3D Glasses

You will need a special pair of 3D glasses to experience the 3D effect. There are two kinds of glasses on the market:

3D Passive Glasses:

The TV broadcasts two overlapping images and the glasses have polarized lenses. Each lens is polarized so that it can see only one of the two overlapping images. The main drawback of this technology is that viewers will need to sit directly in front of the display to get the full 3D effect. If the viewer is sitting on the side, the 3D effects will be less pronounced.

3D Active Glasses:

This technology has been adopted by most consumer electronics firms, including LG, Samsung, Panasonic, and more. With this technology, an HDTV will display one image to your left eye and one image to your right eye. Since the effective frame rate is halved, these HDTVs need to have double the refresh rate of HDTVs (60 Hz). This is why you will find that all 3D HDTVs have a minimum frame rate of 120 Hz (most have a frame rate around 240 Hz or even 480 Hz).

Active liquid crystal shutter glasses quickly block each eye in sequence to ensure that each eye only sees the corresponding image on the 3D HDTV. The active shutter glasses are kept in sync with the HDTV using Bluetooth, infrared, or radio technology. These special glasses usually contain liquid crystals that can be made opaque. thus acting as a shutter. These glasses are battery-operated (battery life estimated at around 80 hours or so).