settle for Just Two Dimensions
when you can have free a decade ago the
marketing machine behind 3D TV was so
strong that even we got caught up in the hype but after all those years not to
mention the millions and millions of dollars spent promoting 3D as the next
big thing seems like no one cares anymore
to the point where if you blinked and
missed the craze entirely you might have never seen a 3D TV in person are you
missing out did 3D TVs really deserve to
die or were they simply left to slowly bleed out by an uncaring industry that's
always chasing the next shiny box badge to imagine what could have been we
tracked down two of the most notable 3D TVs to trial on our staff of highly
trained guinea pigs was it cool or does
the third d stand for disappointment what's never disappointing is our
sponsor AMD are you overdue for a GPU
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foreign
in the late 2000s 3D was picking up steam again as a cool new innovation but
it's actually really really old Tech Way
Back In 1832 yes 190 years ago Sir Charles wheatstone
invented the stereoscope which used a pair of mirrors angled towards images
taken from two slightly different perspectives to create the illusion of
depth you might remember these and you've almost certainly seen one of
these well both of them used the exact same principle but it's a bit of a
lonely experience and here isn't it when the motion picture was created people
were eager to try and blend the popular novelty of stereoscopes and view masters
with movies resulting in anaglyphic 3D
these iconic red and cyan glasses have
become the de facto symbol of 3D but while they were super wowzers for black
and white movies they significantly degraded the experience of your
newfangled Technicolor movies of course
we've come a long way since then and thanks to light polarizing glass
developed by Polaroid that allowed both convincing depth and full color 3D films
would surge back at least three more times first in the 1950s Golden Age
Again in the 80s
3D the third Dimensions Terror and
finally in the 2010s spurred on by your favorite big blue aliens no not those
ones these ones the difference they said was that this
time you could bring the immersion home
with you Jake get over here oh yeah
I expected an action tumble over the couch but that's pretty good no oh god
with no obvious downsides then
3D was suddenly thrust back into nearly
every form of entertainment that could fit a third D but how did they bring it
to the home where previous attempts failed to understand home 3D we need to
First understand commercial 3D the most common of which is the real D 3D found
in theaters it works by projecting the
image through a polarizing lens that actually Alters its polarization
144 times per second in step with 144
frames per second of film wait a second
144 frames per second I thought movies are at 24 FPS
well they are but for starters each of your eyes is going to need its own 24
frames per second so there's 48 frames right there and at that frame rate
flicker from the polarization lens is
very noticeable so to create a smoother
experience each frame actually gets shown three times for a shorter period
each of your eyes gets covered by its own polarized lens which filters out
every other frame giving you that 3D experience in the home by contrast
though the two steps of polarizing the light and filtering it out were split
resulting in two main categories of 3D technology active and passive
representing these two we've got two displays that we're going to look at
today first of which is a Sony PlayStation 3D display this is not to be
confused with the PlayStation TV this is
our active 3D TV it's 24 inches 1080P
and sports a 240Hz fresh rate but that
does not mean that it actually supports 240 FPS content it was a whole
advertising holdover from the plasma TV
days it should be noted that in 3D it
was only able to do 120 frames per second at 720p our second representing
passive 3D is the LG signature G6 OLED
from 2016. this is one of the last and arguably the best 3D TVs made before all
manufacturing of 3D TVs stopped later that year it's 65 inches 4K it cost a
whopping 8 000 and it's HDR Peak
brightness is only 500 nits so it only kind of supports HDR kind of like
YouTube only kind of supports HDR get subscribed by the way so you don't miss
our upcoming video on that because it uses passive 3D it comes with some huge
advantages before we take a look at the king though let's talk about the peasant I'm just
going to get all I'm going to get all oh my god oh move your hand does that not
immediate oh don't look at the lights uh use your other stick I don't even know
how to fire use your other stick oh god oh the stick fires this doesn't seem
like a game where the 3D really does a whole lot I mean it's cool what's better
about passive versus active oh we're gonna talk about that boys actually I
guess now's as good a time as any to say that early on pretty much all 3D TVs
used a mostly normal LCD display which
helped reduce cost and complexity but unfortunately relied on Active 3D
shutter glasses which brought both cost and complexity back into the picture
like the polarizing lenses built into the movie theater projector these
glasses are powered and their lenses contain a layer of crystals that can
rotate when an electrical charge is sent through them when those crystals rotate
they block the TV's image from one of your eyes so if you sync this up with a
high refresh rate display that alternates between the views that you're
supposed to see the left and right image voila the brain does its magic producing
a 3D image hell the script says before I
try it I got a gamer up with my Wan hoodie but um I guess we've already started trying
it so how did you store.com yeah exactly right when the game starts it
immediately makes me want to barf okay oh man so you keep saying stuff that's
like wow this is a perfect time to transition into the next scripted bit
fine let's just do it the issues with these passive displays
and active shutter glasses are many first up the powered glasses need
batteries thus needing to be recharged they can also suffer from Wireless
