(Philip Lelyveld comment:  Companies manufacturing passive polarized 3D include LG, Philips and Toshiba.  Article positions this as a format war.)

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The heat is on in the debate between two 3-D TV formats.

Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of liquid-crystal display (LCD) panels, announced yesterday that it formed “3-D TV alliances” in Beijing over the weekend with five other TV makers: Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Haier and Changhong.

The six companies, which accounted for 90 percent of the Chinese 3-D TV market last year, agreed that the active shutter glasses format is the best technology for a full high-definition, 3-D experience, while vowing to expand their presence with the format, Samsung said.

There are two kinds of 3-D technology in use: active shutter glasses and passive polarized glasses. The key difference is that while the former creates a sense of depth by sending visual information to each eye sequentially, the latter does so by sending visual information to both eyes simultaneously.

For viewers, the active format offers clear and high resolution images but it could cause dizziness and the glasses are heavier and pricier. In contrast, the passive format is less likely to cause dizziness and the glasses are lighter and cheaper but offers a relatively less-clear 3-D experience.

As opposed to Samsung’s alliance, companies like LG Display, the world’s No. 2 manufacturer of flat-screen TVs, Phillips and Toshiba are betting on passive polarized glasses.

At the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas earlier this month, LG Display touted Film Patterned Retarder (FPR) technology, which uses polarized glasses, as the next big technology in 3-D TVs.

“FPR televisions provide full, high-definition quality pictures without image overlaps and flickering, which dramatically reduces the health worries related to 3-D viewing,” LG Display Chief Executive Officer Kwon Young-soo told reporters, adding that 70 percent of all 3-D TVs sold this year will feature FPR technology.

But the debate on who will dominant will likely go on.

Samsung said yesterday that the passive type fails to achieve the resolution level required to be full HD, while LG Display said that the passive format “does obtain the resolution level required to be full HD, just in a different way.”

Original post here: http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2931676