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Laser color television (laser TV), or laser color video display, is a type of television that utilizes two or more individually modulated optical (laser) rays of different colors to produce a combined spot that is scanned and projected across the image plane by a polygon-mirror system or less effectively by optoelectronic means to produce a color-television display. The systems work either by scanning the entire picture a dot at a time and modulating the laser directly at high frequency, much like the electron beams in a cathode ray tube, or by optically spreading and then modulating the laser and scanning a line at a time, the line itself being modulated in much the same way as with digital light processing (DLP).
The special case of one ray reduces the system to a monochrome display as, for example, in black and white television. This principle applies to a direct view display as well as to a (front or rear) laser projector system.
Laser TV technology began to appear in the 1990s. In the 21st century, the rapid development and maturity of semiconductor lasers and other technologies gave it new advantages.