3D Vision Blog

We know that with 3D vision 2 active shutter glasses Nvidia has increased the size of the lenses used by 20%, but what this means in terms of the increase of the width and height of the lenses? On the photo above you can see 3D Vision 2 (left) compared to MonsterVision Max 3D glasses (right) with the Monster glasses being the ones with the biggest lenses I’ve seems so far among active shutter glasses. On the photo you can see that Nvidia’s new 3D glasses are almost catching up to the Monster’s 3D glasses in terms of size, so here is the width and height of the visible size of the lenses between these three 3D glasses, measuring roughly the size with the minimum and maximum height and width:

3D Vision:
Lens height – 26-32 mm
Lens width – 36-54 mm

3D Vision 2:
Lens height – 30-35 mm
Lens width – 36-58 mm

MonsterVision Max 3D:
Lens height – 30-41mm
Lens width – 38-58 mm

And since the lenses of the glasses are not with an exact rectangular size it is harder to confirm these 20% size increase between the first and second generation 3D Vision, but let us believe Nvidia on this one. I was personally more interested by the fact that the lenses of the new 3D Vision 2 glasses have roughly the same width as Monster’s 3D glasses, although they are not as high. This is a good news, considering the fact that all 3D Vision ready 3D LCD monitors are wide aspect ones, but with 3D projectors there are still quite a lot of models with 4:3 or 16:10 aspect ratio and for these bigger not only in width, but also in height lenses can be considered better.

And now for what is the weight of the old and new 3D Vision shutter glasses. As you can see from the photos, the 3D Vision glasses (on top) are a bit lighter at about 51 grams and the new 3D Vision 2 glasses (on the bottom) have a bit of extra weight for a total of about 56.2 grams. Not much of a difference, but the weight is increased a bit. According to Nvidia the new glasses should be able to provide you with up to 60 hours of usage on a single charge, the same amount of time you get with the revised version of the old 3D Vision glasses. As I’ve already mentioned in a previous post the new 3D Vision 2 glasses use a built-in 70 mAh lithium-ion rechargeable battery. And just as a comparison some of the 3D HDTV manufacturers have managed to reduce the weight of their active shutter 3D glasses to less than 30 grams (with less usage time on a single charge however), so there is more to be desired in terms of weight reduction for the next generation… ;)

In the last few days there has been a lot of controversy going on around the fact that Sony has announced that it plans to stop subsidizing the 3D glasses in movie theaters starting next year with the release of the movies “Men in Black III” and “The Amazing Spider-Man.” This has angered the National Association of Theater Owners in US that did not accept these news happily, and this was not the first try for big movie studio to stop subsidizing the glasses. It has happened with 20th Century Fox back in 2009, but they have renounced their plan to stop subsidizing the 3D glasses after the same thing happened as is now happening with Sony. Will Sony do the same as 20th Century Fox is still not clear, but it is clear that unless this happens as an industry wide move the movie theater owners won’t be happy at all. But you know, there are already quite a few placer around the world where movie studios are actually not subsidizing the 3D glasses. This can easily be arranged adjusting the profit distribution shares between the movie theater owners and the movie studios, however movie studios like Sony probably just want to move the cost for the 3D glasses to the theater owners. And this all could lead to a 3D ticket price increase or a decrease in the number of 3D movie projections, but it could also lead to a big market increase in one relatively new category of products – personal movie theater 3D glasses…

Buying and bringing your own personal (BYO) 3D glasses with you when going to a 3D movie projection is already something that quite a few people prefer doing, especially considering some of the side effects of the reusable 3D glasses you usually get in the theater. The reusable 3D glasses in movie theaters are usually being washed in between projections in order to have them cleaned, but how many times you’ve seen the lenses of these glasses scratched or smudged with some cleaning fluid or whatever? You usually have to carefully wipe them out yourself before using them, that is unless you carry your own personal pair of 3D glasses that you can take out and enjoy the movie. There are also some movie theaters that hand out what appears to be packed single-use pairs of glasses that get proper treatment before being repacked and distributed for the next projection… this is usually a better and more problem free solution for the audience, but is probably also more expensive. But you know, getting 3D glasses for a 3D movie projection is something you’d normally expect to get as a service from the movie theater, so should you also not expect to get a discount from the ticket when you BYO 3D glasses? This is one of the options and movie theaters could also start offering different brands of compatible 3D glasses with the type of projection system they are using. And this way they can even further increase their profit by offering different types of personal 3D glasses and in different price ranges, so that you will know when you spent some money for a personal pair of glasses you would then get a discount from the 3D movie tickets.

