The LCDs used in projection systems are most often small reflective or transmissive panels set off by a strong arc lamp source. A number of lenses enlarges the reflected or transmitted image and displays it onto the screen. With front-projection systems the LCD is placed on the side of the screen as the viewer, but in rear-projection systems the screen is set off from behind. Projectors of more expense and performance sometimes utilise three distinct LCD panels, casting separate red, green, and blue images that combine to create a coloured display on the screen.

The increasing desire for film displays has granted a growing emphasis on the switching speed of liquid crystals. This has necessitated the manufacture of items using smectic liquid crystals, particular types of which emit a quicker electro-optical response than nematic liquid crystals. The surface-stabilized ferroelectric liquid crystal (SSFLC) display is in the current day the most complex smectic device. With it the liquid crystal molecules are set out in perpendicular layers to the substrate planes, which are differentiated by one or two micrometres, and within the layers the molecules are on a slant, as shown in the figure. The host liquid crystal possesses optically active molecules, and a slight result of the optical activity and the tilt of the molecules is the presence of a permanent charge separation, or ferroelectric dipole, comparable to the ferromagnetic dipole of a magnet. The direction of this dipole is perpendicular to the tilt direction of the molecules and throughout the plane of the layers. Therefore, there exists a permanent charge separation throughout the liquid crystal layer in the SSFLC, and its sign is directly paired to the tilt direction of the molecules. An applied voltage of the correct sign can reverse the direction of this dipole in tens of microseconds and by doing so reverse the tilt direction of the molecules. The respective change in optical properties can cause a change from light to dark if or when one or more polarizers are used.

SSFLC devices have been commercialized for larger passive-matrix displays, but their cost and complex nature has hindered them from making any significant effect on the market. Small transmissive and reflective active-matrix SSFLC displays, however, have displayed some possibility for use as parts in projection systems or as viewfinders in digital cameras. Their fast reaction allows them to be employed in time-sequential colour systems, in which costly colour filters are taken out for a coloured backlight that flashes red, green, and blue in rapid pulsing (approx 100 cycles in a second). For example, the liquid crystal might be switched to a transmissive state for the red and green periods then to a nontransmissive state for the blue period, creating the result that the eye sees an average of red and green light, or the colour yellow.

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