The ‘Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative’, and The State of 3D HDTV in General

3D Glasses I’m a big fan of modern 3D. Whenever I have the opportunity to see a movie in 3D instead of 2D, I take it. Especially IMAX 3D, which is just awesome. (I’m fortunate enough to live close to one of the best IMAX theaters in the US, and I go regularly.) Yes, 3D can be done poorly, but I find most modern 3D films handle it well. I just saw Captain America in 3D a couple of nights back and enjoyed it.

So you might expect me to have been one of the first to have jumped on the 3D HDTV bandwagon, but you’d be wrong. Oh, I fully intend to buy a 3D HDTV, but I’m waiting for the industry to shake out a bit. I’ll let them work out the kinks, mature the technology, and get prices down a bit more, then I’ll upgrade.

One of those ‘kinks’ that I’ve been waiting for them to work out is the idiocy of having multiple, incompatible systems for the glasses. Most vendors today use active shutter glasses, but the glasses from one vendor won’t work with a TV from another vendor, which means your friends with a Sony TV can’t bring their glasses over for movie night on your Samsung. OK, let me step back and give a quick overview of where we stand. Oversimplified, but it’ll suffice.

We see the world in 3D because each eye sees objects from a slightly different angle. The brain uses this parallax to calculate the distances and provide depth to what we see. But projected images, like conventional TV, all come from the same plane – they’re 2D. There is no parallax, and thus no depth. So the obvious solution is to provide a different image to each eye, each simulating a different angle, creating the illusion of parallax to provide depth. But that’s simpler to explain than to do.

Older 3D systems tended to be anaglyph, using different color filters for each eye – often red & blue, but there are a number of systems. The two images would be projected with matching color filters, and the filters in the glasses meant each eye only perceived the corresponding color projected. This system works well enough for B&W, but the nature of the system – colored filters – often wrecks havoc with the colors in a color image. And it isn’t that sharp, you get bleed through from the opposite eye’s image if the filters don’t block 100%, etc. Anaglyph is still used for printed materials, and sometimes for video, but it is really used mainly as a novelty these days.

Modern theatrical systems are almost all based on polarized light. The glasses are similar to quality polarized sunglasses, only allowing light waves moving in one direction to pass through. A simple way to imagine it is that you can give light a left hand twist or a right hand twist as you project it. So the 3D system does both – using left hand for the left eye and right hand for the right eye. Corresponding filters in the glasses allow only the matching twist through, so that eye sees only the image projected for it. These systems work fairly well, the only real drawback is that the glasses block some of the light, and so make things dimmer – but that’s easily compensated for by increasing the brightness of the image. Since the glasses are simple lenses and all of the work is done in the projector – or the TV – these systems are called ‘passive’. The advantage is that the glasses are simple, cheap, and light. They aren’t quite universally compatible, as there are different ways to do the polarization (mainly circular polarization vs. linear polarization), but most theaters, and passive 3D HDTVs, use the same system so de facto they tend to be.

On the other hand, most 3D HDTVs today use active shutter glasses instead. As the name implies, in this system the glasses are an active part of the system. Instead of each eye receiving a constant stream of light, filtered for that eye, active shutter systems alternate images to each eye. The glasses contain liquid crystal lenses (similar to the LCDs in a digital watch) which alternate between transparent and opaque – exactly out of phase. So the left eye receives the image while the right eye is blocked, and vice versa. This is sync’d with the image on the screen, so a left eye image is shown while the left lens is transparent, etc. The downside to this is that the glasses are complex, relatively heavy, expensive, and need to be recharged regularly. Oh, and each vendor has used a different synchronization system, making them incompatible, as above, but I’ll get back to that.

So, why do only a few vendors (like LG & Vizio) use passive 3D while the rest use active 3D with the expensive glasses? Well, active 3D is a higher quality solution for the home right now. See, with active 3D each eye sees the full image. So if you have a 1920x1080p ‘Full HD’ display, then each eye gets Full HD – just half the time. But with the displays refreshing at 120Hz or 240Hz, you still get the effect of full HD since the brain can’t tell the difference. It is still equivalent to 60Hz or 120Hz per eye. (Remember classic film is 24 frames per second and, in the US, classic TV was only 30fps (OK, 29.97).) On the other hand, passive 3D systems today use fixed polarizing filters on top of the screen which divide the image in half, line by line. So every even line is for one eye and every odd line is for the other. The end result is that each eye is only getting half resolution, so your 1080p set is only 540p in 3D mode. This is another one of those kinks I mentioned, and it will be resolved, which I’ll get to – but first, back to active shutters.

