3D Television : How does it work ?

With the worldwide release and success of James Cameron's 'Avatar', it seems 3D technology may be opening up a whole new dimension in home entertainment.

If you have been following the news, you'll know that 3D TV development is coming big this year. Several main manufactures are aiming at the 3D TV market. And what is really exiting is that they are not using the same technology. Different producers cme up with different ideas and solutions!

Coming to its working, It employs stereoscopic technology by using 3D active shutter glasses. These glasses allow you to see through only one lens at a time and create an image for each of your eyes. Your mind merges these two images and allows you to perceive depth, making the picture on the screen appear 3D.

The 3D experience is made possible by the LG Electronics special lenticular 3D-filter, which gives the viewers auto-stereotopic images and a real dynamic 3D experience! The filter works the same way that the holograms visible on modern passports and ID's. The 3D flter breaks the image and lets the eye watch several pictures at the same time. In the Flatron M4200D is every image actually a composition of 25 images overlapping eachother. When viewing the 3D TV screen at 3 to 7 meters the 3 dimesional perspective seems to be about 50 cm.

One thing is clear though, 3D television seems to be set as the future of home entertainment. The two big hurdles to overcome seem to be pricing of these 3D television sets (estimates roughly in the same region of high-end HD television sets - initially, at least) and secondly, getting the market audience to embrace 3D in their homes. Now judging by the success of the above mentioned movie 'Avatar', it seems consumers are hungry for this new entertainment medium.

It does also seem as if the content producing industry (the film and program makers) will eventually be leaning towards producing programming in 3D, with the announcement of Sony's 3D camera, capable of capturing high quality images at 240fps (that's frames per second) in early October 2009.

Interestingly enough though, as with all new technologies, 3D will be expensive at first, but will most likely become more affordable over time