Time for my update on this direction of 3D Panel TV's.
Today, I got a demo of the new LG 3D Passive glasses system that is currently on the market. It is a 55" and comes in 120Hz. The picture quality is much improved from what I saw at CES in January. I demoed two types of program sources, a 2D to 3D upconvert and Avatar 3D BluRay. Kind of the worst to the best in source content.
In the 2D to 3D mode, the image was what I consider unwatchable. While the image had good 3D depth, and good solid color with no ghosting or cross talk, the motion was horrible with lots of stuttering, minor judder and considerable freezing of the image and then catchup. During the good parts we still had some image tearing that scanned from top to bottom. There were also dead spots as I moved to each side for wide seating viewing angle. In these dead spots the depth just disappeared.
In BluRay 3D playback the image was excellent with excellent depth, both behind the screen plane as well as popping to half the distance of viewing. I got this 3D effect regardless of side angle viewing, something that was not possible at the CES demo. There was virtually no cross talk and the color saturation, contrast and brightness was about the same as the 2D image with little dimming due to the passive glasses. The only defect I could see was an image edge jaggy that seemed to come and go but was very subtly. In fact another person there had to point it out to me or I would have missed it. This panel is ready for prime time 3D BD viewing, IMO. Motion was excellent and the viewing was good at different distances and different angles on the screen plane. I would not be ashamed to hang this panel on my wall.
The main downside to this is the size. I'm used to a much larger screen area and higher definition in the image. To my eyes, all these 55" panels don't have the detail that I see in a good FPTV. But it isn't bad and certainly will wow the average viewer.
If you were on the fence about ready to buy an active glasses panel today, I'd try to check out these Passive systems on a BluRay disk from LG at $2400 and glasses at $15 per pair ain't bad.