LATEST ADDITIONS

The transition from monaural to two-channel stereo in the 1930s is undoubtedly one of the most important innovations in the history of recorded and reproduced sound. The idea first came to Alan Blumlein when he went to the movies, which had only recently been enhanced with synchronized audio.

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/edgedark.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) is a veteran homicide detective for the Boston Police Department and a single father. When his only child (Bojana Novakavic) is murdered on the steps of his home, everyone assumes that he was the target. During the investigation he begins to suspect otherwise and this leads him into a dangerous world of corporate cover-ups and government collusion.

As I explained in a previous entry in this blog, virtually all direct-view 3DTVs coming to market now use battery-powered active-shutter glasses to ensure that each eye sees only the image it's supposed to. But if you've gone to see a 3D movie at a commercial cinema lately, you were undoubtedly handed a different type of glasses that includes no electronics at all. These so-called passive glasses are much less expensive than their active counterparts—which is why they're used in public settings where they can be easily damaged or stolen—and there are two different types, depending on the technology being used in a particular theater. In this blog entry, I'll explain how one of these technologies—polarization—simulates 3D on a 2D screen.