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This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
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Author
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Topic: Quality of 3D on DVD
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Julio Roberto
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 938
From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Registered: Oct 2008
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posted 12-22-2008 04:58 AM
quote: Chris Slycord
The iz3d website has no mention of any version other than the 22" one. And I'd presume giving you a full, 1080p version would only increase the price even more ($350 being for the 22" that doesn't do it).
Read the post again to find out about the 1920x1080 24" or 46". They are Hyundai, not iz3d.
http://www.vrlogic.com/assets/downloads/3D_W220S_W240S_0825_web.pdf
The 24" does a bit more than full HD 1080p 1920x1080. It does 1920x1200 in 2D (when you are not wearing the glasses). In 3D, put the glasses on and it would yield 1920x600 pixels per eye. They are not cheap, but I included links to buy them for aprox. $1250 (24"). It sells worldwide.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4238168&SRCCODE=GOOGL EBASE&cm_mmc_o=TBBTkwCjCVyBpAgf%20mwzygtCjCVRqCjCVRq
The 46" $3700 only sells in Japan at this moment, does full 2D 1920x1080. There are grey re-sellers in the US and Europe, of course.
Another manufacturer, Zalman, also has a 32" full HD model, but hasn't given a price yet (not available yet). Currently they only offer 22" 1680x1050.
Of course manufacturers are gonna milk (big time) early adopters, so there. But remember the prices of non-3D similar monitors a couple of years back and you get the point. Trust me. If they wanted, they would be (about) the same price as 2D ones. Whenever there is competition or market demand, they'll be there. It is not some exoteric and expensive technology that's years and years away from reaching the home market. At all. Watch their price plummet as soon as other big players enter the market next year. There is also some Taiwan-based intellectual property (patent) that yield good and very-very cheap results. The war has just started.
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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster
Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 01-05-2009 10:25 PM
Speaking of 3-D on DVD here ya's go.....
Link To Story...
SAN FRANCISCO - Dolby Laboratories Inc, a company best known for its audio technology, is now targeting one of the most buzzed-about areas in video: bringing digital 3-D entertainment to the home.
Dolby says it is currently talking with content providers about encoding its digital 3-D technology into Blu-ray movies. It declined to identify potential partners. The company is also working on getting its technology used in 3-D video games.
In its push into home 3-D, Dolby will face stiff competition in a nascent market. Many companies at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas will be showcasing various ways to bring 3-D into the living room.
Meanwhile, the entertainment and consumer electronics industries are working to avoid any 3-D format war like the one that erupted between Blu-ray and HD-DVD.
Dolby is already a player in digital 3-D cinema, having introduced its technology to theaters in 2007. It is now used on more than 400 screens in 24 countries.
"Millions of people are seeing it and going home and saying they want to see it at home" said Guido Voltolino, the company's director of business development.
Dolby's home 3-D technology is designed so viewers would not be required to buy additional hardware, he said. It would work on any 3-D enabled TV -- currently available from companies including Mitsubishi and Samsung -- with a standard Blu-ray player.
Most 3-D entertainment requires the use of glasses, from simple polarized lens to costly pairs with extremely fast-moving shutters. Dolby said its technology would support whichever glasses the TV manufacturer specifies.
Audiences are warming to digital 3-D in theaters. Many people now head to their local cineplex to see movies such as "Journey to the Center of the Earth" in 3-D, and a number of major 3-D releases are planned for 2009.
However, when 3-D movies are released on DVD and Blu-ray, the only choice is to see them in an older technology -- the more low-tech blue-and-red lens colored glasses.
The progress of digital home 3-D has been slowed by the lack of a unifying technology standard. Groups including the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) and the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) are working on ways to help standardize 3-D home entertainment.
Dolby said it presented its technology to the SMPTE group in September and "received some very positive feedback." The company said it is now looking to inform "key industry stakeholders."
Dolby added that its approach to 3-D is completely "backwards compatible," and will not disrupt any standards currently being used.
Panasonic has reportedly proposed a 3-D Blu-ray standard to the BDA.
