3D Technology Set to Change Home Entertainment

As 3D technology becomes increasingly more impressive, you may ask yourself if a 3D TV is your next big entertainment investment. The best 3D HDTVs, such as the Panasonic TC-P55VT30, LG 55LW6500, Sharp Elite and the Sony XBR-HX929 display lifelike, vibrant images that seem to come out of the screen and into your living room. Three-dimensional films are no longer cinema exclusive; they are now a very real option for your home theater.

Viewing 3D images is nothing new. Stereoscopy, a technique used to create the illusion of depth in an image, has been around since the 1800s. In the 1950s and 1960s, many filmmakers were making movies with three-dimensional technology, but 3D cinema rapidly died out due to the expense and technical difficulties of producing the movies. Plus, no one wanted to wear those paper glasses with the red and blue cellophane lenses because they washed out the film's colors and created blurry images. Now we have entered a renaissance of sorts for 3D cinema production and technology. As Hollywood continues to release astonishing three-dimensional movies, the TV manufacturers have decided that you need that same immersive experience in your living room as they add this capability to their new lines of top-tier HDTVs.

There's a feeling that for sheer 3D effects – especially in terms of depth and leap effects – the bright-and-breezy LCD sets from Samsung are the most effective. The downside is that LCD TVs do seem to be affected by 'crosstalk' – when each eye sees part of the image intended only for the other eye.

Sony and LG's 3D TVs, meanwhile, are much cleaner, though not quite as impressive when it comes to the sheer impact of their 3D effects. Plasma, meanwhile – only from Panasonic, so far – appears to be clean and free from crosstalk, but so dark. The glasses get rid of a huge amount of brightness to leave a rather dingy image, but arguably the most impressive and comfortable overall image. Crosstalk remains a real and tiring barrier to enjoying 3D, especially over extended viewing periods. Plus, of course, its effect runs counter to the clarity of the HD Blu-ray images that 'alternate frame' 3D was designed to keep. 

Meanwhile Sharp is giving the best of 3D TV experience through their Elite series sets, which have very high picture quality that the present technology can provide. It is indeed value for money that one would get through this TV set.

Bruce Schepers, the Exec VP of Sales and Marketing at Pioneer Electronics Canada says, “Elite has always represented the pinnacle of viewing technologies for home theatre aficionados around the world.” It was in 2008 that Sharp came to own 14 percent of Pioneer by investing a sum of $358 million into the company. It has been Pioneer who have pioneered the Elite TV sets.

What would impress the viewer or consumer at the first instance is the metal frame of the set giving it a sturdy look. Then would come the high quality of image and color that one gets to experience watching the images on the sets of this series. It can even handle different lighting conditions.

One would also note the deeper black levels on the Elite series TV than that on any other TV sets and that includes the Plasma as well. Connecting sources which are non HD, like those from Netflix, or Apple TV would render crystal clear pictures on the Elite sets. Even the contrast is of high quality. One would be fascinated with the effect of watching 3D from a Blu-Ray device and that includes 2D as well.

Watching NBA or tennis or even Super Bowl would be an experience to talk back home about while for gaming enthusiast, there are five HDMI ports to connect the gaming consoles and players and so on. The 3D TVs also come with a single touch connectivity feature to Netflix as also the built in Wi-Fi. There is also a huge array of video apps for playing streaming video.

The technology that the Elite sets use for getting this type of picture and color effect is the RGB+Y technology. The addition of yellow gives all these color enhancement effects. Another technological extra that the Elite sets incorporate is the advanced frame creation system. This gives the effect of greater than 240 Hz refresh rate and thereby giving better picture clarity.