So, active shutter glasses are more expensive and complex, but provide a better image. That’s fine. But they’re expensive, with prices ranging from $50 to $200, while passive glasses start at a couple of bucks. The cost of active glasses wouldn’t be so bad, except for the compatibility problem and the stinginess of vendors. When you buy your shiny new 3D HDTV it may not even come with a pair of glasses. And when they do, it is generally just one or two pair. If you have a family with more people, or ever want to have friends over for a movie night, you need more glasses. Maybe your friends have their own 3D HDTV – great, they can bring their glasses. What, they have a different brand of TV? Oh, that’s too bad.

Different vendors have used different systems to keep the glasses in sync. There are IR- and RF-based systems, using different protocols. So while Sony, Samsung, and Panasonic, for example, all have used IR – they’ve used different IR protocols. Some vendors, like XPAND, have seen this as an opportunity and have been producing ‘universal’ glasses which implement multiple standards to work with multiple TVs, but it still means buying more if your TV came with vendor-specific glasses. Finally the main vendors supporting active shutter, Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, and XPAND, have formed the ‘Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative‘ to produce universally compatible glasses across all members.

The new glasses will support RF and IR protocols. Of course, they’re not expected to be available until 2012, but they will be backwards compatible with 2011 model 3D HDTVs. Basically they’re going to cram all of the protocols into one set of glasses for backwards compatibility, though it sounds like going forward the vendors will be using Bluetooth as a standard RF system on their sets. So one day we may have one protocol across all of the sets, which would allow for simpler ‘universal’ glasses.

So that’s one kink worked out, or at least on the path there. So, time for me to start shopping for that 3D TV.

Actually, no. See, I don’t like active 3D. Sure, the image is great and all, but I don’t like the heavy, or at least heavier, glasses and the costs involved. I have a hard enough time remembering to plug in my PS3 controllers to keep them charged, I don’t want to deal with having to keep my 3D glasses charged. Or worry about them falling into the couch or getting sat on, etc. I think the RealD glasses at the theater are pretty comfortable, and you can even buy custom, designer, even prescription, passive 3D glasses if you want. I’m a big fan of passive 3D, in other words. But I’m not willing to sacrifice quality either, the kink I mentioned earlier.

Fortunately, that’s on its way to being resolved too. While current passive 3D systems use a passive, fixed polarizing screen on a conventional HD display, that’s not the only way to do it. One obvious solution – up the native resolution of the display. If you’re halving the resolution for each eye, the higher the native resolution of the display, the higher the resolution for each eye. A 4k native display would provide better than Full HD for each eye. But making such high resolution displays in large panel sizes is a very expensive option today.

There’s another approach though, as pursued by RealD in their RDZ system, add an active polarizer to the screen. This is kind of a hybrid between active shutter and passive 3D systems. The glasses are passive, but an active layer is added to the screen. Instead of an on/off shutter, it is a polarizer, that alternatively polarizes the full image left or right. While the glasses are passive, since each lens only allows the matching image through, one eye sees nothing while the other sees the image, just like with active 3D. But all of the complexity and cost is in the TV. The glasses are literally the same as used in the theater – if you need more just bring them home next time you go, instead of tossing them in the recycling bin.

Sets using RDZ are expected to hit the market in 2012 from Samsung, and there will probably be similar, competing systems. Personally I think this solution is the best of both worlds. You get the Full HD image quality with cheap, lightweight glasses. Cheap enough that you can have plenty on hand for friends, and not worry about breaking or losing a pair. And if you need prescription lenses (as my fiancée wears) you can have prescription 3D glasses made that you can use at home and in the theater. No more having to sacrifice clarity for 3D, or trying to wear two pairs of glasses. It is hard to justify the cost of a prescription pair just for the theater, even for a die-hard movie goer, but if you can use the same glasses at home all the time, it is easier to justify.

