen; a color-separating optical system for separating said illumination light into at least three-primary-color lights; a plurality of image display panels for modulating said color-separated lights of blue, green and red to emit projection lights representing a blue image, a green image and a red image respectively, each of said image display panels having a rectangular display surface for displaying a correspondence image corresponding to each primary-color ingredient; a color-synthesizing optical system for synthesizing said projection lights of blue, green and red emitted from the respective image display panels to produce a projection light of a full-color image; a projection optical system for enlarging said color-synthesized full-color image to project it to said screen; a reflex optical element formed with a reflecting surface for bending an optical path of said projection light; a plane mirror disposed between said reflex optical element and said screen; and wherein said image display panels are disposed in a posture that longer sides of the respective display surfaces are perpendicular to a reference plane being parallel with paths of the illumination light and the projection light advancing in said color separating and synthesizing optical systems, and said reflex optical element is disposed in a posture that a first plane, which includes incidence and reflex optical axes of the projection light reflected by the reflecting surface of the reflex optical element, is perpendicular to a second plane, which includes incidence and reflex optical axes of the projection light reflected by said plane mirror.