Do you remember the buzz that stirred when 3D entertainment hit the movie theaters? Well technology has come a long way since then, and 3D technologies are making their way to your home theater. The traditional anaglyph red and blue glasses from the past are being replaced with newer technologies, and companies like Sony, Panasonic, and Samsung are bringing 3D to the comfort of your home.
Anaglyph images were, until recently, the most popular method of presenting 3D, largely because of the ease of their production, and also due to the fact that this was the first 3D technology widely adopted by the Hollywood film industry. Sony has displayed a prototype that uses standard Real D polarized glasses for viewing. The Real D Method uses a single projector that alternately projects left-eye and right-eye images and then uses a method to circularly polarize the viewing using clockwise polarization for the right-eye and counter-clockwise polarization for the left-eye. The polarized lens eyeglasses separate the images for the viewer. Both Panasonic and Samsung have decided on a different approach, using the LCD shutter glass method. This method uses alternating left-eye, right-eye images, but the LCD shutter glasses lens alternately go from opaque to transparent many times per second in synchronization with the image being displayed. The most interesting part about the use of shutter technology is that is should theoretically work on any television with a 120 Hz refresh rate with the use of an external 3D controller.
While Sony and Samsung have no immediate plans for the production of a real product, Panasonic is in the process of developing a product that will reach the market.