I am a HUGE FAN of Passive 3D!

[Scott Greczkowski]

I never have played with Passive 3D televisions before until this weekend.

My son's TV in his room died so we were looking for a new TV for his room. I wasn't really looking for a new 3D television but was in BJ's and they had a new LG 47" 3D setup on display, so me being a geek hit the 3D button and grabbed the glasses. I noticed the glasses were a bunch of pairs of glasses someone took from the movie theater and not your expensive active glasses.

The 3D started playing and I was blown away by how good the 3D was! This was real jump off the screen 3D, something that I haven't really seen on my other 3 3D televisions I own. I was in shock! I wasn't expecting the 3D to look this good. I handed a pair of glasses to my wife and even she was impressed with what she saw (she is not a 3D fan).

I played with the TV a big and put it in 2D to 3D conversion mode and was impressed there as well. My Samsung 3D has 2D to 3D conversion but it is not as good at the conversion as this LG was, so again I was impressed.

I talked with my wife and we decided we would take the Samsung 3D set that was in the living room and move it into my sons room to replace his TV which died. We have 4 pairs of Active Shutter glasses for that TV. And we will put this new LG in the living room, where it will be easier for everyone to watch 3D. My son wanted to have friends over before to watch a 3D movie but we only had 2 pairs of glasses at that time. But with this TV it comes with 6 pairs of passive glasses, plus he can tell friends to bring their 3D glasses from the movies if they have them. I may also be able to buy a case of the movie theater ones for around $70 from a friend. If I can do that it would be great.

The set was normally $1199 but yesterday is had an instant rebate making it $899.

The model is the LG 47LM6400.

Now I am only wishing the two televisions inmy bedroom were passive as well. One of the big reasons I dont watch 3D much is because in my bedroom I am always losing sync with the televisions. I dont know why Panasonic and Sony put the 3D transmitters on the bottom if their TV's. They should be at the top!

 

[dfergie]

For the active sets get the Optoma or Monster RF emitter & glasses, no loss of sync at all with that setup.

 

[Pepper]

Your experience is exactly what made me buy the LG 55" model. I wasn't even seriously considering 3D as every set I had tried (active) gave me a massive headache. I saw the LG in the store on black Friday and knew right then I had to have one. I have not regretted that decision.

 

[NotMe546]

Thanks Scott for the great information.
For anyone like me that doesn't have a coupon, Amazon has it for the same price.

Did you guys have input on this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp1zr2v9kT8

 

[KE4EST]

I have never tried passive 3D. I have messed with active ones in stores and was not impressed. Now I will have to try this, I just assumed that passive would be worse.

 

[Ronnie-]

I also am impressed with the passive sets. I have one of both and when I watch I prefer the passive.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Pepper]

Thanks Scott for the great information.
For anyone like me that doesn't have a coupon, Amazon has it for the same price.

Did you guys have input on this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp1zr2v9kT8

I can say that the video is pretty much spot-on and agrees with my real-life results!

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I just assumed that passive would be worse.

I assumed it would be as well. Boy was I wrong!

 

[TheForce]

Been trying to tell you guys for over a year now. Scott, I thought you had passive long already. I have to have active in my home theater due to the large projection screen but when the new 4K 65" is released by LG, I'm putting that on the wall behind the roll down screen.

The big advantage is eye fatigue. I can watch my Passive 10 hours during long 3D editing sessions and never get tired. If I watch a longer than 2 hour movie on my active projector my eyes are really fatigued. I don't get headaches but just tired.

Passive does have some resolution issues although many won't see it as they are dazzled by the simplicity. The 4K panels will resolve the resolution problems.

Passive will always have a problem with vertical visual angle of viewing. It's not critical but if you go outside of that angle the image loses 3D and goes double. No problem with side horizontal angle however.

For really cheap price you can buy clip-on passive glasses if you wear prescription glasses.

 

[teachsac]

I agree with Don. For now I prefer active. I do see the resolution issues. Perhaps when the 4K sets come out.

S~

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

About the only thing I dont like about this TV is its magic remote. Its like a WII remote, there are no channel buttons or input selector buttons on the remote.

 

[Tampa8]

Scott you can get a regular LG remote, I did. I have the 55" LG LM7600, the 2D to 3D also is better than I ever thought it could be. Not like actual 3d where things pop out at you, but does add alot of dimension to the screen especially outdoor scenes. Using passive glasses has it all over the electronic type.

 

[riffjim4069]

Needless to say, I have ignored 3D and have no idea what everyone is talking about. However, I am considering buying a new set and...well, never say never. Anyway, I read up on active versus passive 3D and perhaps I'll give passive HD a whirl here in the coming weeks/months.

