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NFL's First Broadcast In 3-D, Still Has Work To Do

darkwing_bmf writes "The NFL broadcast a live game to theaters in 3-D for the first time on Thursday night. The technology demonstration was mostly successful but they still have some issues to work out. 'Some scenes clearly captured the benefits of 3-D broadcasts, however, such as an interception by Chargers linebacker Stephen Cooper as players crisscrossed the field, and a long touchdown catch by San Diego's Vincent Jackson with the arc of the ball caught on camera all the way. Viewers were encouraged to text in their reaction to the viewing. One of the first comments, according to the commentators: "More cheerleaders."'"

6 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Next: cameras in helmets! by SputnikPanic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now all we need are cameras in the players' helmets and then we can all feel like we're really part of the game. Which might not be such a good thing when you see a 300-lb lineman with a full head of steam barreling towards "you". Might make for sloppy beer management...

  2. Re:Sure! by philspear · · Score: 5, Funny

    The third consists of those who want to watch beautiful cheerleaders perform routines that emphasize their feminine, athletic and desirable traits, while wearing the skimpiest possible outfits

    Hey, come on, quit trolling! They could be a LOT skimpier!

  3. So what you're saying is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Three kinds of people watch football:

    1) Dumb kids

    2) Closet homosexuals

    3) Leering perverts

    I'm not dumb and I'm not a homosexual, so I'm a leering perv.

    See how easy it was to summarize your wordy post?

  4. Re:No football!!! Bring on the Hockey! by ari_j · · Score: 5, Funny

    3-D puck to the face FTW.

  5. Re:Polarization by bmwm3nut · · Score: 5, Informative

    I see what you did there.

    Anyway, to answer the the OPs question here's a simplified example (real physicists, don't hate on me, I'm not going to get into the gory details here).

    First, lets think of a wave in the water. It's traveling in one direction (towards the shore) and vibrating in another (up and down from the plane of the water). Light is the same. It travels in one direction (from the theatre screen to your eye), but it can vibrate in two directions: up and down, or left and right (and technically any combination of that like diagonal and such). This is called the polarization: vertical or horizontal.

    So what these 3D theaters do is have a special theater screen that preserves polarization (most just randomize it) and they have one image for one eye sent out in vertical polarization and the other sent out in horizontal polarization. Then by using special glasses they can show only one polarization to each eye.

    Think of polarized glasses as having little bars in them, if they're aligned up and down only vertical light can squeeze through the bars, the horizontal gets stuck. Likewise the bars can go horizontally and the vertical light gets stuck.

    Actually it's the other way, but that's more complicated. If the bars (i.e. molecules aligned such that they conduct electricity) are vertical, the vertical polarized light resonates with the bars and gets dissipated and the horizontal makes it through. But that's just technical matters.

    This is also why polarized sun glasses are great for boating and driving. Since most of the time you're looking out at a big horizontal reflector (the water or your car hood or the road), most of the light that's reflected (glare) is horizontally polarized (I won't go into the details why), so the polarized sunglasses are set up to filter out horizontally polarized light which removes glare and you only get the vertical light which is just about everything else.

  6. Re:Sure! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    On a podcast I listen to, the host made a really good point: The more you defend how straight you are the more you secretly want some dong.

    How much do you love pussy, fyngyrz?