DIY 'Infinity Contrast' Display (projector-LCD-backlight mod) development thread

Great idea, and It's nice that it worked out of the box (without requiring GPU or FPGA).

A couple of future ideas you might like to try out:

1. Projectors can be paralleled easily, so can you take 4 el-cheapo 1080p projectors and parallel them to make an expensive 4k projector? Aligning them will be tricky but with your mechanical skills it would only have to be done once. With a GPU or FPGA you could calibrate it in SW and make the image seamless. 

A bunch of cheap VGA projectors could make a HD projector too. The benefit is that they are driven by LEDs (so no expensive bulb), the cooling requirements are vastly reduced (since the heat is distributed), and the optics are smaller and therefore cheaper.

2. If you use the sun as a backlight you can have a projector that uses very little power, only the electronics and the LCD. It could run off solar too. No cooling fans means silent operation. It would be broad-spectrum (so perfect). In theory it could be installed and run in a darkened hut in the middle of Africa. With your backlight dimming approach it would compensate for clouds and dimming.

Posted by: @hasmanean

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2. If you use the sun as a backlight you can have a projector that uses very little power, only the electronics and the LCD. It could run off solar too. No cooling fans means silent operation. It would be broad-spectrum (so perfect). In theory it could be installed and run in a darkened hut in the middle of Africa. With your backlight dimming approach it would compensate for clouds and dimming.

I was just thinking about it, it would be very, very economical, I can only add that we use sunlight with tubes in the room, as well as solar panels that will produce the most sufficient minimum for control boards. It's just going to be eternal TV. The idea is very powerful, guy, go patent it))

Could you try exploring the idea of combining this with the dual-LCD monitor concept? Specifically, the back LCD and backlight could be used in place of the projector to create a light map. Although the backlight might not be bright enough, I think it is worth a try.

The biggest hurdle with using a projector as a dynamic backlight mask is handling the edge alignment and diffusion to avoid those noticeable halo or blur artifacts where the sharp backlight edges don't perfectly line up with the front LCD panel.
Testing the light map or rendering out custom mask profiles to smooth out the edges is key. For anyone experimenting with custom video masks or trying to quickly test how different blur intensities affect the backlight map on test feeds, using a tool like https://zimblu.co/blur-video/ is super handy to quickly dial in the right amount of softening without waiting for heavy software to render it out.

[MOD] The supplied link is an advert for an AI service which is deceptively dressed so I've unlinked it.