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Learn About 3D Technology

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3D Technology For Your Home

Do you love 3D movies? I do. Did you know that if you take your own 3D glasses to the movies, you may get a discount? There are a lot of new advances in 3D technology and I will introduce you to some of them here. Let's get started.

Photo from iCLIPART.com. Unlimited access to more than 7 million clipart images, photos, photo objects, fonts, and sounds for one low price!

How Does It Work?

3D for the home3D is based on the principle of stereoscopy, which creates the illusion of depth in an image. The easiest way to enhance depth perception in the brain is to provide the eyes of the viewer with two different images, representing two perspectives of the same object, with a minor deviation exactly equal to the perspectives that both eyes naturally receive in binocular vision.

There are currently three kinds of 3D technology on the market and each one works differently:

The first one, anaglyph technology, is the most famous one (think red/blue paper glasses) but usually the 3D effects are not so great.

The second one, polarized (or passive) technology, is the technology you have been exposed to when watching a 3D movie in an IMAX theater (e.g. Avatar 3D, Alice in Wonderland 3D, etc.)

The third one, active technology, is the most recent one that is quickly becoming the standard in terms of 3D watching at home.

Photo from iCLIPART.com.

Accessories & Movies

To Enhance The 3D Experience

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Anaglyph Technology

Ready for 3DFor the longest time, mankind has been interested in creating a 3D effect on a 2D screen. Most painters created some effect of perspective in their paintings to simulate a 3D effect.

More recently, in 1853 Wilhelm Rollmann developed a technique to simulate 3D. He created anaglyph images using two color layers superimposed but offset with respect to each other to produce a depth effect. Usually the main subject remained centered while the foreground and background shifted laterally in opposite directions. When viewed with two-color glasses (the lenses are chromatically opposite in color usually red and cyan), these images produced a stereoscopic 3D effect (your brain is tricked into thinking that this picture is in 3D).

This technology has been used countless times in movie theaters, as the typical red and blue glasses are inexpensive. The movie Bwana Devil is regarded as the first of the commercial 3D movies in the 1950s. However, while the 3D effect were fun to watch, the pictures were of low quality and had strong shades of green and red.

Photo credit to iCLIPART.com.

CafePress Offers 3D Items, Too

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Polarized Technology

Also Called Passive

3D GlassesThis is where it gets interesting. Most of us have seen Avatar or other movies in IMAX 3D with polarized 3D glasses. These glasses create the illusion of three-dimensional images by restricting the light that reaches each eye, creating a stereoscopic, or 3D, effect.

To create that 3D effect, two images are projected onto the same screen through different polarizing filters. The viewer wears low-cost eyeglasses which also contain a pair of different polarizing filters. Through the filters, each eye sees a different picture (each filter allows the light which is similarly polarized and blocks the light polarized in the opposite direction). This is used to produce a three-dimensional effect by projecting the same scene into both eyes, but depicted from slightly different perspectives.

The great thing about this technology is that the glasses you need to wear to enjoy 3D are really cheap (between $1 and $10 per pair); however, most believe that the 3D effects generated through this technology are not as sharp as the ones generated through a display with active technology. We'll discuss active technology later.

Another photo from iCLIPART.com.

Samsung UN55C8000 55-Inch 1080p 240 Hz 3D LED HDTV

Samsung UN55C8000 55-Inch 1080p 240 Hz 3D LED HDTV

Samsung UN55C8000 55-Inch 1080p 240 Hz 3D LED HDTV

Amazon Price: $2,599.00 (as of 02/17/2012)Buy Now

Samsung LED HDTVs combine breakthrough picture quality and advanced connectivity options that will keep you entertained 24/7. This UN55C8000 LED HDTV also makes it easy to be green, and will save you some green, by being ENERGY STAR compliant.

Customer Reviews:

M. Patel from Marine, CA says, "My final verdict: Buy this TV if you are REALLY excited about 3D as I am, I don't think you will be disappointed. Don't upgrade just for picture quality. last years 240hz models look just as good, and some reviews say last years look even better."

Dweller in the Valley from Tacoma, WA writes, "This HDTV is awesome, for the money i believe its the best. some of the TV's coming out later this year are sure to beat it but they're also going to cost a couple grand more. but compared to all the hdtv's out now this tops them all thanks to precision dimming, finally those cloudy looking blacks are gone. allowing for a pristine picture. i have owned Panasonic plasmas and older samsung and this easily tops them all just because of the precision dimming. You see any HDTV can give great colors and great motion but only a handful can give you good blacks making it in my opinion the number thing to look for when buying a new TV. And having the 3D feature as an extra option is awesome. glad i purchased it ."

More 3D TVs

Samsung

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Active Technology

Connecting With TechnologyThis technology has been adopted by most consumer electronics firms, including LG, Samsung, Panasonic, and more. With this technology, an HDTV will display one image to your left eye and one image to your right eye. Since the effective frame rate is halved, these HDTVs need to have double the refresh rate of HDTVs (60 Hz). This is why you will find that all 3D HDTVs have a minimum frame rate of 120 Hz (most have a frame rate around 240 Hz or even 480 Hz).

Active liquid crystal shutter glasses are then worn by the viewer and quickly block each eye in sequence to ensure that each eye only sees the corresponding image being displayed on the 3D TV set. The active shutter glasses are kept in sync with the HDTV using Bluetooth, infrared, or radio technology. These special glasses usually contain liquid crystals that can be made opaque, thus acting as a shutter. These glasses are battery-operated (battery life estimated at around 80 hours or so).

Photo from iCLIPART.com.

Active Liquid Crystal 3D Glasses

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Hello. My name is Beth and am known as bethd821 here at Squidoo and many other places in the blogosphere. I have diversity in interests and will... more »

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