interference if you block the sync transmitter that's either on the display
or as a separate piece of hardware and many users complained about comfort and
flicker especially if there's any other light in the room oh don't look at the
lights finally of course they're expensive displays that relied on these
kinds of glasses for their 3d effect would sometimes come with a pair or
maybe two included in the box but if you wanted any more than that they would run
you anywhere from fifty dollars to over a hundred and fifty dollars each not
that you were likely to need more glasses the impressive library of about
60 3D games for the PlayStation 3 pales
in comparison to its overall library and notably includes very few multiplayer
titles in a nutshell PlayStation 3D had
many of the same pros and cons as NVIDIA's 3D Vision for PC gaming high
cost limited game support reduced image brightness and LCD technology that
simply wasn't fast enough to fully separate the stereo images which led to
a lot of brightness loss as well as frequent user headaches options oh this
is so cool yeah should I try it now similar view here we go and you lose so
much brightness with these they literally block half the light half the
light yeah and then lift the glasses up oh one other issue is that devs weren't
used to working in 3D meaning that important information like the subtitles
in Killzone for example would appear at a different depth than where you
normally had to look so you had to refocus your eyes to read them and then
look back so if you blinked you could miss important information of course the
killer feature in my mind when I heard about the PlayStation 3D display wasn't
necessarily stereoscopic gaming but simulvue simulvue promised to allow
local multiplayer without splitting the
screen so each Jake and I could use half
of the frames being output to see our own version of the game really cool
right yeah I can see that being cool if you could like watch different content
from your spouse when you're sitting okay that's exactly the next talking point one of the most things I was most
excited for was like the kids are watching their kids movie with their
headphones in the wife and I are watching some serious movie right on the
same TV yeah that'd be pretty cool family family time right instead you got
to buy multiple TVs yeah it's stupid are we are we playing at the same time
right now I think so oh my God whoa this is so cool though I never got
to try it I never had a PlayStation 3D display back in the day and only a
handful of games ever supported this but I heard about this and I was like wow
how amazing would that be right like for like something like Mario Kart yeah if
you could just both have a full screen freaking display that'd be amazing it is
pounding now it's very obvious right
that the polarization filter isn't perfect and the pixels don't switch fast
enough with LCD to completely get rid of the ghost of the other image so it can
be very unpleasant in the real world
because of the hard to ignore downsides of active 3D glasses this Tech ended up
pretty much completely abandoned so then how does the passive alternative fare to
find out we're going to have to jump ahead a few years and a few price
brackets to the LG signature OLED G6 holy if I just close my right eye
and Jake closes his left here we go boys it still works the first advantage of
passive 3D TVs is that they can be more easily enjoyed with the whole family
thanks to much cheaper glasses how cheap
you might ask well free if you're willing to be creative this is a pair
that Taryn actually liberated from the movie theater and they work just fine
we're supposed to try it with a Blu-ray first but Jake already got ahead of
ourselves a little bit and tried just Closing one eye to see half of our Kill
Zone game and it's like how how well
does this compare to shutters yeah way better the brightness isn't crazy but I
can screen Peak so easy well it's cool we can show the camera this though oh
Linus this looks so cool I know it does here's the thing Jake I was a 3D nerd
but really yeah the problem is that the
active shutter glasses gave me just a splitting headache like I wanted to love
it and the passive stuff well it never
really got good until the moment 3D died
yeah this came out like in the the the
body of 3D was twitching and this TV was
its last spasm and it finally got not good but great okay here we go you ready
this doesn't look that 3D to me um I can't tell
I mean it does kind of look 3D there's definitely stuff popping out but I don't
think that I would call this a very satisfying experience well we have
Blu-rays um yeah but I really wanted to see
something that I think is actually going to look good and Titanic definitely
won't Independence Day Resurgence I mean I
don't think that even looks good in 2D
TV oh my God maybe that's a thing that
might be a thing Jake we gave up on trying to play 3D files we are on our
Titanic Blu-ray with our Panasonic fancy
Blu-ray player and we're ready now right yeah well hit it well wait is it is it
my controller yeah press 3D act oh wow I
don't know if this is the movie I would go watch in 3D like oh wow the people
are coming they pop out of the corner oh that's pen
is coming right out wow this guy is really in front very 3D like obnoxiously
through the brightness difference is
marginal we've got some better stuff coming in terms of the actual
3dness of the content but in terms of
how the TV performs like good gravy isn't that amazing passive TVs are able
to achieve this level of brightness and I mean it doesn't give you a headache no
I don't have a headache I mean I do have a headache still from yesterday but
that's the same headache the way that they do this is that each alternate line
vertically is actually polarized the
opposite way coming right out of the TV and you can actually see it if you take
a pair of glasses and you hold it right up to your content now on a regular
1080p display that would be a bit of a problem because you'd be giving up half
of your vertical resolution for a 1080p 3D movie but because this one is 4K
there's actually some trickery in the TV itself so we are getting the full 1080p
