XPAND is a widely known company if you are even slightly interested in 3D technologies. With their unique active-shutter 3D system, they’ve reinvented the 3D cinematic world and have provided the luxury of watching a 3D movie from the comforts of our own home.
The road to constructing the world’s first “universal” 3D glasses have made the company successful, but the fact is, they have been present on the market way before that. What XPAND 3D actually is and how does it play into today’s entertainment world?
How 3D works
Although it might seem complicated and very technologically advanced at first, the idea of creating 3D movies is not that much of a novelty – after all, it is all based on the fact that people have two eyes that allow us to see depth. Without going into much detail about how human body works, “stereoscopy” is the term used to describe the 3D technology of today and it means that the technology replicated the way images are seen naturally.
There are many methods of bringing two separate images to the screen and showing them to people in a way that creates the 3D effect. And just like other 3D methods available on the market, the XPAND active shutter method also relies on the human stereopsis. Here, to separate the two images, the technology doesn’t rely on changing the image, the light or the colour of the movie.
Instead, XPAND developed a method which uses alternating shuttering of the lenses. It all happens at a rate not possible to be seen with naked eye, but in basic terms, the right eye is blocked in the moment when the left eye image is shown and vice versa. The XPAND 3D Glasses that were made to work with that technology are a hi-tech device, in comparison to the traditional disposable plastic passive glasses.
Active shutter technology
Since the lenses are literally being shuttered, the projector must be perfectly synchronized with the glasses and it is done by a synchronization signal. Bringing this technology to TV screens and using it outside dedicated XPAND 3D cinemas was a challenge, but it has been working for a couple of years now.
The result of deploying the XPAND 3D technology in any display method has meant getting brightest and crispiest image, with no ghosting, wide viewing angle and most of all, universal glasses that work with almost any TV set now!