Having movie theaters offering different personal 3D glasses is probably the best way, especially considering the fact that there are multiple 3D projection systems in use that require the viewer to wear a different type of 3D glasses to see the proper image. These are mostly passive solutions – IMAX, RealD and Dolby 3D as well as some active ones such as XpanD, which is probably the most widely used active solution for 3D movie theaters. Obviously active and passive 3D viewing methods are not compatible, although you may be able to make a kind of an universal solution, but even the different passive solutions are not compatible with each other due to the different method of light polarization being used in each. When you look around you will see that pretty much all better looking and especially designer 3D glasses available are compatible with RealD’s projection system only. Sure you could pretty easily also find IMAX or Dolby 3D glasses, but these are usually the same not so practical and not so good looking type of 3D glasses that you get handed out when you enter the respective 3D movie theater. The IMAX 3D glasses shouldn’t be expensive and hard to produce, but most likely IMAX is not giving out license to anyone else to make designer 3D glasses compatible with their solutions, the same could also apply to Dolby 3D, although their glasses should be a bit more expensive and harder to produce due to the way their lenses work. This would of course need to change if the market of personal 3D glasses continues to grow and there is a big potential for that, although the presence of multiple formats makes it harder for the users. Depending on what format the local movie theaters around you use you may need to buy multiple different pairs of 3D glasses and if you go for more expensive designer brands such as Calvin Klein or Oakley it could turn out to be quite an expensive thing to do. And if you don’t go watching 3D movies that often it becomes even less attractive, even though there are a lot of options for personal 3D glasses that don’t cost over $100 USD…

Do you remember back in June this year Nvidia announcing that new more affordable wired 3D Vision active shutter glasses are coming? Well, if you live in the US you are able to get these cheaper wired 3D Vision glasses for a while now for $99 USD, however if you live in Europe, where there are a lot of more price-oriented markets, you are still out of luck. It appears that the wired version of the 3D Vision active shutter glasses is still yet to reach Europe and most likely other markets as well. I did manage to spot some places offering the glasses, but only in Germany and even there it isn’t easy to get a hold of them, and as expected the price in Europe is translated to 99 Euro. So it seems that we are going to have to wait a bit more for the wired version of the 3D Vision glasses to become widely available in Europe. And until then you’ll have to wait for a review of the glasses comparing them to the already available for a while and more expensive wireless counterpart.

And while you may think that the wired version of the 3D Vision glasses may be more attractive for people that consider the wireless version a bit too expensive this is not the case. There are actually a lot of people using the 3D Vision glasses professionally and although there is already a wireless 3D Vision Pro version available targeted at them, they may still prefer the wired glasses. The reason for that is due to the battery having bigger chance to fail in about a year or two in a wireless version after 8-12 hours of nonstop daily usage. So for these people the wired version could be more convenient solution in longer term, regardless of the price, and having to deal with cables is not a problem as they tend to work in front of a PC all the time anyway. Of course from the profit point of view having professional users buy the cheapest consumer version instead of the more expensive professional model is not that great, but then there is the point of what people need. Which reminds me that there is still no easy way to get your damaged or failed 3D Vision glasses repaired, like for example if you break a lens incidentally or your battery fails, as there are no spare parts for being sold anywhere. So you ultimately have to buy a new pair of glasses and the general rule is that the more complex a product is the more likely is something to fail in it over time and this makes the simpler wired 3D Vision glasses more attractive for some people… ;)