Coming in 2012: 3D Glasses That Aren’t Incompatible and Pricey

By  |  Monday, August 8, 2011 at 11:02 pm

Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, and 3D glasses maker XpanD have announced that they’re working together to design a specification for Bluetooth-enabled 3D glasses that will be compatible with HDTVs from all the above makers. They intend to ship them in 2012, and the glasses should work with existing 3D-capable TVs as well as new ones. It’ll eliminate the current hassle of having to buy glasses made by your TV’s manufacturer, and will presumably help to drive down prices for the specs.

To which I say: GOOD! GOOD! WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?

 

 
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  1. Max Says:
    August 10th, 2011 at 3:22 am

    While personally I think active shutter glasses are awful and stereoscopic 3d TV as a whole is overrated (cool sometimes but normally I’d prefer 2d), I cant agree more with the last statement.

    Each company pushing incompatible methods of timing the shutters was/is ridiculous. This is a start although I’m guessing that these glasses are just capable of detecting the particular brand and switching to that ‘mode’, which is still kind of a kludge.

    Some sets using IR while other RF just shows the pointless level of segmentation. Pointless to consumers at least, the companies are only just doing this now as they were quite happy to take your $100 for compatible glasses. They now seem to realise this is annoying enough to consumers to affect sales in a meaningful way.

    From the article:
    “To get the ball rolling, XpandD announced in March that it had signed a deal with Panasonic to come up with a standard for infrared systems. This latest expanded agreement brings more protocols and company technologies into the fold.”

    The first sentence points to a proposed single unified standard (for IR not RF), but the second and the compatibility with existing sets points to some form of multi-mode operation.
    I’m hoping they will be supporting the various current methods and introducing a single standard all future sets will operate with.

  2. hemingways Says:
    August 11th, 2011 at 4:53 pm

    So far 3D TV is a gimmick. Move along, nothing to see here.