Oh, yeah, I left out ‘glasses free’ 3D systems. That wasn’t an accident; I’m extremely unimpressed with them. They work OK on small displays – cell phones, handhelds, etc. – though even there they have major limitations. But they have too many drawbacks. Glasses free systems work via two major systems – lenticular screens or filter slats. Lenticular screens are familiar to most people – you know those images that seem to move when you tip them back and forth? Those have a lenticular screen on top. Basically rows of linear lenses that create ‘slices’ of an image. so when you view at a given angle you seen only specific slices, as directed by the lens. If you ever see one of the images without the lens in place it looks like several images all sliced up into ribbons, interlaced with each other. And that’s exactly what the display is doing – it is actually displaying columns of left & right images interlaced, and using the lens to direct each one to one eye. The slat system works in a similar manner, but even simpler. There are vertical slats positioned in front of the display designed to simply block every other column of pixels from each eye. But in such a way that it blocks the odd columns for one eye, and the even columns for the other.

So, in these systems you have the same drawback as today’s passive 3D – it halves the resolution. But, worse, there are very specific fixed points (or point in some cases) for viewing. While active and passive glasses systems work pretty much from any viewing angle the display supports, with glasses free systems you have to be in one of the ‘sweet spots’ where the effect works. Anywhere else and you may see nothing, or garbage, or 2D, it depends. Again, you know those cheap lenticular pictures? Know how as you tip them, as one image dissolves into the next there is a point where it is neither image and just a mess? The displays are like that, if you sit in the wrong place.

I’ll never say never, but to date I haven’t seen anything out or announced that truly resolves these issues with glasses free 3D. I’ve seen systems that will increase the number of viable points for viewing, but that’s just polishing a turd. You still have finite points and you still lose quality. Until someone comes up with a real breakthrough I think passive Full HD 3D will be the best option. I’m just waiting for it to arrive – and be priced reasonably, of course. I picked up my current set, a 61″ Samsung 1080p DLP, in late 2006, so it has plenty of life left in it. I can wait. ;-)

Press release spotted via Engadget.

About MegaZone

MegaZone is the Editor of Gizmo Lovers and the chief contributor. He's been online since 1989 and active in several generations of 'social media' - mailing lists, USENet groups, web forums, and since 2003, blogging.    MegaZone has a presence on several social platforms: Google+ / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / LiveJournal / Web.    You can also follow Gizmo Lovers on other sites: Blog / Google+ / Facebook / Twitter.
This entry was posted in Blogs, HDTV, Press Release and tagged , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.
  • Fanfoot

    Wooaah.  Serious post dude.  I guess no more carpal tunnel for you huh?

    You left out one more bit of detail–that while Blu-Ray 3D may be full resolution 1920×1080, current 3D TV channels are not.  They’re already half resolution, typically 1/2 horizontal for 1080i and 1/2 vertical for 720p.  They do this in order to transmit the 3D signal in a ‘frame compatible’ format that allows them to avoid increasing the bandwidth for the channel and also allows them to make the channel work with the existing STBs the cable company has deployed. 

    While most people find this trade-off acceptable, I think one of the issues with passive 3D today (e.g. half resolution) is that it halves the resolution AGAIN on top of the already-half resolution of 3D TV channels.  So while it might look acceptable when you watch a passive 3D Blu-Ray movie, it might not look so great when you watch a 3D movie on cable.  Half the horizontal resolution was tossed to create a frame compatible signal, and half the vertical lines are tossed to create the passive 3D.  Which takes your beautiful 1920×1080 frames down to 960×540.  Given that even DVDs run 720×480 you may not consider 960×540 exactly ‘hi def’.

    • http://www.gizmolovers.com/ MegaZone

      I never actually had carpal tunnel, I had a problem with the ulnar nerve in my left arm.  I ended up having surgery to relieve the pressure on the nerve – they actually move it from the outside of the elbow to the inside, I believe it is an ulnar nerve transposition – in October, 2009.  It took a while, but after the surgery things got better and I got most of the feeling and use of my left hand back.  No real idea why it started, there was no trauma, but we suspect it is because I’m a big, tall guy and everything is too small for me – like desks and tables.  Since I’m right handed I’m almost always leaning on my left arm, crossed in front of my body, when I sit at one.  Years of doing that finally inflamed the tunnel the ulnar nerve runs through, and once it was inflamed it was a negative feedback loop – just bending my arm pulled on the nerve, which irritated it more, which kept it inflamed.  The pressure cut off the signalling in the nerve and caused me to lose sensation in part of my left hand and wrist, and caused it to start to atrophy as the muscles weren’t doing anything.  Really kind of interesting in the abstract, but not much fun when it is your hand.

