Xpand Credits Multi-Firm Initiative for Lower-Priced Active-Shutter Glasses

LAS VEGAS -- Pricing of active-shutter glasses has plummeted with the arrival of the Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative announced last year, said Ami Dror, chief strategy officer of Xpand, a founding member of the Initiative, which showed the first Full HD Glasses demos at the Xpand CES booth here. The first glasses, from Xpand, Sony, Samsung and Panasonic, are expected to be in market in March, Dror told us, saying the entry-level Samsung models will be priced $19 and $29, which Dror said are a direct result of the Full HD Glasses Initiative and its licensing, specifications, quality assurance programs and test centers, which allow glasses built to spec to be manufactured more cost-efficiently.

The test center is the most important part of the initiative, Dror said. “You know if a product has an HDMI logo on it that it will work,” Dror said, saying the Full HD Glasses logo will provide the same assurance. Not all glasses will work with all TVs, though, because some will use IR and others use RF communication, he said. Regarding possible customer confusion, Dror said there are two different logos: one for RF and one for IR. Dror conceded that could create confusion but said TV members were concerned about backward compatibility and wanted to keep the two versions.

Dror envisions the 3D market breaking out into passive 3D TVs on the low end and active 3D TVs at the high end: “They will co-exist.” Even Xpand is now making passive glasses to offer a broad selection of products, he said, but the company also has its eye on high-end next-gen features made possible by active technology.

One of those features is “3D Ecosystem,” an automated technology that detects whether a viewer is wearing active 3D glasses and then configures the TV for 3D operation. The 3D Ecosystem technology works using bi-directional RF communication between the glasses and the TV, Dror, told us. When the viewer puts the glasses on, a proximity sensor senses that the glasses are on and the glasses automatically send a signal to the TV, which goes into 3D mode. When the viewer takes off the glasses, the TV automatically switches to 2D, he said. “You can still watch TV then when you go to the kitchen,” he said. That technology is only possible with a single-stream 3D broadcast, Dror said. Currently, 3D channels and 2D channels operate independently, but “very soon” those channels will carry the same data so consumers will be able to choose a stream in 2D or 3D, he said, predicting that will occur before the summer Olympics.

As 3D broadcast standards evolve into a single stream that contains both 2D and 3D, rather than side by side, displays will simply follow the indicators from the glasses, and users won’t have to turn glasses on and off, Dror said. The Xpand glasses will hit store shelves in Q4, Dror said. Another feature Xpand plans to offer at the high end is a preset option so “the TV will not only know where the glasses are on or off but who you are,” and will adjust settings accordingly, he said. “Those features are impossible with passive 3D,” he noted. “Because active has bi-directional communication, we can send information in and out,” he said.

Sharp and Philips were among the noticeable active 3D TV companies not demoing product, but they are “supporters” of the standard, Dror said. Licensing began 2 months ago, he said. Supporters are reviewing the licensing process, he said, and their names can be used for marketing purposes. Dror expects a menu of Full HD 3D glasses to hit the market by IFA in late August.