Patent 7963657 was granted and assigned to Sanyo Electric Co Ltd on June, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An imager is shifted with respect to an optical axis of a refractive optical system. Thereby, a throw distance of a projector is shortened. A wavelength-selective half wavelength plate for rotating a polarization direction of green light beams is disposed between a dichroic prism and the refractive optical system in such a manner that the polarization direction of the green light beams is in parallel to the shifting direction. Thereby, the green light beams are incident onto the refractive optical system as P-polarized beams, whereby a transmittance of the green light beams in the refractive optical system is increased, while suppressing lowering of the light amount of the green light beams, and color non-uniformity resulting from lowering of the light amount of the green light beams.