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Julio Roberto
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 938
From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Registered: Oct 2008
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posted 01-09-2009 05:36 AM
I agree with steve 100%.
Gaming market: 3D has some near-term future.
3D movie market: It's a catch 22. People would need TONS more 3D content to justify purchasing another (3D) TV. No matter what they say, "current" TV's are mostly not suitable to GOOD 3D. They can do 3D, but with compromises on flicker/resolution/etc.
For a 3D home "viewing" market to catch up, we would need AT LEAST:
-Some 30 or so 3D titles available in blu-ray. They would necessarily be at half-resolution as current blu-ray players cannot output 1080p48fps
-Some not very geeky (i.e. no shutter glasses) and not very expensive display method with excellent results and little compromises (i.e. no flicker). Current TV's are mostly not up to this task. A new TV would have to be purchased.
Hollywood will not release 3D titles until a good standard and enough equipment is out there, and people will not buy 3D Tv's in volume until there are movies available. Maybe if some hotshot satellite or cable TV company would start a 3D channel full of new content (sport/gameshows/movies) it could kick-start the adoption of 3D displays. It's being done in Japan, so maybe it'll work out.
People into gaming love the 3D. And gaming consoles have little difficulty adapting to whatever standards you want, as they are flexible and re-configurable, and most games are already (basically) "3D" to begin with. It doesn't cost hardly anything to do 3D gaming. Again, a set of standards would be useful, but not as critical as with the movie industry.
3D in theaters would bring revenue to the producers of made-for-3D "B" movies, which otherwise wouldn't have done so well at the boxoffice if made 2D only. Read valentine 3D, journey to the center, etc. This is like in the 80's, with independents and their distributors making a killer with sub-par stuff like "Treasure of the four crowns", APE, Flesh for Frankenstein, etc
The difference is that in the 80's you just needed to equip the theater with a cheap 3D lens adaptor and a silver screen if you already didn't have one. A couple $1000's at worse. The exhibitor was able to cheaply and quicly benefit from the 3D "craze".
Now you have to change the entire booth to digital ($100k+) and, if you already have digital, still need a high gain screen plus not-so-cheap (one way or another) 3D "adapters" (several $1000's more or royalties). So while studios and distributors and manufacturers and 3D "operators" benefit, exhibitor are left with the larger part of the bill and maintenance/operation expenses (silver screen, labor to handle/clean/replace glasses, etc).
I believe that a "hit" movie (animation or not) would only bring a modest amount of extra business from 3D than from 2D IF the ticket price was the same. Perhaps a 10% increase in actual increased attendance. A non-hit "cheap" made-for-3D movie obviously will do much better business in 3D than 2D, perhaps to the point of becoming a blockbuster only for the 3D novelty.
Since it seems an additional 20-30% ticket price increase is allowable by the public for 3D, then this figure is further increased, of course.
But when you factor exhibition costs for the 3D (higher lamp usage, glasses management, 3D equipment and screen maintenance, etc) it becomes clear most of the profit goes to the distributor, to whom the cost of distributing 2D or 3D is virtually the same, and the studio, whose cost to shoot in 3D in this age of digital is only a fraction of the total cost of the 2D film.
And as soon as 3D takes off, if ever, home TV technologies will quickly even surpass those that can be obtained in a theater.
So I remain exceptical not on 3D in the movie industry but on EXHIBITOR's true profit in the 3D movie industry (mostly speaking of a exhibitor that does film currently, not digital already).
Adoption of digital in Europe is slow in general, in spite of some goverment grants and stuff and having a big player right here (Barco). 3D adoption is even slower.
I'll say it over and again. If studios and distributors want digital 3D in theaters, the solution is easy: have distributors purchase huge amounts of equipments from manufacturers at much lower prices and lease them to movie theaters at or below cost. Done. Just with the savings in print-striking costs they'll turn a profit in a few years.
Alternatively, distributors could offer a 5 year contract no-questions-asked to exhibitors to which they were willing to strike a film print for. Play my movie digital instead of 35mm for 2 weeks and I'll give you a $1000 automatic discount. No questions asked. How hard is that? It's not like they'll be losing any money or anything. The cost of printing/transporting/warehousing/destroying prints etc surely would be greater.
