May 17, 2011, Society for Information Display, Los Angeles—We talked to Rick Heineman, vp of marketing communications and Robert Mayson, president of the consumer electronics division at RealD about their latest announcements. These include universal active shutter glasses and integrated high resolution 3-D LCD panels and displays from Samsung.

The universal active 3D eyewear technology is compatible with 3D TVs from most major
consumer electronics brands using active shutter technologies. The new product supports image sync via infrared and RF solutions like RF4CE and Bluetooth. The SoC controller enables automatic setup and synchronization for most TV brands. The high level of integration reduces size and weight as well as a provides a lower cost. The electronics, power, and lenses all work off of a small watch-type battery and energy scavenging provides up to 100 hours of use for the battery.

RealD will license their new active technology to OEMs for implementation into new active glass products. They will work with manufacturers to design 3D eyewear that suits a specific brand identity, technical parameters and cost objectives or offer existing RealD brand active 3D eyewear. They expect versions of the glasses to be in retail channels by July.

In another announcement, RealD and Samsung announced that panels featuring a new jointly developed 3D display technology will become available for OEMs. These new LCD panels adopt characteristics from the company’s cinema system to deliver full resolution 3D images to each eye using RealD 3D passive cinema glasses.

The LCD based display technology is integrated on the LCD panel and actively syncs with the left and right eye images. The technology enables their active retarder to be directly bonded to the LCD panel to integrate the active shutter on to the screen. The phase change is performed on a scrolling basis to provide full 3-D HD video that can be viewed through passive, circularly polarized RealD 3D cinema eyewear. RealD 3D displays are also 2D compatible, resulting in no reduction of image quality in 2D mode.

This active 3-D technology is unlike film patterned retarder (FPR) based 3D displays that cut resolution to each eye in half, so this new display technology delivers full resolution, 3-D images to each eye by adopting active shutter technology on the display. The result is a brighter, flicker-free, fully immersive 3D experience across a wide viewing angle. The new technology enables passive 3-D viewing at home on a standard-size screen, eliminating the need for expensive active-shutter glasses.

Panels are expected to be available for PC monitors in 23-inch and 27-inch sizes by early 2012 and for TVs in 55-inch size after the commercialization of PC monitors. The availability of additional panel sizes and details about pricing are to be announced.