Let’s accept it as a given that for the foreseeable future, home 3-D video will require that viewers wear special glasses. Though I’ve seen some really impressive 3-D without glasses displays — the Philips “Wow” technology comes to mind as a standout — none of these look anywhere near as good as 3-D with glasses for large living room display sizes.
That said, I must admit a bit of disappointment to hear the news that Panasonic recently introduced a 3-D plasma display at the CEATEC convention in Japan (see report from TWICE magazine Panasonic’s 3-D HDTV Among CEATEC Highlights.
The reason for my disappointment is that, predictably, Panasonic has opted for the shutter glasses approach, which essentially uses the same panel to display both left and right eye images. They’re shown sequentially, with the shutters in the glasses directing the frames to each eye, switching at a rate of 60 or 120 times per second (for U.S. and Japanese video frame rates.)
The superior approach, as I’ve seen demonstrated by Sony and others using LCD technology, is more expensive and requires two panels that don’t switch — each one is on continuously, providing a different image for each eye. Polarized light, and polarized glasses — the same type as used at 3-D theatrical movies — is used to direct the different images to each eye.
The problem with the shutter-glasses approach — though popular with the PC gaming crowd — is that it produces a strain on the eye-brain system. If you think about, the two eyes never actually see an image at the same time — the images are constantly alternating. I’ve seen white papers and other reports indicating this can lead to headaches and other problems. Such research is always disputable, of course, but I can testify myself that, having walked around numerous conventions and seen demos of both technologies, I can “feel” the difference. It’s not something easy to put into words, but there’s a calmness to the polarized glasses that disappears when I wear the shutter glasses. It’s just a vague feeling, but it’s definitely there.
There’s something slightly disturbing with the shutter glasses, and that feeling disappears as soon I take them off. In the old days the shutter glasses were very heavy and uncomfortable — that’s not what I’m talking about. The newest incarnations of shutter glasses are amazingly lightweight and comfortable. Yet, something still isn’t quite right with them, and I think it goes to the heart of how the technology works. I believe polarized 3-D is inherently superior to shutter-glasses 3-D.