      As for HDTV – yeah, I didn’t want to get into even more detail in the already huge post. :-)  A lot of broadcasts are handled in side-by-side format where they cram two frames into one.  So yes, you get 1080×960 left & right frames instead of 1080×1920.  So you will lose even more in today’s passive 3D HDTV.   You lose 50% to start when you pack two frames into one, then 50% of the 50% that is left when you display it – so you end up with 75% loss from the original image.  Ouch.

      Top-and-bottom packing is actually better for passive displays.  A 1080p source will be 540×1920 – which is the same resolution as each ‘eye’ on the display.  So that’s what it does, it just displays each frame on every other line, interleaved.  No loss in resolution – aside from the 50% loss you started with. 

      The problem is bandwidth – there isn’t enough in one channel to broadcast the full 1080p left & right frames, like Blu-ray can handle.  At least not using the MPEG-2 codec that is standard today for ATSC & cable.  They’re still hashing out future standards for improved 3D broadcast support, but possibilities are using MPEG-4, other ways of encoding 3D like 2D+Delta (One full eye plus only the differences for the other eye), 2D+Depth (One full eye plus a ‘depth map’ the receiver can use to reconstruct the 3D effect), and others.

      • Fanfoot

        Of course I was leaning hard on my left elbow when I read this, doing exactly what caused you problems.  Maybe I’ll have to stop doing that…

        Comcast is requiring users to switch to MPEG-4 capable boxes (Pace ones) to receive 3D channels, so its certainly an option.  They’re willing to do this of course because 3D really isn’t that popular.  If they had to replace everyones boxes they probably wouldn’t be doing this.

        And MPEG-4 really can do the same quality in about half the bandwidth, so that 15Mbps they normally use for HD could handle a full HD 3D signal in the same bandwidth using h.264.

        As far as 2D+Delta the stuff I’ve seen suggests it really wouldn’t save much bandwidth, given that your stereo vision is apparently very sensitive to the high frequency components so high levels of compression on the Delta tend to suppress the stereo image. 

        Of course they’ll have to go with one of these approaches if 3D becomes popular, since they can’t keep allocating separate bandwidth for the 2D and 3D channels in the long run if that happens (seems unlikely at this point).  Any of these other approaches could produce a 2D or 3D image out of the 3D channel at least.

        • http://www.gizmolovers.com/ MegaZone

          The 2D+Delta system is actually widely used outside of broadcast.  How much space is saved over sending two full frames (left & right) depends on the content I suppose, much like digital compression in general.  I believe in Europe broadcasters were pushing for 2D+Delta, but the standards bodies decided to use 2D+Depth instead for DVB-T 3D.

          The US is still trying to decide what kind of system to use for ATSC 3D.  A while back MPEG-4 was added to ATSC, so perhaps they’ll go with a full-frame L/R standard using MPEG-4 to fit both frames in the bandwidth of a single MPEG-2 frame.  Or we may end up with 2D+Depth or something like that.

          Any of these systems can do 2D – in a system that uses two full frames, you just show one frame.  Either one is viable on its own.  In any of the 2D+X systems the 2D frame is used.

        • http://www.gizmolovers.com/ MegaZone

          The 2D+Delta system is actually widely used outside of broadcast.  How much space is saved over sending two full frames (left & right) depends on the content I suppose, much like digital compression in general.  I believe in Europe broadcasters were pushing for 2D+Delta, but the standards bodies decided to use 2D+Depth instead for DVB-T 3D.

          The US is still trying to decide what kind of system to use for ATSC 3D.  A while back MPEG-4 was added to ATSC, so perhaps they’ll go with a full-frame L/R standard using MPEG-4 to fit both frames in the bandwidth of a single MPEG-2 frame.  Or we may end up with 2D+Depth or something like that.

          Any of these systems can do 2D – in a system that uses two full frames, you just show one frame.  Either one is viable on its own.  In any of the 2D+X systems the 2D frame is used.

  • Fanfoot

    Wooaah.  Serious post dude.  I guess no more carpal tunnel for you huh?

    You left out one more bit of detail–that while Blu-Ray 3D may be full resolution 1920×1080, current 3D TV channels are not.  They’re already half resolution, typically 1/2 horizontal for 1080i and 1/2 vertical for 720p.  They do this in order to transmit the 3D signal in a ‘frame compatible’ format that allows them to avoid increasing the bandwidth for the channel and also allows them to make the channel work with the existing STBs the cable company has deployed. 

