I want it: sort out the brightness on 3D TVs

Our second "I want it", this time dedicated to an exasperating problem with 3D TV glassses: the way they deprive you of 60% of brightness when you put them on!

And surely it would be so simple to rectify! Frankly by default, TVs are excessively bright. In the shop, the manufacturer wants their set to be as eyecatching as possible, more so obviously than the competitor set beside theirs. At home, they reckon on making you think that with all that saturated, excessively bright colour you've had your value for money.

Lunettes 3D Samsung Find the best price

As we say in every TV review, as soon as you turn your new set on, even if it looks washed out at first, put your TV in Cinema mode. The colours will be more accurate, closer to what the programme makers wanted, the greys become neutral and the brightness correct. Your set will drop from 300 or 400 cd/m² by default to 200 cd/m².

-60% of light with glasses, while there's a reserve of +50%

Put on the 3D glasses and activate them. The television receives the signal and knows you've changed mode. It doesn't however change the settings, you're still in Cinema mode. The problem is that on the one hand the glass in our glasses - two LCD screens - isn't perfectly transparent and on the other, the glasses display one black image in two so that images only arrive at one eye at a time.

The result is that the brightness perceived through the glasses falls off drastically. Manufacturers timidly claim reduced brightness of 30%. Our readings show a reduction of closer to 60 %! Which is why certain users are so disappointed: the colours are dull.

This is real stupid when you know that somewhere between 30 and 50% of brightness is previously removed for 2D! Why is this available brightness not reintroduced for 3D?

The first solution would be to move your TV settings from 2D Cinema mode to 3D manually. But seeing as the glasses already communicate with the TV (and they do this well), why couldn't the switch over happen automatically?

We're counting on you Mr Samsung

Current Sony and Panasonic 3D TVs can't be changed at this point and we'll have to wait for the future generations to get any developments on this point.

Samsung have thought things through better. Monthly updates, partly to improve 2D to 3D conversion, are said to be in the pipeline.

What if they used these to sort out the low 3D brightness issue?

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