Scott Wilkinson

As an A/V enthusiast, you might well be familiar with <A href="http://www.kaleidescape.com">Kaleidescape</A>, a California-based maker of high-end movie servers. <I>UAV</I> hasn't covered its products lately because we are dedicated to high def, and they have been limited to serving DVDs&#151;until now. The company today announced the introduction of full support for Blu-ray with its new M-Class architecture.

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.