I love going to the movies. I probably always will. Now that we have 3D movies I'm like a little kid in a candy store. Any excuse is good enough for me to experience the fantastic 3D effects they are coming out with these days. Luckily for me I have four little girls who give me the perfect excuse to see all the latest kids animations with 3D effects.
3D movies work by making sure each eye sees a different image to the other, both taken from a slightly different perspective.
As our eyes are two inches apart they each each see the world differently. When we view a 3D movie this effect is being simulated which fools our brain into seeing a 3D image on a 2D screen. Every 3D image or movie you view uses this same principle but may go about it in a slightly different manner.
Anaglyph Stereo
Once a popular method anaglyph is now more of a novelty due to its poor picture quality. In case you don't know the term anaglyph refers to the red and blue glasses which are usually made out of cardboard. Each separate image is made up of either a red or blue tint. The red or blue lenses filter out the corresponding image so each eye sees the different perspective. This technique is a novelty at best and is not really suitable for enjoying 3D movies in high definition full color.
Active Shutter Glasses Stereoscopy
The technical term for active shutter glasses is alternate-frame sequencing. Each image is shown alternately on the screen. When an eye is not supposed to see the image it is blocked by the shutter over that eye going dark. When the technology was fairly new many people complained of a visible flickering in the image. It's for this reason that a TV needs to be have a refresh frequency of 120Hz or higher to double the frame rate of the animation on screen. These higher frequencies are becoming the default standard of new model TVs and projectors.
Using active shutter glasses can have its downsides. Perhaps the biggest disadvantage is the need for a power source for the glasses. It can be provided via cable tethered to a power supply or via batteries. When you have a large family that can add up to quite a mess of cables or quite a lot of batteries. Active shutter glasses have been around for a while now so the technology that uses them has become quite affordable. This is excellent if you only need one or two pairs of glasses.
Polarized Light Stereoscopy
As technology is always evolving new techniques for displaying 3D imagery are coming onto the market. Polarized light stereoscopy, currently popular in cinemas, is now being made available in the home marketplace through the use of projectors. It's a very efficient way of creating 3D images as both images can now be displayed on the screen at the same time. Polarized lenses in the glasses filter out the corresponding pictures so each eye sees only one slightly altered image while blocking the other.
There are some major advantages to this method but the one limiting disadvantage is that it is prohibitively expensive to the average home user. Projectors are currently the best way to display the images so you will need to buy a silver projector screen to get the best effect. Silver screens make sure the light reaching your eyes remains polarized so the picture retains its quality.
The polarized technique has some major advantages that will enable it to become the dominant method when prices finally do come down. The glasses are lighter, cheaper and don't require batteries. Viewing angles are also greater giving you the ability to have a larger and more widely dispersed audience. If you use shutter glasses you can expect about a 20% reduction in brightness. Polarized lenses give you a much brighter image by only blocking out about 10%.
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