3D TV - here to stay or flash in the pan? - Page 2

You would be best off with a DLP then. Nothing on the market can match the smooth, fluid motion for sports or gaming.

Whats with people telling me what I need? I had a DLP years ago and I can list an entire plethora of reasons as to why I regret my purchase and vowed never to buy one ever again.

flash in the pan

Let the plethra begin then.

Here to stay. I wonder how many people who voted flash in the pan actually have a 3d TV. If you are buying a new TV and want a top rated TV chances are it's 3d anyway. I didn't buy mine just because it's 3d.

I was really surprised how much my none-techie wife loves 3d. I think she sees the 3d better than me. Don't get me wrong, I like it... but she loves it. She even spent some of her own $s on some 3d dvds. She has never bought a dvd in her life before 3d.

The glasses don't bother us. Everyone we showed a 3d demo was very impressed. My kids told their friends how good the picture looked and they didn't believe them. I think until you see 3d in the correct environment you just won't know. We have Dish network, so we can't get any live 3d unfortunately. So content is limited for us. We have a Samsung 58 inch plasma by the way.

Just take a gander at the sheer number of movies either already released, being released soon, or in production and notice the hype around some of those movies. Look at sales of 3D abroad, it's strong - stronger than US. Even being cynical one must admit that the 3D has proven itself at least enough to survive as a niche market.

Bottom line, no way is it a fad. Anecdotally, ambivalence or cynicism goes out the window real quick when we fire up the home theater and put the glasses on someone's head. The response from our guests is overwhelmingly positive. I cannot emphasize this enough. They love it and it shows and I find that to be the most compelling evidence that 3D is here to stay.

The rebirth of 3D in theaters started with a single movie in 2006 - Chicken Little.

We now have 3D movies being announced for 2013:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1237092

So exactly how long in years is a "flash in the pan?"

I think it is the otherway round. For people like us who wera glasses, just putting one more over the top isn't a big deal. For someone who doesn't wear glasses - it makes a bigger difference.

Just the other day, my wife and I watch Despicable Me in 3D and then in 2D the next day because she liked the movie so much. It was the first 3D movie she has seen and she loved it. Her and I both agree that 3D movies are much more immersive and make the move more enjoyable to watch.

I was a recreational scuba diver for years. The eyewear didn't bother me, and I never heard any complaints from any of the other divers. And some shallow dives were comparible in duration to a short movie. Add to that 70 pounds of gear in addition to the mask.

Every year our work hosts an astronomy party; optical lenses (telescopes & binoculars) are kind of a necessity there as well.

I also wear additional eyewear at work when handling hazardous materials.

I wear eyewear to read. To drive. To keep the sun out of my eyes. Millions of people do the same, without complaint (I mean, really, what would your opinion be of someone who uttered, "I really enjoy reading, but I can't stand wearing those darn glasses!"). 3D glasses are a tool to enable an experience. I really never undersood the whole "glasses are inconvenient" argument.

Well stated!
The same could be said about all the complaints about "heavy" active glasses.

I never bothered to look at your post before since I am more interested in blu-rays for the home. Those really long lists prove it is no flash in the pan.

Ever wondered why people do LASIK? Just saying...

Maybe if Apple made those glasses they would at least look cool

Actually, I have a Sony 3DTV and my biggest complaint is the heaviness of the glasses. I am constantly re-adjusting them as they grind into the sides of my nose.

Now I just ordered the new 2011 Sony glasses off eBay which are supposed to be much lighter than the previous model, so I'm optimistic this will stop being an issue going forward.

Unrelated, my second biggest complaint is that my 55" Sony 3DTV produces an underwhelming 3D picture compared to other models I've seen at the big box stores (both active and passive). I bought the TV without even testing it because I got a HUGE deal on it. The 2D is awesome. The 3D is hit and miss. I'm already keeping my eye out for a deal on a new 3DTV...

