Maybe this is a dumb question. I saw Avatar 3D in a theater yesterday (story is Hollywood Lib at its worst) but the 3D effect was pretty good. My Question is - Why can't the 3D image be duplicated for display on all our legacy equipment and screens and look the same if the viewer is wearing the glasses? In other words, if I sat in the theater with a high quality video camera and shot Avatar 3D and then projected it at home on our wall screen and I wore the glasses why wouldn't I see the same 3D as I saw in the theater? Is it a scam when they insist that we all need to buy new TVs and front projectors to have 3D at home or is there some valid reason why what I asked above won't work?
with 3d video there is two images of the same part. One slightly to the left for the left eye and the other slightly to the right for the right eye. When you watch the video without the 3d glasses you''ll see like a blurred outline around the image. so when you you wear the glasses it puts the image correctly in 3d. The reason for needing a new tv for the 3d effect is that the tv needs to convert the 2d image to 3d to be displayed on the screen. Hopefully third parties will make on add-on card for legacy lcd tvs to make this work.
The correct answer is that new TVs and monitors support refresh rates of at least 120Hz meaning that they can display twice the images in the same amount of time as traditional sets. This is necessary because in the same amount of time it would take to show you one image for both eyes, the new 3D technology needs to show you one image for your left eye and another, slightly different, image for your right eye. The glasses make sure that each eye sees only the image intended for it.
