It has been a long time since we had our first 3D experience. It involved wearing colored glasses, one eye with red and other with cyan lens, which are called anaglyph glasses. These colors were in particular red and cyan; since red lens only allows red light going in and cyan lens allows every light passing through except red. This way, each eye sees a different image from the screen and combines them in brain; resulting in 3 dimensional images. While this option is inexpensive, it gives rise to headaches and nausea especially in long sessions (a few hours) and has a poor picture quality. Not to mention horrible color.
Another option is Shutter Glass (SG) technology, which are the most common in 3D Tvs at the moment. These glasses are battery powered and require interaction with the TV set, the TV sends the image on the TV to the one eye while blocking the other lens with a black curtain and vice versa. Since the second eye will get a different image from the first eye (the picture in the TV will change, even just a bit) each eye sees a slightly different image and brain combines them for 3D view.
Viewer doesn’t notice this “blacking” since the lenses open and close alternatively with a very high speed. This technology produces far better picture quality than anaglyph system but still has nausea and headache problems (can even cause attacks in epileptic people); also the shutter system causes a high brightness loss and flickering. It produces lots of electrical waves since it has batteries in the glasses which are quite close to sensorial organs and the brain. Also, these glasses use an active electrical system so they are quite expensive, which is thought to be as the main curb in the path of 3D TVs. If you want to see 3D pictures with your say 10 friends, you have to spend a sum of money nearly equal to the TV set itself for 10 SG glasses.
We are now looking at the newest 3D system: cinema 3D glasses. This technology was first adopted by LG to manufacture 3D TV sets. It uses light polarizing system, which we are familiar with in Real 3D movie theaters. The cinema 3D glasses have two different polarizing filters which seperately enable different waves of light to pass through. Hence, from the TV panel, waves of images can be sent to the different lenses of the glasses.
The different images again combine, exposing the 3D image. Since cinema 3D glasses don’t require electrical components; they have no batteries, the glasses are light and comfortable to wear, also they don’t produce electromagnetical waves. They also has almost zero crosstalk and produce brighter images. Cinema 3D glasses cost only a few bucks to buy, too. As I said earlier, LG is the only firm using this passive glasses technology in their 2011 TV series and these TVs are on the market now. I passionately recommend considering this technology before buying a 3D TV set.