Actually, I'm happy people are complaining about glasses. That will make companies to come up with better ones. I'd like to get clip-on ones that go with my regular glasses (or may be the otherway round).

Its here to stay along with motion+ technology. 3d support doesnt cost manufacturers anything, its a free bullet point they can add to their list of features. If most people are no longer interested in 3d then theyll stop bundling glasses but the support will still be there. It makes no sense at all to stop supporting 3d, its just simple software and a bluetooth emitter.

What would be in danger is 3d movies, that is a significant cost that filmmakers have to take, if 3d sales in theaters stop then they would no longer see it profitable to buy extremely expensive 3d cameras.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I get it... kinda... Glasses-free 3D would be the ideal, and is the "holy grail" of display tech. But I don't think the hold-outs ("I'll wait until the glasses-free sets come out") realize how long they'll be waiting. The technology is only there on a basic level, and even when it does become feasable it will probably add to the cost in a significant way (unlike current 3D delivery methods).

My point was, there are people who don tons of gear and swim underwater for recreation; people who strap on backpacks & jump out of airplanes; people who put on spiky shoes & ropes & caribbeaners & climb up mountains for recreation... all we're asking you to do is put on a pair of glasses!

Here to stay definitely because almost all mid-high end tvs these days are 3D.
I recently bought a panny 50GT25 and it wasn't because of the 3D, it was because I was in the market for a good big screen plasma HDTV and all of the options that I considered had the 3D feature.

Just a note - Hollywood doesn't buy the cameras they use for film production. They rent them for the production time period.

There is very little depth in movies compared to games. When you take the glasses off, the picture looks almost normal, since there is so little separation. In games, when you take the glasses off, its a blurry mess because so much of the scene is separated by up to 3 or so inches. I should post some photos. If movies were made this way, i bet the world would look much more real and immersive. That might be hard to do for movie theaters i guess, since the distance from the screen effects the depth perception so much. You can see this yourself if you move toward and away from your tv [when its in 3D mode of course].




I'd like to see ONE review that says passive is less bright than active. I've read around 10 reviews of passive TV's, saying their brighter and clearer than active, which is what my in-store testing shows as well. My own experience with active on an Sony NX711 is that it DRASTICALLY reduces brightness and contrast. Even with my 2011 46" Sharp LE835 which i find to be super bright and have much, much less effect on color compared to my 2010 Sony NX711, it is not as bright as the LG passive i saw in the store compared to a 60" LE835. Having said that, i'm an active user ONLY, since i game with this TV only 2'8" away in 3D.

Wasn't able to find the review I read that stated it was brighter. It could have just been the TV though. Although, after taking the time to search for that review, I did come across plenty of others. I would say about 4 out of 5 tech blogs/writers preferred Active over Passive. Most of them said the picture was dull and soft on the passive along with it having more cross talk, and worst of all....A lot of them stated they say scan lines in the passive displays. Lastly, I don't know the reason behind it but they say that the passive technology hurts the 2D picture. Maybe someone else can elaborate. Considering most of the content is watched in 2D, why in the world would anyone want to pick a technology that hurts the 2D image? Doesn't really make sense if you ask me.

3D is here to stay. There are still some growing pains but when it's done right, and shown right, it's glorious. 3D filming will mature, so will ways to watch it, but I think it's good enough and popular enough even with the current technology that it's not going anywhere.

You must not have watched 3D films recently because they really don't do this very often anymore, unless it's a horror movie, but here's the thing, they do those kinds of shots in 2D movies ALL the time. You just don't notice because whatever it was that was coming towards the camera never actually comes out of the screen.

Just picked up one of the LG LED TVS with passive 3D. When I started looking at TVS 3D wasn't even on my radar. Then I figured that there are more and more movies coming out to the theaters so maybe it's not bad to have. The glasses are really light and I only picked up one 3D Blu Ray so far and it was entertaining. I'm not going to go out and buy anything I wouldn't have bought or seen otherwise, but I have it as an option for the future.
As for the passive vs active...can't comment on active because I didn't test any, but I just can't imagine it's that much better than what I've seen so far with this set.

