As 3D pushes its way ever-further into our living rooms like male bedbugs practicing traumatic insemination, we huddle in fear at the looming need to eventually shell out, like, 200 bucks for 3D glasses that will operate with our particular television.
Or will we? 3D gurus XpanD say no, and to back it up have released the X103 active shutter glasses, which are allegedly operable with any and all 3DTVs.
“Once you have a 3D TV channel the glasses receive a signal, for the next three-to-five seconds they scan the signal and when they find which wave that TV is on they sync in,” says XpanD CEO Maria Costeira of the technology. Throw in a tachyon beam and that sounds like classic Star Trek technobabble – but then again, I don’t pretend to be an engineer unless I’m playing Team Fortress, and even then, I’m not very good. So I’m willing to take Costeira’s word for it. For now.
“[The glasses are compatible with] virtually anything capable of playing 3D-encoded content at 120fps,” Costeira admits. “Basically, I say 99 per cent, because I never say anything is 100 per cent sure in life.” A wise plan, when you’re in the business of making bold claims. “With the big brands, there are not many scientific reasons why they would deviate from certain rules regarding the standardization of certain devices. So, with that, I don’t think that there’s a great chance of something coming up that the glasses cannot work with.”
Fair enough. So how much do we have to shell out for complete 3DTV freedom? $129 bucks, apparently – still quasi-outrageous if you’re not in the business of loving the tits off the concept of viewing Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs ‘the way it was meant to be seen’ (EDIT: I just realized I have made that precise joke before), but more reasonable than some of the prices dudes like Samsung have been quoting. For affordability considering what Costeira considers “totally different leagues [sic]”, you may want to give the X103s a looksee. Give ’em a gander. Size ’em up. Take ’em for a spin. Give ’em a whirl. You know, that sort of thing.
