Comments on: Best 3D Glasses – Passive Polarized vs Active Shutter 3D technology

By: Morg

Morg — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:45:38 +0000

I want to agree with Edison Birth. I have not purchased a 3d set yet as I have been sold on passive glasses. The flashing motion in the active glasses gives me a headache, whereas the passive technology does not. Ironically the passive vs active subject is the exact reason I stumbled onto this site in the first place. I have yet to find anyone truly do a professional side by side comparison of the technologies. All the articles I have found are written from a secondhand standpoint. Meaning they state what the “industry facts” are… but clearly haven’t compared the performance of the technologies. Currently LG is selling a complete line of passive 3d models in the UK. Other than that, JVC has a single professional model. I want more hard info on the REAL….TESTED differences. I have seen the passive JVC (very briefly, once) and the 3d performance was outstanding. I have also seen numerous active setups and all had crossover and ghosting caused by missed lcd flashing and all also gave me eye strain…….I’ll be waiting for more info on passive glasses technology……..

By: Edison Birth

Edison Birth — Sun, 30 May 2010 14:53:43 +0000

Ed, your 3D TV guide is excellent; thank you very much for providing us, consumers, with your unbiased technical expertise and comments. However, you should consider revising/updating your guide and verdict on active versus passive glasses for 3D TVs. In my opinion, Active Shutter based 3D TVs, should no longer be recommended, despite the big push by the major 3D TV manufacturers in that direction.
Reason: on May 28, 2010, a new 47-inch TFT LCD flat panel 3D TV was introduced at the Society for Information Display (SID) trade show in Seattle. This 3D TV set works with very inexpensive passive polarized glasses, which are free from flicker and crosstalk, and therefore, they do not cause dizziness, eye tiredness and headaches, as the active shutter 3D glasses do.
Therefore, I have decided to postpone buying my 3D TV set until I can get one of those with passive circular polarized glasses in the stores.

By: kammodo

kammodo — Fri, 07 May 2010 15:14:07 +0000

“Of course, chances are that in the next few years someone will develop a 3D TV that doesn’t require glasses”

Phillips 3D WOW technology has been out for a little while now. I believe this requires no glasses.

By: Best3DTV

Best3DTV — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:15:40 +0000

Agreed Ed, but I do think it will be quite some time before we get to that kind of technology. Additionally, if the regular goggles (without augmented reality) don’t catch on, it might be harder for folks to put more money into developing the augmented reality stuff.

Having said that, I’m sure DARPA has probably been pouring massive amounts of money into augmented reality glasses. Hopefully something good will come out in the next decade or so.

By: Ed

Ed — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:05:46 +0000

I don’t see any principal problems with having goggles that display a common “3d-tv” in the living room as am augmented reality item, thus allowing you to see the other people in the room just as you do today.
Sure, some technology development is still needed, but I think it would be pessimistic to consider it unrealistic for “family viewing”.

/ed

By: Zerofool

Zerofool — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:43:26 +0000

Oops, I didn’t see there was previous page . The PC monitor I was talking about is the iZ3D one, and it uses two LCD panels – one for both colored images, and the second one to polarize each pixel individually, so each eye gets different amount of the brightness for each pixel (it uses linear polarization). I’m interested what the upcoming 27″ model of theirs will offer in terms of ghosting and 2D image quality.

By: Zerofool

Zerofool — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:19:31 +0000

Another thing I didn’t see here:
Active shutter technology greatly reduces the brightness of the viewed image, and requires the display to be able to produce much brighter image in 3D mode than in regular 2D mode (probably plasmas will have slight problem there, I can’t wait too see one in action). Passive polarized glasses in other hand affect the brightness very little, and this is another advantage they offer.

Flat panel TVs that use polarized solution basically have polarization layer on the front, with each line polarized differently, thus reducing the vertical resolution for each eye in half. There are other (better) polarized solutions for flat displays which produce full resolution per eye, but currently implemented only in PC monitors.

HMDs (head mounted displays) are ultimately the best possible 3D solution, but currently only offer low resolution for the mini-displays. And they are not suitable for family viewing, only for 3D gamers/enthusiasts.

By: Ed

Ed — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 08:15:35 +0000

I guess scepticism can be translated into anticipated number of years we have to wait

- Small LCD-screens were around for ages before they eventually replaced CRT:s for TV:s.
- I am sure many dreamt of color TV in the era of B&W.
- etc

And frankly, since 3d vision is about seeing two slightly different pictures with your two eyes, generating them both on the same flat surface is not the most logical way. In some sense, it is a heritage from the technology we have for 2d, where a flat surface is a very sensible idea.

In a way it is like generating stereo sound from a single speaker, with earplugs filtering out the sounds not intended for the bear it is in, until you realize that you can have two separate speakers. It makes (some) sense only because it starts from how you generated mono-sound.

Cheers /ed

By: Best3DTV

Best3DTV — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 07:38:22 +0000

Nice points Ed. It certainly would be exciting to see that technology being made possible. Perhaps I am overly skeptical about the goggles thing because Virtual Reality via Headsets and goggles was always, just around the corner ever since I was a kid. I’ve always been excited about it but the progress made so far has been disappointing to say the least

By: Ed

Ed — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 07:18:12 +0000

I think most of the comments can be applied to any point in the evoluiton of TV.

- The large LCD-screen was a big challenge long ago, while 28″ CRTs was very feasible.
- the color depth of a modern TV is a waste of space, since the eye cannot see color very well except the point at which you focus.
- etc

Regarding the “no longer one TV family experience”, you could still make the whole thing an augmented reality thing, where you see a “TV” in 3d in the far end of the room, the size you want, but if you turn your head, you see your wife just like she is.

The “one TV” has obvious disadvantage:
- Only one person sits straiht in front of it. Everyone else gets a distorted perspective
- It takes space in the room (even a flat, thin LED TV uses wall space)
- It is more expensive the bigger it is
- It uses a lot of power and generates heat
All these down sides would be less with goggles per viewer.

I don’t expect it to happen tomorrow, but it seems a likely evolution. And it will generae another set of problems than those we are fighting with today, which means some of them may never need to be solved. Just like the flicker-free, ultrasharp, thin, 50″ CRT TV we dreamt of long ago was never needed.