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I have been considering the possibility of creating active glasses for modern televisions with 4K resolution and a native refresh rate of 120 Hz, enabling the viewing of 3D movies. Interestingly, this seems relatively simple to implement and, as far as I know, it has never been done before at this resolution.
NVIDIA 3D VISION has been discontinued and appears to no longer work. Unfortunately, I lack the technical knowledge required to attempt building a homemade prototype.
During a brief research, I discovered that active glasses still exist nowadays but are limited to specific 3D projectors. In these cases, the projector transmits a radio signal to synchronize the glasses' polarization with the vision of each eye. Therefore, I believe that, to adapt them to modern televisions, it would only be necessary to develop a frequency emitter based on the data from the HDMI cable. This would transform any 4K 120 Hz TV connected to a notebook into a 3D-compatible screen.
It would be amazing if someone created a video showing how to make functional 3D glasses for any modern TV, as most TVs today are 4K 120 Hz.
Posted : 04/04/2025 1:48 am
3D shutter glasses are very simple indeed - the resolution isn't relevant at all but the frame rate is and here's where the issues start.
Each eye is alternatively "closed" (black) and open (clear) as the screen displays the appropriate image. So a 120Hz TV would (in theory) require a blind capable of switching from black to clear and back again at least twice that rate - although movies are typically encoded at much lower frame rates.
But that's the issue - unless the TV has a system to transmit the L/R information to the glasses we're on a hiding to nothing. In theory (and this is purely theoretical) we could decode the HDMI signal and use that to drive the glasses but then there's an issue of synchronising the actual frames to the displayed frames on the TV - which is actually a few mS behind real time and that creates issues of its own. You'll see if this if you use a separate amp and the TV has an adjustment to fix the lip-sync.
The amount of work is not practical unfortunately, particularly as there's so little 3D program information out there - much of it is post-processed 3D (Titanic for example) which looks like a bunch of cardboard sets because each item has been meticulously cut out and pasted back in a compositor frame-by-frame.
3D movie cameras are horribly expensive and difficult to use so very few films are shot in true 3D - Alien Prometheus was. The ones we see in cinemas (like Real3D) use special polarised lenses that work optically. LED TV screens can't do this because they already have a polariser built-in. This works very much like the system Matt did recently with his projector TV.
I love 3D movies myself but it's usually limited to mostly or 100% CGI because then the director doesn't have to worry about these huge, clunky digital cameras. Current state of the art is represented by headsets like Meta's Quest 3 (not the 3S which is rubbish, I know because I bought one) and more expensive ones like the Valve Index. As this tech improves - and hopefully isn't as restrictive at Meta's greedy attacks on privacy - that will eventually be the way forward I expect. Right now most headsets are far too uncomfortable to enjoy the depth and range of a movie in comfort.
Take everything I say with a pinch of salt, I might be wrong and it's a very *expensive* way to learn!
Posted : 04/04/2025 12:36 pm