3D Glasses

[consultant]

Does anyone know if the plastic 3D glasses you can buy to watch 3D Blu-Rays are worth it over the disposable ones. Figure you are going to use them maybe half a dozen times a year AT MOST.

I read somewhere if you get fingerprints on the lenses they are essentially ruined. If the plastic glasses the lenses can be cleaned and the disposable not, then I could see their value. Otherwise seems like a waste of money to pay 5 times more for the plastic glasses?

[Spiky]

5 times more than...free?

3D on disc is a technology so new, it doesn't even really exist yet! Until they can decide on a format and run with it, and include it in TVs, all you will have is the cheesy color-blocker setups that look like utter crap. I guess I'm saying that no price is worth what currently exists. Wait til it is real before worrying about 3D.

[consultant]

Have you actually viewed a 3D Blu-Ray?

From what I've read, 3D DVD doesn't look very good, but Blu-Ray 3D movies are better looking.

The theater 3D uses an expensive dual projector system. That's why the DVD/Blu-Ray 3D is a different method. I doubt there is going to be some new way of doing it for home viewing for quite some time.

The disposable ones come free with the movie, yes. But if you want more than 4, you have to go buy they for about $1 a piece where the plastic ones including shipping come out to about $5 a piece.

[Alan Smithee]

Uh, there hasn't been dual-projector 3-D since the 50s- DLP uses just one projector, and the more recent 3-D movies on 35mm were shown with a single projector with a special lens.

Red/blue 3-D is stone-age technology. In the 80s in Japan, on a videodisc format that never made it to the US (called VHD) there were a few 3-D titles release in field-sequential format, which wasn't perfect but much preferable to red/blue. The old Sega Master System had some games that used this same format, and a few 3-D movies were put out on VHS by a small company in the early 90s.

A new 3-D standard is being worked on now for HD video which is supposed to produce higher quality results than anything that has been available at home before. THAT'S what I'm waiting for.

[caligulathegod]

One issue to consider is that there are a couple different 3-D anaglyph formats out there for Blu-ray. There's red/blue(cyan) and magenta/green.