    While most people find this trade-off acceptable, I think one of the issues with passive 3D today (e.g. half resolution) is that it halves the resolution AGAIN on top of the already-half resolution of 3D TV channels.  So while it might look acceptable when you watch a passive 3D Blu-Ray movie, it might not look so great when you watch a 3D movie on cable.  Half the horizontal resolution was tossed to create a frame compatible signal, and half the vertical lines are tossed to create the passive 3D.  Which takes your beautiful 1920×1080 frames down to 960×540.  Given that even DVDs run 720×480 you may not consider 960×540 exactly ‘hi def’.

  • Fanfoot

    Oh, one more thing worth mentioning.  Because active shutter glasses are opaque half the time, they cut the brightness of the TV by something like 50%.  Which means that active TVs have to crank the brightness up much more than passive systems, at least when they’re displaying 3D material.  One obvious problem with this is that the power draw of such systems goes up quite a bit when they’re displaying 3D content.

    And one more thing–since active systems require the TV to alternate between left and right eyes 120 times a second, they require much faster reaction times than typical TV content.  As a result current 3D LCD TV sets, which have slower reaction times than plasma, often have visible ‘ghosting’ of the images between the two eyes.  Which is why if you’re going to buy an active 3D set right now, you should probably be looking at a Panasonic plasma.  Personally I’m a big LCD guy, but if you’re buying an active 3D TV right now, I’d stick with plasma.  Of course plasma TVs already consume too much power even without the 3D brightness problem…

    • http://www.gizmolovers.com/ MegaZone

      Passive 3D HDTV also crank up the brightness.  While it isn’t as bad as active shutters with one eye complete blocked half the time, the polarizing lenses do cut light going into the eye, and the set has to be brighter to compensate for that.  And it cuts the light to both eyes, all the time.  It is a bit like wearing sunglasses while watching TV, perhaps not quite as dark.  Theaters have to do the same thing, turning up the brightness when projecting 3D.  And yes, all 3D HDTVs draw more power when in 3D mode than when in 2D mode because of this.  LED 3D HDTVs are usually better about this because LEDs draw less power to start with.  And the high-end back lit models (as opposed to edge lit) can brighten areas of the screen more selectively.  Which also helps black levels.

      Plasmas are often considered better than LCD for 3D, but I think it is something of a matter of taste – and not all LCDs are created equal.  A 240Hz set is going to perform better than a 120Hz set.  Just as some people see flicker on a 2D 60Hz panel but 2D 120Hz looks OK.  Faster is better when it comes to refresh rates.

      As always, it is worth doing your research first.  Before I bought my DLP I did a LOT of research, quite a bit of it on AVSForum, and went to look at different sets in person.  (Remember the way they’re adjusted in the store is NOT how you set them at home though.)  Some people say they always see the rainbow problem on DLPs, at least the older color wheel models like mine.  (Many newer sets switched to colored LED light sources instead of a lamp and wheel.) But I’ve only seen in on some cheaper sets, and never on mine.  Different people may perceive different things on the same set.

  • Fanfoot

    Oh, one more thing worth mentioning.  Because active shutter glasses are opaque half the time, they cut the brightness of the TV by something like 50%.  Which means that active TVs have to crank the brightness up much more than passive systems, at least when they’re displaying 3D material.  One obvious problem with this is that the power draw of such systems goes up quite a bit when they’re displaying 3D content.

    And one more thing–since active systems require the TV to alternate between left and right eyes 120 times a second, they require much faster reaction times than typical TV content.  As a result current 3D LCD TV sets, which have slower reaction times than plasma, often have visible ‘ghosting’ of the images between the two eyes.  Which is why if you’re going to buy an active 3D set right now, you should probably be looking at a Panasonic plasma.  Personally I’m a big LCD guy, but if you’re buying an active 3D TV right now, I’d stick with plasma.  Of course plasma TVs already consume too much power even without the 3D brightness problem…

  • Pingback: More Consumer Electronics Deals From Amazon | Gizmo Lovers Blog

  • Pingback: ATSC Begins Work On Broadcast 3D TV Standard | Gizmo Lovers Blog

  • Pingback: The Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative Gains Four Members | Gizmo Lovers Blog

  • Pingback: Farewell ‘Full HD’, Forget 4K, Make Way for Ultra High Definition | Gizmo Lovers Blog