The optical performance of the reflective polarizer was investigated over three kinds of direct-lit backlights and/or different configurations of the optical sheets. The optical gain factor achieved by using the reflective polarizer increased as the diffuse nature of the optical sheet was enhanced, because of the more efficient polarization conversion. In addition, the gain factor decreased substantially in flat-lamp backlights compared to tubular-lamp backlights, which was ascribed to the high loss factor during the polarization recycling process due to the complex structure and large area of flat lamps. All these results suggested that reducing the loss factor of the backlight is very important for efficient polarization conversion and thus high optical gain of the reflective polarizer.