3D High Definition TV is here!
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3D Glasses and PC Requirements
There are some additional components needed to turn your new 3D-Ready HDTV into a home 3D-IMAX theater.
- Wireless 3D Glasses with an IR Emitter (The emitter plugs into the HDTV)
- A Personal Computer (PC) connecting to the HDTV through an HDMI cable
- 3D playback software for the PC
- A starter library of 3D-DVD movies and 3D Video
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Wireless LCD "Shutter glasses"
Two types of 3D glasses work with the new 3D-Ready HDTV's: eDimensional (E-D) style glasses and ELSA (or Revelator) styles. Both types can be found packaged
under several name brands and appear to be made by the same factory.
There is a small IR emitter for each style. The emitter's plug (see picture below) connects to a special socket in the TV. The emitter itself can be set on top of the TV and operates the wireless glasses at a distance.
There is an incompatability between these two types. The IR emitter for the ELSA style will not operate the E-D glasses.
In addition, although ELSA type glasses will operate with an E-D emitter, the ELSA and E-D glasses work in opposite polarities. When the
E-D glasses open the Left-eye-image the ELSA glasses open the Right-eye-image. You cannot use both E-D and ELSA glasses together.
Please note: I wear corrective eye glasses. I can testify that both these models fit
very comfortably over normal eye glasses.
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| E-D Style |
ELSA Style |
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IR Emitter for E-D / ELSA style 3D Glasses
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Which type of 3D glasses should you choose? That may depend on your expected audience.
Believe me, during the holidays everyone in the house will want to experience the new 3D theater!
And that means having several sets of glasses.
The ELSA style glasses are more solidly built, but they are also more expensive. Currently extra pairs cost $80 each.
Extra pairs of E-D glasses are $50 each. But the E-D glasses and emitter have a shorter ranged. This shorter range is likely
to be a problem in larger family rooms.
Here is a plug for my 3DFlightSim model 3D-20 emitter. For very large rooms or for commercial venues this is the emitter for you!
Even in normal family rooms the 3D-20 will allow you to purchase and use
the E-D style glasses, saving $30 or more for each extra pair.
Best Buy for Starters
If you want to test the 3D on your 3D Ready Mitsubishi or Samsung for the least amount of money you can purchase the "Wireless Upgrade Kit" from eDimensional. The kit provides an emitter and
one pair of wireless glasses for only $60 - all the hardware you need for testing out the new 3D-HDTV in addition to a PC.
(Edited 3/19/08) Another way to test out your system is to purchase the
3-D DLP® Starter Pack from Dynamic Digital Depth Company. This is an excellent product that I highly recommend. It does a fantastic job at converting normal cinema DVD's into 3D video for use with your 3D glasses. Just make sure your computer satisfies the system requirements listed at the DDD website. Also recommended: the Stereoscopic player from 3DTV.at. The Stereoscopic player is an excellent program for viewing specially made video files and DVD's produced in 3D-format. |
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PC Requirements
You will need to connect a PC to your 3D-HDTV to watch stereoscopic video. Searching on the web it is difficult to pin down the system
requirements for the PC. Samsung's site recommends a fairly high end system and various other websites list many different hardware
and software requirements.
You probably do not need to purchase a new PC just to test out the 3D on your 3D Ready television. I found that very basic hardware and software produces
terrific 3D on the new 3D Ready HDTV's. If your system has the right kind of video card (see page 3) your computer should work if it has:
- A 1 Gigahertz or better CPU
- Windows XP or Vista
- DirectX version 9
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My testing indictes that 3D video playback does not place very much load on the PC's graphics. But my attempts to use PC's with on-board (motherboard integrated) graphics were not successful. The ASUS M2A-VM motherboard with HDMI integrated
graphics proved incompatable with stereo video. There may be a problem with current versions of 3D graphics drivers,
or there may be a more basic hardware incompatibility with this board's ATI Radeon X1250 chipset.
Update: 2/2/08
The GIGABYTE 73PVM-S2H with integrated HDMI graphics works perfectly with our test setup. The motherboard's NVidia GeForce 7100
integrated graphics proves compatible with 3D-Ready TV's. Other motherboards
with Nvidia GeForce 7100 on-board graphics may also work well.
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- Page 1 - Is your HDTV "3D-Ready?"
- Page 2 - 3D glasses and PC requirements
- Page 3 - video card and software requirements
- Page 4 - Hooking up the test
- HOME
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