1080p simultaneity
I do not recall writing in any of my articles that active shutter “simultaneously” displays 1080p images on both eyes. I always was specific that it was 1080p per eye in alternate fashion. Would you rather see jagged edge diagonals on half images with cheap glasses? (see the family room carpet on the image of LG's 3D demo at Best Buy). Two simultaneous 540ps from different angles do not show the smoothness that a single 1080p image can show from the same angle.
Yes, but each eye (on a passive system with glasses on) does not show two 540ps from different angles, they only show one image from one angle and then show the other half (from the same angle) in a short enough time frame that your brain perceives it as a single image.
I have read your past articles, and my comments really apply to the series. For example, "Passive 3DTV Brain Perception - An Excuse for Technical Limitations?" was the title of a previous article. Just as the brain combines the images occuring at different time frames in a passive system , it does the same for an SG system. "Active 3DTV Brain Perception - An Excuse for Technical Limitations?" is just as valid a title. Unless you are teleporting actors, objects and scenefry into your living room,
all 3D TVs create illusions that only exist in the brain.
1081 lines instead of inverted line pairs”
Your 1081 idea seems like a simple solution in the surface to maintain the order of the video lines using the polarity restriction of LCD passive, which is: add one more line and shift the whole image one line down on the second 120Hz cycle. The manufacturing of specialized 1081 panels is subjected to cost efficiency in adapting plants to satisfy the limited application of the chosen LG 3D passive method.
Yes, perhaps the other solution I mentioned could alleviate this by displaying 1920x1079 lines on the current scene. Following this method and bumping the frequency to 4 times the original transmission rate (120 Hz), I hope you can see how the missing line could be displayed later so no information is dropped, although this top and bottom line would be displayed half as often as the center lines.
However, there would still be a constant vertical shift at every other video frame with content that is actually sourced from another physical position of the recorded image, which could produce artifacts when constantly flicking the position of every video frame. This is not like the interlace of NTSC, which uses a second cycle to complete a video frame and the lines on that second cycle show the content that was recorded by the camera on those exact lines on the video field.
In terms of the physical shift, I considered that, but I believe this shift is to small to be noticed: .06" on a 65" screen view, "x" feet away. However, depending on the response rate of the pixels, artifacts may be produced, but this is not an issue related to passive or active technology, but more to the LCDs in general. Of course, since the scene is constantly changing anyway, I'm not sure if the artifacts created by this 0.1% shift would be any more noticeable by those caused by the change in scene content.
Active bias
Bias no, personal preference (due to image quality) yes. Quality is usually the main subject on all of my articles on a magazine dedicated to quality HDTV and all of the other content I published. However, I consistently recommend that passive and active should both exist for their particular reasons and people’s requirements, the articles are intended to be read as a sequence or chapters rather than taking one paragraph out of context; since I anticipate that some may not read them as a whole some basic facts have to be repeated (such as the resolution, glasses, method of display, etc.).
So what would be my personal preference regarding 3D picture quality? It would be 1080p (better: 4K) on each eye simultaneously with no 3D glasses and no visual interruptions between viewing zones at a reasonable price. Although 3DFusion is close to that, my preference does not exist, so I have to go for a trade off in features, such as brightness, angle, resolution, blurriness, etc. What Mr. X may prefer is his personal business, what I prefer as second choice today is active shutter using non-LCD technology.
That covers plasma panels, DLP/LCoS (Sony, JVC) projectors, etc. No the DLP rear-projection (Mitsubishi) because their light engines are still using wobulated 1080x960 chips to claim the display of 1080x1920 images, additionally, their horizontal angle of view is even more restricted (starts at 10 degrees) than LCD panels (which start at 15-20 degrees, not to mention 10 degrees vertically and the 3D is gone).
How far that “personal” preference can go in my home? As far as not having any of the non-preferred displays “not even for free” occupying space in any room. Although LG passive may be on that no-list, that panel may be what Mr. X wants because the glasses are cheap, so be it.
Everyone is allowed to claim their preferences using their own set of parameters, my preference is always based in picture quality and constant exposure and experience with hundreds of 3D/HDTVs since the HD standard was an analog prototype in the mid-80s.
I hope I am allowed to have a personal preference without been accused of hating passive when the information I publish is over the head of most magazines. I never worked conditioned to advertising on the opposite page. Consumers can have the whole picture when I see a manufacturer is trying to sell a Yugo like a Ferrari.
Best Regards,
Rodolfo La Maestra
Preference is stating that you prefer SG technology over passive; bias is stating that active technology is superior to passive. While you do present an honest, throrough discussion of passive TVs with many valid drawbacks, I haven't seen the same approach applied to active ones in this series of articles. For example, in your articles, you don't mention that cross-talk is a much bigger problem with active hardware than with passive hardware. If you haven't already, I'd encourage you to check out tis site:
http://displaymate.com/shootout.html for quantatative comparison of the Passive vs Active.
My personal preference would be for a
plasma with a passive display, but these are not on the market.