A Decade Of 3D TV … Or Not

Not Ready For Prime Time

For most, the launch of 3D TVs and the arguments between choosing active glasses and or passive glasses has thankfully faded from memory but there are some who might be blissfully unaware of the technology announced during CES 2010 which was going to change the way everyone watched TV.  For a brief moment, companies dreamed about providing 3D content to the masses and selling not just a TV experience but also the chance to sell you goggles too!  These goggles would come in two flavours, the passive glasses familiar anyone who has watched a 3D IMAX or cinema release and an active version with shutters timed to the movie to effectively display different images to each eye to take advantage of the trickery your brain performs when presented with images in parallax.

None took to this more than NVIDIA, who created not just one but two generations of 3D Vision glasses during the craze, and only retired support for them earlier this year.  AMD responded with HD3D drivers, allowing your HD5000 series card to support a variety of 3D glasses and displays, of which their were quite a few to choose from, but decided against designing their own hardware.  Display manufactures from all over the globe immediately started producing large quantities of models to choose from and consumers grabbed them off the shelves to try out this brand new experience.

We reviewed a few of them back in the day and our feelings of the experience was matched by most consumers; a resounding meh!  If you were slightly off centre the picture quality became horrific, almost nauseatingly so, which meant that you had to watch the movies alone as without the glasses the content was essentially unwatchable.  Add into that batteries or cords to power the active glasses which provided a better experience than the passive ones, or constantly replacing the passive ones as they because scratched, broken or simply lost and the experience quickly proved to be more bothersome than enjoyable.

Thank Slashdot for reminding us of this particular chapter of technology in 2019.  Were there any other technological marvels such as OnLive that you recall from the past decade, be they good, bad or indifferent?  LucidLogix and its HYDRA platform don’t count, they were from the oughts.