images interlaced because we have double
the resolution that's part of what it makes this like frame smashing or
something like that uh what interlacing no no it works kind of like an
interlaced video frame except that instead of having just one in frame with
half of it being shown alternately we've actually got two full frames one for
each eye utilizing that full vertical resolution
come try it David this is an absolutely incredible 3D
experience though well why don't we try a movie that might actually use 3D
better yeah ocean predators oh there we go oh whoa that looks awful
wow if you move around it looks so weird I'm actually kind of surprised at how
well it works from different viewing angles I wanna Let's do an animated one
you figured out a way to play one of the animated ones oh uh I figured out how to
play Doom I don't want to watch Avatar I want to watch something that's not going
to be boss baby hi there this is a bit of a long shot do you guys have any
3D Blu-rays in stock you have a huge selection of course you do
found it in the clearance section
very popular 3D Blu-ray they definitely got some animated stuff in here uh yeah
whoa Toy Story yeah that'd be cool oh this is not three oh 3D version included
okay well let's pick up some good stuff then okay Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs we got
some finding oh yeah 14 okay
I'm actually excited about this Shrek that's what it takes we all saw that I'm
buying these for work purposes so I'm using the work card and they're staying
at work are you ready I'm I'm ready
you ready to get shreked okay wow this
is actually this is awesome wow though
the 3D is done like pretty well this is
the first one so far that I've been like this actually like kind of adds something the thing is when you've got a
two camera rig and you're trying to shoot live action in 3D focus is a
nightmare right because you can only have one part of the scene in focus and
when you're watching it back then if you look and focus your eyes at a closer or
a farther away object it's out of focus
so you're focused on a blurry object it just doesn't work there's still some
weirdness like when somebody runs into the frame it's kind of like jittery yes
man now I want a 3D projector for the theater room God damn it man this is
like a video game there's like propaganda before oh here we go
interesting they didn't try to overdo the 3D in this movie yeah like in that
scene it was just the fireworks really yeah I feel like because everything is
so dark though you don't really it kind of masks the 3dness like in other
content you notice it a lot more when there's big color changes between what's
in the foreground and what's in the background this is just that where buddy
was like below the playing field was pretty cool
okay this is pretty cool switch it to 2D for a second I want to see what the
difference is like sure oh yeah that's immediately way more lame
at some point it should be noted that even with a 4K display depending on the
3D content you could still be limited to a vertical resolution of 540 lines
why it often came down to bandwidth
limitations at the time while Blu-rays could simply double the frame rate and
or resolution that would have added enough cost for broadcasters that any
push for home 3D would have been Dead on Arrival so most 3D is actually handled
by sending two images at half resolution and then broadcasting them together in a
single 1920x1080 frame the two main ways
they do this are side by side or top
bottom where you either lose half of the horizontal resolution or half of the
vertical resolution respectively the image gets sent to the TV where they are
then merged and displayed as a single 1080p frame 1080p ish it's kind of like
when you're interlacing a 2D image but instead of interlacing data from a
single frame it's actually from two separate frames that are destined to go
to each of your eye holes truthfully on a quality display like this one it still
looks pretty good so why I didn't 3D
stick around this time 3D was and continues to be more difficult to
produce and really easy to mess up so
even with that additional cost it would often end up looking cheap adding insult
to injury the content was expensive to distribute less comfortable for
audiences you can say that again and all of this
at a higher price glasses list 3D displays like on the Nintendo 3DS
addressed some of these problems games
and animated films use Virtual rather than physical cameras and are therefore
much easier to convert to 3D but as 3DS
users can attest they have their own drawbacks including crummy resolution
and even crummier viewing angles with all these problems in mind it's no
surprise that by 2016 just six years
after being thrust into the mainstream production of 3D TVs by all major brands
ceased 4K Blu-ray doesn't support 3D at
all nor do any modern consoles and as far as we know there are no 3D TV
channels still available making it effectively dead
there are still Niche pockets of 3D enthusiasts though to my knowledge
NVIDIA's final 3D Vision capable driver can still play Old stereo 3D games and
the latest is from I think 2020. Voodoo apparently still supports 3D and these
current model projectors from JVC still
include robust 3D support for the handful of 3D Blu-rays that are still
being produced but due to the complexity of shooting live action films in 3D many
of them have 3D implemented in a way that's just kind of cheap and gimmicky
looking because it's added in post so I
it's in the script I doubt they sell very well but we know that for a fact
based on having actually gone to the store I don't know maybe the new Avatar
is going to kick start another 3D Renaissance I don't know they have a kid
now and there's water um seems compelling enough to spend 13
years of your life working on right well maybe we can buy another 8 000 TV right
or maybe you could be compelled to spend some money on our sponsor jackery
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video on the Looking Glass holographic monitor another attempt at making
game-changing 3D display Tech but one that actually could have a ton of
potential