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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
True Blood Season 3—HBO
Kris Deering  |  May 19, 2011
Video: 4.5/5
Audio: 4/5
Extras: 3.5/5
The Maenadian reign of terror may be over, but Sookie Stackhouse and the townspeople of Bon Temps face a new calamity that makes the bacchanalian evils of Maryanne Forrester seem tame by comparison. In Season 3, Sookie desperately tries to locate her fiancee, ending up in a netherworld of human and undead interlopers, among them the powerful Vampire King of Mississippi, Russell Edgington.
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TV ReviewsLCD TV Reviews
Vizio XVT3D650SV 3D LED LCD HDTV
Thomas J. Norton  |  May 19, 2011
Price: $3,700 At A Glance: Excellent 2D performance • Excellent black level and shadow detail • Cheaper, lighter, passive 3D glasses

Vizio steps up with the first passive 3DTV, but will the world take it sitting down?

Since the advent of 3D for the home, the specter of pricey active shutter glasses that cost as much as $150 each has hung over the technology like a dark cloud. Many potential buyers are put off by the prospect of buying enough glasses to outfit the whole family, not to mention the houseful of friends who’ve come over to watch Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil in 3D. (Yes, Virginia, there is a Hoodwinked! sequel in the pipeline. Not many remember that the computer-animated Hoodwinked! was produced in 3D, probably because not many remember Hoodwinked! at all.)

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Other TechAudio Video News
3D Titans Talk Transformative Tech
Brent Butterworth  |  May 19, 2011

A crowd of movie-industry folk, film students, and press assembled last night for a preview of clips from the upcoming Transformers: Dark of the Moon - the first in the series to be shot in 3D - as well as a lengthy and surprisingly technical discussion between Transformers director Michael Bay and Avatar director James Cameron.

The presentation, titled "3D: A Transforming Visual Art," took place at the Paramount Theater, on the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood.

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Audio Video News
KEF sharpens the cutting edge
Michael Berk  |  May 19, 2011

 

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The Big Picture
Samsung 4K 3D & Other Flat Panels
Scott Wilkinson  |  May 19, 2011
Aside from the RealD passive/active 3D flat panels, Samsung had some other great demos in its booth at SID DisplayWeek. One of the most interesting was a 70-inch, 240Hz, 4K (3840x2160) 3D panel that uses active-shutter glasses. The custom footage of a woman hanging out at an oval house in the woods looked gorgeous, though all the motion was very slow, and I did see a few artifacts in the stairs during one pan.
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The Big Picture
Samsung/RealD Active/Passive 3D Flat Panels
Scott Wilkinson  |  May 19, 2011
This week, the Society for Information Display (SID) is holding its annual DisplayWeek confab at the Los Angeles Convention Center, where the future of display technology is front and center. Among the biggest announcements at the show was a partnership between Samsung and RealD to develop a new type of 3D flat panel that uses passive glasses but does not cut the vertical resolution in half like other passive-3D flat-panel technologies.
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Audio Video News
Samsung makes good on 3D glasses promotion
Michael Berk  |  May 19, 2011

We'd mentioned last month Samsung's plan to distribute two pairs of 3D glasses free with each 3D TV sold after April 24; turns out there were some glitches in the process of getting consumers their glasses, so if you feel you missed out, go ahead and Continue Reading »

Audio Video News
Netflix: I'm the King of the World
Mark Fleischmann  |  May 19, 2011
It's official: Netflix is now king of the internet, eclipsing all other forms of net traffic, bringing an abrupt end to the nation's use of other video streaming operations, web browsing, email, and naughty bits.

Oh all right, that's an exaggeration. But not by much. a recent study by Sandvine, a network analytics firm, reveals that Netflix is indeed the biggest bandwidth consumer on the net.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Mechanic—Columbia Pictures
Kris Deering  |  May 18, 2011
Video: 4.5/5
Audio: 4.5/5
Extras: 2/5
Arthur Bishop is a 'mechanic' - an elite assassin with a strict code and unique talent for cleanly eliminating targets. It's a job that requires professional perfection and total detachment, and Bishop is the best in the business. But when his mentor and close friend Harry is murdered, Bishop is anything but detached. His next assignment is self-imposed - he wants those responsible dead. His mission grows complicated when Harry's son Steve approaches him with the same vengeful goal and a determination to learn Bishop's trade. Bishop has always acted alone but he can't turn his back on Harry's son. A methodical hit man takes an impulsive student deep into his world and a deadly partnership is born. But while in pursuit of their ultimate mark, deceptions threaten to surface and those hired to fix problems become problems themselves.
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3D Tech
A Passive 3D Approach
Thomas J. Norton  |  May 18, 2011
Another Road to 3D

Up to the present, all 3D HDTVs have used active shutter glasses, and most still do. The two separate 3D images—one for each eye and each of them full 1920-by-1080 resolution—flash on the screen in sequence. Active shutter glasses are triggered by an IR signal generated by the 3DTV (or a separate transmitter attached to it). To isolate the 3D images to their respective eyes, the glasses alternately open and close each eyepiece. The alternating is rapid enough that even though the two pictures are displaced in time, the brain fuses them together and sees them as a single 3D image.

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