The Dimensionalists

Here at In-Three, we reuse our glasses and clean them by hand as necessary, but the theaters have a much larger task when it comes to maintaining their 3D glasses.  Read all about it.

Wired takes a look at a few 3D projection technologies and explains how they work with the glasses.

For more in depth look at how the various 3D systems work visit Cinema Tech Geek for explanations on the XpanD, Dolby, Real D and MasterImage 3D.

Advancements in 3D technology have made viewing films in 3D on the big screen a remarkable experience. Films can now be crafted to be so real, so life-like, such an immersive experience for viewers that having a 3D version available is increasingly the norm for theatrical releases. But often times, when the DVD/Blu-ray release comes around, films that had highly successful 3D versions screened in their theatrical release can only be found in old school 2D for home viewing. Why would film execs not offer a movie in the same format that was so successful at the box office? Technology and, ultimately, quality, are the main culprits—but just as 3D has developed on the big screen, changes are a foot for home viewing as well.

This blog has covered the ills of viewing 3D through anaglyphic glasses—those paper-framed, red and green lens-ed, 1950s drive-in shades—in the past, highlighting the issues in color correctness, focus/fuzziness and eye strain/discomfort. Simply put, they don’t provide a positive, quality 3D viewing experience. This isn’t a problem for viewing films in 3D in a movie theater, since newer active and passive 3D glasses are being used to view these more technologically advanced films. But for home viewing? Its time to bust out the anaglyphics. Current home theater technology, even as the cutting-edge hardware comes closer to mimicking a movie theater experience, is not yet able to support the same kind of 3D that is causing jaws to drop when viewed on the silver screen.

While having to use anaglyphic glasses when viewing 3D at home is the most obvious deterring factor for releasing 3D films on DVD or Blu-ray—or for consumers to buy the ones that do come out—there are underlying technology issues that require these glasses and deter at-home 3D from scaling the heights of in-theater viewing.

The underlying principal that allows for viewing in 3D is binocular vision—the process in which our eyes see two slightly different images which our brain combines into a single vision. 3D viewing is achieved by essentially shooting and screening a film twice, each at a slightly different angle, and using some kind of glasses to make viewers see only one of the images being screened in each eye. Viewers’ brains take these two separate images, combine them, and the 3D effect is created. But by essentially having to show the same film twice for the purpose of creating 3D, any DVD or Blu-ray would have to carry twice as much data to create the same experience at home—a burden too heavy for either media format.

The DVD/Blu-ray’s that offer 3D with anaglyphic glasses achieve their desired effect through a very simplified version of this process that doesn’t require as much data, but causes the image to suffer in terms of quality.

But as more and more families purchase 3D-ready flat screens for their homes, the demand for a higher-quality 3D home-viewing experience will certainly rise. Many companies are already tackling the issues of glasses styles and data capacity—as well as others—working to create the equivalent experience of viewing 3D in a movie theater for living rooms all around.

The Consumer Electronics Association’s (CEA)® Video Systems Committee recently announced the launch of a new working group, R4 WG16. The new working group will address issues with 3-D technology including investigating and drafting standards for 3-D glasses.

“As evidenced by the range of 3-D-enabled products at the 2009 International CES, the 3-D video market is growing quickly,” said Brian Markwalter, vice president of Technology and Standards for CEA. “The creation of CEA’s new 3-D Technology working group reflects industry enthusiasm for ensuring interoperability among 3-D displays, glasses and video sources.”

A recent CEA study in conjunction with the Entertainment and Technology Center at the University of Southern California, 3-D TV: Where Are We Now and Where Are Consumers, showed that more than 26 million households are interested in having a 3-D content experience in their home signifying the importance of standardizing this growing technology. For more information, or to join the R4 WG16 working group, please contact Alayne Bell at abell@CE.org.

CEA leads technology manufacturers in fostering CE industry growth by developing industry standards and technical specifications that enable new products to come to market and encourage interoperability with existing devices. CEA maintains an unmatched reputation as a credible and flexible standards making body and has earned ANSI accreditation. Through more than 70 committees, subcommittees, and working groups, the CEA Technology and Standards program provides a unique and efficient forum where technical professionals throughout the industry develop a unified technology roadmap and address technical issues critical to the CE industry growth. For information about CEA Technology and Standards, visit www.CE.org/standards.

Ray Bans with neon frames may be back in style–a blast from the recent past, for anyone who remember the ’80s and early ’90s with any kind of clarity–but when it comes to glasses for viewing films in 3D, bright colors have gone way out of style and black is, well, the new black. Yes, however nostalgic you may be for those two-toned plastic-lensed, paper-framed 3D glasses that have been the industry standard since the heyday of drive-in theaters, its time for a change–its time to bring on the black lenses and black frames. But don’t worry–taking the color out of 3D lenses isn’t going to take the color out of life. In fact, the very reason for this change has to do with improving the color of 3D films.

Like all stereo glasses two-toned 3D glasses function based on the principal of binocular vision. Your eyes see the world from slightly different angles, each eye capturing a subtly different image, which your brain mixes and adjusts to create a cohesive image. Older 3D films take advantage of this feat of human physiology by projecting a composite of two images, shot at slightly different angles to mimic the separate views of you eyes, one image more red and the other more blue (cyan, specifically). Here’s where the glasses come in: by coloring these “anaglyph” lenses in a complementary way, the components of the composite image enter your eyes separately. The red image enters only through the eye with a red lens, the cyan image only through the cyan lens. When your eyes combine the images, the two offset, differently colored images are overlapped in the brain and suddenly pop into 3D.

But here’s problem: by altering the color of the two differently angled shots, the final 3D image always has a green cast to it (red + blue=green), the unnatural color making viewers continually aware that they are watching a film, that their eyes are being tricked. They can’t disappear into the world of the film–something that should happen more readily when viewing in 3D. Thankfully, there’s a new way of creating 3D without color shifts, allowing for a color-perfect 3D viewing experience. Instead of shifting the color of the projected images, the two separately shot, slightly angled images are both polarized. Polarizing an image means, very simply, that the image is made up of light that only travels in one direction. By using polarization filters to make one image of vertical light and one image of horizontal light–with the black lenses of the new 3D glasses having a vertically polarized lens in one eye, a horizontal lens in the other–allows for the same effect: one image in one eye, the other image in the other eye, resulting in perfectly-colored 3D image.

An alternative option is “shuttered glasses” in which a coating on each lens alternately shuts off in synchronization with the image on the screen. The glasses are synched to a projector emitting infrared signals.

Finally, for those nostalgic for the old anaglyph glasses there’s a excellent option for you too. Dolby is distributing a sophisticated “comb” anaglyph system that maintains color balance and creates an experience similar to polarized glasses. The glasses even look like to modern polarized glasses.

So no matter how you view 3D in theaters today your glasses will not interfere with you having a comfortable, immersive experience.