Meant to be Seen

With all the LCD TVs that are out there at the moment that currently don't support S3D, and with more and more movies coming out in S3D, I am amazed that there isn't a company that is creating a viable, full colour, S3D solution for these. My idea is that it shouldn't be too difficult to have an overlay that would attach to the screen which would have polarizing in opposite direction for every second line. This would enable conversion for a reasonable price for all those who have shelled out the money for a large TV.
I have started a poll on the iZ3D forums if anyone is interested:
http://forum.iz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=1106" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Let me know your opinion. I personally think that a well marketed solution like this would make a killing, if only there were more content available.

You want to stick a polarizer yourself on your LCD TV? It will need to be well aligned.

This techique is called u-Pol (micro-pol) (short for micro-polariser) or sometimes called x-pol.
As you say, alternate rows of pixels are polarised in two orthogonal polarisation states and when you wear the correct polarised 3D glasses, the left eye sees the odd numbered rows and the right eye sees the even numbered rows (or vice-versa).

There are already a number of manufacturers with commercial products available which use this technology:
- Hyundai
- Zalman
- Pavonine / Miracube / Dimen
See my extensive list (with product numbers, etc) here: http://www.3dmovielist.com/3dhdtvs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Unfortunately, a micro-polariser panel which the consumer could fit to their existing LCD is not a commercially available product. There are technical problems which will probably prevent a consumer add-on from ever becoming a commercial product.

Cheers,
Andrew.

I agree with Awoods. Simply attaching a sheet for a consumer is not a viable option I think. A micropolar is TRICKY to attach, high accuracy, and in many cases a black matrix guard band is also needed. For every screen you would also need a different one.

Yeah, it sounds good in theory but its not really a viable option. Aside from the difficulty in actually attaching the film you have to take into account that every model tv would need a separate film. There couldn't be a one size fits all solution. And what happens when you mess up? Who is responsible? Because of all this I doubt you'll ever see a product like this come to market.

Isnt this like what Wazabee do

http://wazabee.net/node/291

and

http://wazabee.net/node/290

just on a bigger scale ?

Nope. The wazabee is glasses-free. It must be some kind of parallax barrier or some type of lense that directs lines of pixels to each eye.

I don't know why a reasonably dedicated end user wouldn't be able to install one of these. A 52" 1080P screen has a pixel height of approx. .7mm which, while small, is not out of the relms of doable. I would assume that a product like this would be shipped with a test pattern that would be displayed on the screen and a film over the top that would be inverse of the pattern on the screen for alignment by eye. I would also assume that it would be electrostatic.
I'm aware that they would have to be custom for the different manufacturers, however, unless my sources are wrong, there are actually only a few display manufacturers making LCD panels (wasn't there some joint venture between samsung and sony so they're both using the same panels?).
AWood, thanks for all the correct terminology. While I'm aware that there are manufactures already with this solution in complete products, I would think of this as a bridging solution, somewhat like a digital set top box for an analogue TV. While the solution isn't ideal, it should suffice for those who have recently purchased a solution and not looking at upgrading for some time.

My projector setup gives me an image about 8 feet wide and the pixels are about 1/10 of an inch. Now I'm cutting 1/10th inch strips of polarizing film and sticking them to the wall alternating polarization with each pixel row. This is going to be great! I'll be able to play Terminal Velocity in native interlaced mode. Just kidding of course but I do think it's a nice and slick idea that should work fine except for the reflected light from the projector. I like projectors for these ideas because you can adjust pixel/image size to your needs. By the way, this should work for vertical interlacing too with obvious adjustments. Maybe checkerboard too but I'm not going to cut 480,000 little squares of film.

chow, or is it ciao (ki-ay-oh)

There is a company called VRex which is doing just that. Maybe you should contact them:

http://www.vrex.com/products/micropol.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I have been thinking about such a solution (attaching a filter to a lcd screen) and made a few observations on the zalman trimon 22" to see how it works.
it seems to me that there is a little space between the liquid cristals and the filter, I just posted this in a french forum but I'm not sur how to explain in english but I will try anyway so please, don't be too cruel about my bad english

when you look at a 3D interlaced pic on the zalman, the field of view is very short vertically, if you move up (or down) juste a little you start to see ghosting and if you continue moving further up you come to a point that you see "clearly" both view (left & right) of the picture.
what I found out is that if you move even further up, you'll reach a point where the pic become watchable again, exept that left & right view are inverted.
go on and move even more, ... ghosting again, then the pic do come back to normal again but not inverted this time.

this means that:
when you are in the normal position, you have a straight line between your eye, the line of the filter and pixel1
when you move up to the 2nd position, the straight line is between your eye, the same line of the filter and pixel2 (no need to explain why the 2 views are inverted in that case)
when you move up to the 3rd position, you get: your eye, the same line, pixel3.

based on those observation, I think that the (very small) distance between the pixel and the filter allows you to place a filter without having to adjust it too much vertically, the only thing that really mater is that the pixel lines and the lines of the filter should be exactly at the right size and parallel to each other.

the following pic shows what would happen in the case of a misaligned filter,
from left to right:
in black the lcd screen with (in red) the position of pixel1
in blue the filter with (in red) the position of line 1 (the alignment is not good and the line is way too high).
in red, the position where the viewer'eye should be in a normal situation
in green, where it should be to compensate the bad alignment of the filter



of course I exagerated the misalignment between the pixel ans the filter, at such point the filter's line should be aligned to the next pixel but it shows that if the filter is too high, all you have to do is move up a little to compensate and it should work perfectly