Zigbee Developing RF-Based 3D Sync Standard for 3D Glasses

ZigBee said Tuesday it’s developing an RF-based 3D sync standard for 3D glasses. The standard will support programmable frame rates and shutter open/close intervals, multiple user experience modes for seamless switching between 2D and 3D modes and gaming, and “frequency agility” to avoid interference with other RF-based devices, the company said. The glasses will resolve interoperability issues among 3D TVs from different manufacturers, interference issues resulting from too many IR signals in a room and the need for line of sight to maintain a 3D signal with IR glasses, Zigbee said.

Zigbee Alliance Chairman Bob Heile told Consumer Electronics Daily that “a lot of effort” went into the design of 3D Sync to ensure signal transmission between glasses and TVs would be “extremely robust.” He compared RF to infrared, which “suffers with light pollution, especially with large TVs,” and added that while “IR has had a great run,” it has “sort of hit the wall” due to the proliferation of multiple devices in the home. He conceded that RF brings its own challenges. “Whenever you're using unlicensed bands, other users are there, and you have to design solutions that can tolerate that exceptionally well,” he said. If the RF 3D Sync signal encounters interference, frequency hopping will kick in to “jump to another channel” in a way that’s seamless to end-users, he said.

The standard is in the test stage and “will move quickly” into the broad world, Heile said. “This is not complicated stuff like smart energy.” He gave a timetable of weeks to “a couple of months” before manufacturers complete first implementations and interoperability tests are conducted. He said TVs and glasses will appear in the market “certainly in time for Christmas, and I hope a lot sooner than that."

Some current connected TVs packing Ethernet, Wi-Fi or USB ports could be upgradeable to 3D Sync, Heile said. But most implementations will be new designs, which “allow TVs to do a lot more than 3D glasses” since the same communications technology is also part of the remote control design. He said a number of high-end TVs in the market currently incorporate Zigbee remote control standards, and once that basic communication protocol is in a TV, “it’s a matter of loading in the 3D app and having glasses that can talk to it.” 3D Sync can also be used simultaneously with the Zigbee Input Device standard, introduced last year with Zigbee Remote Control. All three standards utilize the ZigBee RF4CE spec that was designed to replace IR technology in home electronics. To upgrade 3D TVs with Zigbee Remote Control inside for use with RF glasses, users can download a driver and install it on a TV.

The RF4CE spec offers two-way communication, which will allow consumers to do “a lot more interesting things” with consumer electronics, Heile said, citing Zigbee-based touchscreen remote controls that provide playlists, confirmation of commands and the ability to select movies. Confirmation that a command has been correctly received provides “a very satisfying user experience,” he said. “Through two-way communications I can now update stuff and add new features and capabilities,” Heile said. “It’s what we're used to with smartphones.”