Active 3D Television Eye Strain vs. Passive 3D Eye Fatigue; Does it make a Difference?

by Phil Conner, staff writer

This is an issue worth investigating. Do our eyes and brains have to work harder to receive an active 1080p resolution signal to each eye as opposed to just one. One thing is sure, we will not find the answer to this question from the manufacturers of these technologies. Active shutter glasses 3D manufacturers would of course say no and passive 3D TV makers would state that their technology is better in this category. However, I dont think anyone would claim that passive 3D TVs and glasses cause more eye strain than active 3D. One caveat to this is that Samsung did pay for a study that did show some eye fatigue from 3D active shutter glasses.

The technological reason that active shutter glasses may put more strain on your eyes is that the glasses actively open and close the "shutter" lense of each at 60 flashes per second through the use of battery power. Your brain is processing the signal from that result.

With passive 3D glasses and Televisions the viewer sees 540 lines of resolution to each eye through inexpensive passive 3D glasses. These glasses have no inbuilt battery and thus are "stationary" instead relying on the TV's 3D technology to do the work.

Active 3D glasses therefore are flickering right in front of your eyes which theoretically should cause more processing by the brain. Our experiences with a dozen 3D TVs that we've reviewed this year tell us that active shutter 3D TV picture quality is much smoother with little if any of the overt flashing and blurring that we saw last year. Still, passive 3D while not containing quite as much depth seems to have even less eye fatigue or strain than active shutter technology. That's our take. Many would argue, but we do see and review a lot of these TVs - about a dozen in 2011. So if eye fatigue is a major consideration for you, you might think about passive over active 3D.