Televisions have evolved massively over the past couple of years, going from liquid crystals to organic LEDS to quantum dots, but fundamentally, the principle behind a television remains the same pixels light up in different colors, coming together to make a picture. New technologies have just simply tried to perfect this, making each pixel smaller, brighter, and also simultaneously darker. However, what if I told you that a lot of new technology could be just recreated by repurposing old tech? DIY Perks, the YouTube channel known for turning discarded electronics into brilliant creations, has done exactly thattaking a broken LCD TV and a dated DLP projector and transforming them into a display that delivers contrast levels rivaling OLED panels. Its an experiment that shouldnt work, and yet, with some clever engineering, it does.The project started with an aging LCD TV, one that had lost its backlight but still had a functional display panel. The problem with old LCDs is their inability to produce deep blacks, a limitation caused by their reliance on always-on backlighting. Modern LED TVs try to fix this with local dimming, where different sections of the backlight can be dimmed independently. But because the number of zones is relatively small, this method introduces a halo effect known as blooming, where bright areas bleed into dark ones. The ideal solution would be a backlight with thousands of independent dimming zones, but that kind of precision is expensive to manufacture. Instead of accepting these limitations, DIY Perks realized that a high-resolution projector might be the missing piece of the puzzle.Designer: DIY PerksAt first glance, using a projector as a backlight sounds absurd. After all, projectors are designed to shine images onto a wall, not illuminate the rear of an LCD panel. But even an outdated 1024768 projector has over 700,000 individual pixels, making it vastly more precise than the coarse LED dimming zones found in high-end TVs. The idea was simple: strip the LCD TV down to its raw panel, place a diffusion sheet behind it to evenly distribute light, and use the projector to create a dynamic backlight where each pixel can function as its own dimming zone. In theory, this would eliminate blooming entirely and allow for stunning contrast.Stripping the TV down was the first challenge. With careful disassembly, the fragile LCD panel was freed from its housing and placed into a custom frame for stability. The diffusion sheet, the thickest layer of the original backlight, was salvaged to ensure smooth light distribution. The projector itself needed modification too. Normally, a DLP projector creates color by shining white light through a spinning color wheel, but since this build only required pure light, the color wheel was removed. This single tweak massively boosted brightness, ensuring enough light reached the LCD panel for a usable image.The first test was promising but flawed. The projected image didnt align perfectly with the LCD, causing ghosting and other artifacts. This was where software processing came in. Using OBS Studio (a free video-editing software used by livestreamers), DIY Perks applied a luma key filter to create a luminance map, ensuring only dark areas received dimmed backlight. A glow filter was also added to softly expand the illumination zones, reducing alignment issues. With these tweaks, the system suddenly worked astonishingly well. Blacks were deep, highlights remained crisp, and the screen took on an OLED-like appearance, despite being built from discarded components.Side-by-side comparisons against a modern LED TV made the improvements clear. While the DIY screen couldnt match the sheer brightness of an LED panel, its black levels were superior. Scenes with strong contrasts looked cleaner, with no visible blooming. A simple white cursor on a black background showed how precise the backlight was, tracking each point of light with pinpoint accuracy. The improvement was undeniable.The biggest obstacle left was practicality. A standard long-throw projector needed to sit meters behind the screen, making it difficult to integrate into a typical living room. One possible solution was switching to a short-throw projector, which could sit directly behind the TV. Another option involved mirrors, using a ceiling-mounted mirror to bounce light down to a second mirror behind the TV, allowing the projector to be wall-mounted. While not the most elegant setup, it made the concept more viable.Beyond this proof of concept, theres potential for even greater refinement. Using multiple projectors could increase brightness, making the display more usable in daylight. Replacing the projectors bulb with LEDs could improve efficiency and color accuracy. With so much room for experimentation, DIY Perks has opened the discussion to their forum and Discord community, encouraging others to build on the idea. Considering how far this project has come from such humble beginnings, its exciting to think about whats next. And if youve gotten this far, yes, the process is laborious at best and its just easier to spring $1,300 for an LED but if youre mad enough, even just a little, this project has already excited you enough to search for broken tech on craigslist.The post Homemade OLED? This DIYer Built a High-Contrast TV From Scrap For Free first appeared on Yanko Design.