I just don't get it. Everybody benefits from digital a lot except exhibitors who only benefit a little (some potential labor costs, mostly offset by higher maintenance). But nobody pays for digital 1 cent except exhibitors to whom everybody (TI, christie-nec-sony-barco, realD-dolby, integrators-dealers) wants to rip-off at "full-retail", unless you are an ass-big chain that can afford your own deal.
And cinedigm is no better. They are up to make money also, so it's not like they are giving to the poor (exhibitor) while taking from the rich (distributors). They are also keeping part of the deal which otherwise could go to exhibitor.
Something is wrong here. Why would a movie theater in their right mind want to do a digital change over under these conditions? $100k in hardware would cover labor costs of a projectionist for quite a few years ... time in which the digital equipment is going to break-down or become obsolete and hard to maintain, demanding another >$20k investment which would once again cover another year of labor ...
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 01-09-2009 08:54 AM
Julio,
I agree with you, mostly. However, as for "full-retail." That is incorrect. I can't imagine how much cheaper the "big-3" could make their projectors. As compared to the A/V market, DCinema machines are CHEAP.
Seriously. Compare a 2K A/V projector to a DCinema version of equivalent lumen output. The DCinema projector is going to be cheaper. The A/V projector is going to have more flexible inputs rather than the dual-HDSDI and dual DVI but other than that, the DCinema projector is a bargain. Heck, we are a Sanyo dealer and a Christie Dealer. I can quote you a Christie CP2000-M for about $5K LESS than a Sanyo PLV-HD2000. The Sanyo is only 7000 lumens, has less than 1/2 the contrast ratio, many times the lamp cost (takes 4 lamps...they add up) and is using LCD technology, not DLP or even LCoS. I can't imagine Sanyo selling many, if any of these.
So as to DCinema projector (or even other parts of it), their prices are on the low side for their industries. They are just significantly higher than for film based systems. And any realistic projection of lifetime, costs, film systems are significantly cheaper.
Steve
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Julio Roberto
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 938
From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Registered: Oct 2008
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posted 01-12-2009 09:11 AM
Yeah. "High end" non-DCI projectors are priced as "high end" devices. After all, who needs a +5m movie screen in their homes? Those who can be coaxed to PAY for it, of course.
A lot has to do with the volume of production runs and the size of the companies (and their execs' salaries' checks), obviously.
So anyway, digital is so far kind-of-expensive for the cinema exhibitor. Figure a 5 screen 35mm multiplex already fully automated with ELF's etc and changing over to digital could cost +$400k with a 3D screen. This change, perhaps, would save the salary of 1 dedicated projectionist.
Now, $400k+ would cover him for quite a few years, say 10. Also, maintenance could potentially be higher. Certainly so after 10 years, so another +$40k would be expected in technical services in that amount of time, once again offsetting the salary of a projectionist for another year or so.
So after 11 years you are left with paid equipment that COULD start to produce you some savings in labor costs. But after all that time I'm pretty sure most of it would be obsolete enough so that you seriously want to consider upgrading to the new 4K ultra-bright 3D projectors that your competitors are touting around, putting you down for another +$250k digital upgrade ...
Anyway. Back to 3D DVD. This from a news piece on CES 2009:
"Panasonic is already calling for a quick transition to 3DTV with a standard in 2009 and products in 2010. That would mean re-spinning the Blu-ray chips to support the multi-view coding version of H.264 compression and updating the firmware to handle things like graphics and subtitles over stereo 3-D video.
But even Panasonic knows that's pretty optimistic. The industry is still fragmented over the kind of format, display technology and glasses (if any) it wants for stereo 3-D. And my colleague David Benjamin pointed out that the 3-D content still leaves something to be desired.
So, expect 2010 to be the first year companies try to reap some substantial profits on today's Blu-ray while they hold off a move to Blu-ray 2.0: The 3-D Experience until at least 2011. After all, people who have had a round of bad luck, tend to be cautious. You hear about that sort of thing here in Vegas."
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