 

[TheForce]

Passive is easy to pick fault with in a store, especially when comparing side by side to active technology. But you have to watch it for long time periods to understand the advantages. I don't plan on buying another active set, ever.

On another note- I see the stores are running many really great sales on the older 3D models. I wonder if we're about to see the new 4k models soon? At CES manufacturers at LG and Samsung and Panasonic said to look for 4K models in the Fall after CEDIA. These sales may be to clear the older inventory. IMO,the new 4K technology will completely eliminate the passive half resolution and jaggies problems. The downside of these new 4K TVs will be price. They are expected to intro higher than last years models. So, if cost is also an issue, might need to wait until next summer to afford a 4K even if they intro in the next few weeks.

Sent from my iPad3 using SatelliteGuys app

 

[yaz96]

We have both. ( See my avatar )

A Sony 65" active and an LG 42" passive. I can't really see a difference in the 3D, and it does seem like less eyestrain with the passive and the glasses are a helluva lot lighter than the active ones....

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Another thing I like about passive 3D... I can lay down sideways and still watch in 3D, I can't do that on my active shutter sets.

 

[TheForce]

Scott-that is not a property of passive technology. It doesn't work on Vizio. If I turn my head sideways the greater the angle of the glasses to 90° the worse the 3D effect looks. I know LG advertises this benefit. It is as a result of their superior circular 3D passive technology.

Linear polarization doesn't work so well if you tilt your head. Tilting your head changes the angle of the polarizing filters in each eye, and each filter will start to block more of the light that it should be letting in (the light from its eye's image), and let in more of the light that it shouldn't (the light from the other eye's image).

Circular polarization doesn't have this issue because it filters the same whatever angle it's titled at. So you can tilt your head and your eyes will still be seeing their respective images only.

However, even with circular polarization, the 3D experience always suffers if you tilt your head a lot, as the images for the left and right eye are recorded and displayed for left and right eyes that are horizontally aligned. So really you need to keep your head fairly upright to see the 3D image properly anyway. But circular polarization is less sensitive to the tilt of your head, so it does have an advantage.

 

[Ilya]

For whatever reason, my eyes cannot stand active 3D, so passive 3D is my only choice. I know that I lose half of the vertical resolution with passive 3D, but at least I don't get headaches. LG makes excellent 3D sets at a very affordable price!

Sent from my iPad 3 using SatelliteGuys

 

[Xizer]

I had the opposite experience. Passive 3D is dreadful.

I actually bought a LG LM7600 because of the glowing reviews. Clearly, these reviews were written by the same people who think upscales look just fine. I learned my lesson. Never trust your typical Internet reviewer to be competent when it comes to things like this.

While the lightness of the passive 3D glasses is all good and fine, where it truly matters, the picture quality department, passive is abysmal. This must be the resolution thing people talk about. 3D Blu-rays looked only 720p and there were obnoxious black horizontal lines running across the screen, every other line. I can describe it only as like looking outside a window through a set of blinds. So not only does passive 3D on a TV halve the resolution, you can see the half of the resolution it cuts out in the form of black bars! WTF? I think this passive 3D technology LG uses infects 2D viewing too: Everything I viewed on the panel looked interlaced.

So yeah, it was nice having lighter glasses and not having to crank up the brightness on the screen to compensate for active's darkening effect, but it wasn't worth halving the resolution and seeing black lines on half the screen. We all know how terrible 720p looks. ESPN, ABC, and Fox are amongst the worst looking HDTV networks. I watch Blu-rays for a reason: to escape these horrible low resolutions.

Needless to say, it went back in the box after a day and I got a proper active 3DTV: The Samsung ES7100. The 3D on this model performs as it should: full 1080p resolution. No bizarre black lines over half the image. No interlaced looking 2D. It's the same 1080p image I'm used to with the 3D effect plastered on top. These flickering and crosstalk issues people complained about in early active 3D models have obviously been resolved as I experience none of that. The Samsung 2012 model active glasses are actually quite light, and they only cost $20.

The sad thing is I think the LG LM7600 would be a better product than the Samsung TVs if only it had proper 3D and not this passive crap. I was impressed with the color quality, design, and all other features of the TV actually. It had better menus, a cool motion control remote, and a vastly superior "Smart" interface.

 

[Ronnie-]

I mentioned it before, but having both a Panny active and a Vizio passive, if I am watching 3d (which is rare), I prefer the vizio because of the passive tech. I have not noticed the problems described above, at least to the extent that it would be unpleasant to watch.