Active Shudder 3d is kind of crappy

[micrometers]

are there any benefits at all for active shudder 3d compared to passive 3d?

It seems that active shudder 3d only requires say an extra chip to be installed, and not a reengineering of the display itself, so (ignoring the cost of glasses) it wins on cost. OTherwise, it seems overall to be inferior.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I'm not sure. Personally..I don't see any issues with active. I've used both. The one thing active can do that passive can't do is switch to 2D mode (multiple users) so that one person can watch in 3D and the other can watch it in 2D (at the same time).

Other than that...no idea.

 

[Soundmanred]

SHUTTER.

caps

 

[GTaudiophile]

My office has a state-of-the-art, 90-seat theater that can operate 35mm, Blu-Ray, Digital Cinema, and now "shutter" 3D since December. I watched "Hugo" on the system and it seems comparable to other 3D movies I have seen in other theaters. That said, I am still no fan of 3D in general. Implementation costs also seem lower.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Active shutter requires a TV which can perform actual 120hz refresh rate. The video itself display 2 frames for every 1 frame of real footage, one for each eye. Each frame is a full resolution frame (i.e. 1920x1080 for 1080p content).

Passive 3D does not need to display 2 frames for every one effective frame. Both the information for each eyes are interleaved on the screen. This has the side effect of halving the resolution (typically it is done cutting the horizontal resolution). So instead of 1920x1080 shown to each eye as is the case with active shutter, you only get 960x1080 resolution.

Ultimately, until passive displays double their horizontal resolution, I would not recommend them. As it currently stands, there is no such thing as high definition 3D from a passive 3D display, as you do not get enough horizontal resolution to even make 720p work (as that requires at least 1280x720 resolution, which you can not display).

 

[micrometers]

Well, I tried out a passive display in a store, and it seemed to me to have much less flicker and lighter glasses that didn't run out of batteries.

point taken about the resolution issues.

 

[Aikouka]

Active shutter requires a TV which can perform actual 120hz refresh rate. The video itself display 2 frames for every 1 frame of real footage, one for each eye. Each frame is a full resolution frame (i.e. 1920x1080 for 1080p content).

The actual resolution provided to the TV also depends on the transmission method being used. Only Frame Packing provides full 1080p resolution to each eye as side-by-side, checkerboard, and top-bottom are half the resolution per eye. So even if you have an active shutter TV, you're still only seeing half the resolution.

I'll have to dig a bit deeper, but I'm not sure about your 120Hz part. I mean, the HDMI spec does not list a 120Hz refresh rate on any of the resolutions that I recall, and the most common ones are 720p50, 720p60 and 1080p24. If those are actually halved (60Hz per eye), then 120Hz would make sense for 720p60. However, I don't believe my DLP has a 120Hz refresh rate and it does active shutter quite normally.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Some TV's do 3D better than others, it's not just about the glasses. My TV does amazing 3D in both movies and gaming compared to what I've seen elsewhere.

 

[A5]

The actual resolution provided to the TV also depends on the transmission method being used. Only Frame Packing provides full 1080p resolution to each eye as side-by-side, checkerboard, and top-bottom are half the resolution per eye. So even if you have an active shutter TV, you're still only seeing half the resolution.

I'll have to dig a bit deeper, but I'm not sure about your 120Hz part. I mean, the HDMI spec does not list a 120Hz refresh rate on any of the resolutions that I recall, and the most common ones are 720p50, 720p60 and 1080p24. If those are actually halved (60Hz per eye), then 120Hz would make sense for 720p60. However, I don't believe my DLP has a 120Hz refresh rate and it does active shutter quite normally.

I think the 120Hz refresh is necessary to keep smearing to a minimum when watching 3D (and it also nicely provides 5:5 pulldown of 24fps content for people who care about that), but you're right in that there aren't any full-res 3D transmission methods at the moment .

IIRC, 3D DLPs do the checkerboard pattern while most active LEDs and Plasmas decode whatever the source gives it and do some kind of pulldown while modulating the glasses.

 

[Aikouka]

but you're right in that there aren't any full-res 3D transmission methods at the moment.

Frame Packing is full resolution per eye. It's essentially two 1080p frames (+ 1920x20 buffer between each) and the audio in each frame. I assume that's why they call it "Frame Packing" as they're stuffing two images into each frame rather than one.

IIRC, 3D DLPs do the checkerboard pattern while most active LEDs and Plasmas decode whatever the source gives it and do some kind of pulldown while modulating the glasses.

The older DLPs like my Mitsubishi WD65C9 only process the checkerboard format, but most of the newer ones will handle every format. However, I'm not sure if they simply have translation hardware (i.e. whatever-to-checkerboard) built in or if they natively handle all of the formats.