-Jody

It's a flash in the pan. As long as studios and filmmakers use it as a gimmick to pad their wallets (and continue to make poor 2D conversion movies) and the economy is on shakey ground, it will start to lose steam once again.

3D, right now, is being used like flashy digital S/FX to hide the fact that so few of these movies have any quality content. Instead of better and better stories to draw an audience, they go with more 3D "pop out" stuff and even more digital S/FX.

The only reason Avatar is still the 3D movie benchmark is because they carefully set up each shot to utilize 3D to its fullest and most natural effect. That takes time, care, and patience, three things most modern filmmakers do not have.

Pump 'em out like the latest James Patterson paint-by-numbers novel is the studio motto.

The best 3D next to Avatar has been the dual-70mm IMAX 3D films which also have DP's who know their stuff when it comes to stereoscopic photography.

One of the PRIMARY benefits of passive is less crosstalk than active LCD's and 9 out of 10 reviewers say they prefer passive 3D i thought... Do you work for an active TV company, you sound like it.

I think semantics and the workings of the active/passive tech differences are getting us off base here. IN GENERAL (and as I understand it):

- Passive tech is going to be brighter, because the brightness loss is limited to light loss through the polarizing lens and nothing more. With active, the shutter for each eye is closing and blocking out half the light every other refresh cycle, and the lenses also have some light loss even in the open state.

- They are not scan lines per se, but rather the horizontal lines on current passive sets are due to how the set utilizes the FPT (polarizing) material. Each eye receives every other line of content (simultaneously), as opposed to active tech which displays all lines (in rapid succession). To oversimplify (this is NOT meant to be a detailed primer on how the different setups work, or an editorial on which is better!), passive tech provides each eye with "half an image" constantly, while active tech alternates "a whole image" from eye to eye. This means that passive provides a flicker-free picture with horizontal lines visible (to some people) (which can be perceived as a softer picture or "stair-stepping"), and active provides a sharp, line-free picture with visible flicker (for some people).

- Crosstalk can be present on either display type. With passive (for circular polarization) it is dependant on the extinction rate of the FPT (for LCDs) or the screen material (for front projection); for linear polarization the viewing angle also comes into play. With active it is dependant on the delay & duty cycle of the shutters and how well they sync with the display (although different display types handle crosstalk with varying degrees of success... dlp is generally considered excellent with lcd generally faring poorer). The difference is that active can be further tuned with the correct emitter and/or glasses; with passive you are generally limited to changing the display or screen material (or perhaps making changes to the brightness & contrast adjustments).

Sorry for the OT post, just want to make sure we're all speaking the same language!

That isn't correct. There will be a light loss when going through the polarizing film of a passive 3DTV before the light hits the passive polarized glasses.

Passive 3DTVs are brighter because between the two light losses - the display's film retarder and the passive glasses - is less than the active glasses which is where all the light loss comes from with an Active 3DTV.

The maximum light transmission to the eyes in an active glasses 3D setup is 50%. Very few if any active glasses reach that transmission %.

Yea, I work for a company that makes active 3D displays. As to the 9 out of 10 reviewers liking passive more, what kind of reviewers are you talking about? Normal people or people trained to look for certain things? In doing my Google search, I found that more people liked active for the reasons I stated. The main reasons being that active 3D gives you full HD while passive is limited to 720. Passive displays hurting 2D picture quality and finally, the passive 3D picture didn't look as sharp.

If you have a new active display that uses Bluetooth then I really don't see a reason to choose passive over active unless your looking to go the cheaper route. There is nothing wrong wit either one as I like anything to get 3D going mainstream and I think passive will help with that more.

Good point, I forgot about the polarization at the source (display).

But the overall conclusion stands; that there is less light loss with passive than with active.