Vizio, a USA based budget friendly TV manufacture, is releasing 3D TVs using what they call "Theater 3D". This is a Passive 3D technology which works in a similar fashion to a theater. Instead of using the bulky, and expensive, active glasses which many other manufacturers are using, the Vizio technique is to do the same light polarization as is done in theaters. The big difference, and problem, is that with the TV you must use half the lines for the right eye, and half for the left eye, thus dropping the verticle resolution of your media from 1080 lines to 540 lines. The resulting softness in the image will be a deal breaker for many...but will the cost reduction and simplicity be enough to curry favor with many?
I think that they will need a fix/workaround by making new LCD pannels which provide 1920x2160 resolutions (double the vertical resolution) and line double for normal (2D content) should look the same to the end user, but use this double vertical resolution so that when we run 3D we keep the same 1080 lines of resolution for both eyes....I am not sure how well this would work...just an idea.
Please note that Vizio has both Active and Passive style 3D TVs so just be sure to evaluate all of your options when deciding on a new TV as Vizio still might provide a TV which will match your desired quality with 3D and your budget.
For now it looks like Active Shutter is still the way to go as it continues to provide crisper images with higher resolution. Just my 2 cents.
