Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Sony plans 3d televisions for 2010

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Posted by Cameron Glendinning (Member # 3516) on 09-02-2009, 06:49 PM:

web page
Sony set to roll out 3D TV in 2010
3/09/2009 7:05:01 AM
Japanese electronics giant Sony said on Wednesday it aimed to bring 3D television screens into homes next year, a technology usually found in the cinema at present.

Sony said on the margins of the IFA - the world's largest consumer electronics fair which opens to the public on Thursday - that it would "lead the commercialisation of 3D by bringing 3D to the home in 2010".

The firm also said it would make other products, such as its VAIO laptops, Blu-ray disc players and Playstation game consoles, compatible with the new technology.

Viewers will wear electronic glasses that open and close rapidly in time with images designed for the right and left eye, creating a three-dimensional effect.

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Posted by Kurt Zupin (Member # 2751) on 09-02-2009, 07:56 PM:

So I'd still have to wear some sort of glasses? No Thanks.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 09-02-2009, 08:44 PM:

Sooo... temporal anomalies ala RealD and other field sequential-esq crap? No thanks from me too.

Hopefully that's not the Blu-Ray standard. Hopefully it's just the displays that will be doing a crappy interpretation of dual 1080P full bandwidth output. Any news on that?

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 09-21-2009, 11:37 AM:

Why is this such big news? Aren't there a ton of TV's out there (especially DLP sets) that can do field sequential 3D with active glasses right now?

Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 09-21-2009, 12:17 PM:

Nah ... the "big news" is that, by Sony saying they'll come out full-flag with all sort of stereo-3D stuff by the end of 2010 ... it hints that a 3D standard for home will be fully nailed by then.

Basically, the only missing piece of the puzzle is the blu-ray consortium agreeing in how blu-ray discs and blu-ray players should do 3D. All the rest of the industry is ready and waiting for that.

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 09-21-2009, 12:36 PM:

And by the time everything is in place the 3D fad will be over again and nobody will care except maybe for some video game applications.

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 09-21-2009, 04:11 PM:

You seriously think it's just a fad this time?

Posted by Aaron Garman (Member # 1653) on 09-21-2009, 05:01 PM:

I agree with you all: accomplish 3D without glasses and then I'll be impressed.

To me, this would be like artists back in the day forcing the public to accept stone sculptures instead of oil on canvas. It's apples and oranges.

AJG

Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 09-22-2009, 01:05 PM:

"Sensible" (cheap/good/convenient) 3D without glasses is simply not physically possible, as far as we know. The whole world has been searching for something like this since the first 3D movie was shot ~100 years ago.

Good 3D w/o glasses is possible today, but using multiviews (or holograms) to fill an area with lots of "stereo-pairs", which poses a problem from the transmission point of view or produces a problem with people sitting in the transition zones between views, etc.

In other words: we still don't have, and perhaps never will, have a good-and-cheap-and-convenient way to shoot-and-display-for-a-large-audience 3D without glasses.

Now, a different story is to do expensive (relatively compared to two-channels stereoscopic 3D), cumbersome, not-so-good 3D .... that, can be done without glasses anytime [Wink]

In the future, stuff like CGI generated films could easily be sent to a large audience in 3D w/o glasses. Or a carefully designed theatre could be built were the seats match an optical screens and sends a few multiviews to cover the whole viewing space for all types of audiences (i.e. from children to people with large heads sitting off-center in their seats).

But, for the time being, we can all forget about (good, cheap, convinient, targetted to more than one-or-a-few-viewers, non CGI content) glasses-free 3D in the short (or perhaps even long) run.

But with manufacturers being able to put on the shelves 3D screens of over 60" and great resolution for quite cheap, I say stereo 3D (glasses included) does have a place at homes although, indeed, 99% of the people are going to use them to watch 2D content 99% of the time ...

The thing about 3D is that it hardly costs anymore to make a TV 3D ready than it already is (i.e., as mentioned, there are plenty of 120hz and beyond, all the way to 600hz, inexpensive HD TV sets in the market already today), so this whole 3D thing is but another excuse to try to get us to throw away our current gear and sell us another TV set or another blu-ray player.

But, since it's basically the same price, or a little more in case of blu-ray players, i.e., why not? It makes sense for manufacturers. And, of course, at first, they'll try to charge much more with the excuse ... "But it's in 3D!!!!"

Who wants to bet with me on how long it takes the industry to come out with a 55" 3D-capable TV full HD 240hz (superior to DCI 144hz) for less than $2000 (Hint: there are more than one already in the market, all the way down to $1700, just awaiting a firmware update and a HDMI 1.4 controller chip).

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 09-22-2009, 09:51 PM:

I agree, full color 3D in the home without glasses is just not happening any time soon. There simply is no technology in existence to make such a thing practical for a normal living room setting. Also, the cost of such a thing (if it worked at all) would probably be laughably outrageous.

Even if a TV could show 3D without glasses it would run the risk of merely giving a disappointing TV as an aquarium effect with everything receding inside and nothing moving forward.

I think anyone who demands 3D without glasses will be stuck avoiding anything in 3D altogether for the next 20 or 30 years. The glasses are simply going to be an unavoidable part of the equation until we have something like room filling 3D holographic movies that don't require the clutter and cost of a bunch of projectors lining the walls. Like I said, maybe 20 or 30 years from now there may be some sort of new revolutionary technology to make a lot of mind blowing things happen. I don't see it happening with any of today's technology.

Flat panel televisions are another problem. No new full color 3D system for HDTV is getting off the ground without it working in a flat panel TV form factor.

Given a choice, I think most consumers will choose flat panel televisions even if it means doing without 3D. They'll still pick a flat panel TV even if there are bulky rear-projection televisions or more complicated front projection systems that can do 3D with polarization or some other method. Flat panel TV sets take up less space and they look a hell of a lot better in a living room. That's a major selling point for a great deal of people, wives in particular.

I'm not surprised the method most likely to be used for full color home 3D is LCD-based shutter glasses synchronized to a TV set and Blu-ray player. What other method could work for a LCD-based or plasma-based flat panel TV set?

Panasonic, among others, is pushing for dual 1080p/24 streams on the Blu-ray disc using some sort of offshoot of the Bonus View technology. HDMI 1.4 is supposed to allow dual 1080p/24 streams to be possible.

As to the complaints about "field sequential" this or that, I don't understand the problem. New 3D TV sets, Blu-ray players, etc. will likely be running on a 240Hz clock, providing 120Hz quintuple-flash for each LCD lens. That's quite a bit faster than the human eye can see frames of motion. Human vision at best tops out a little over 70Hz. As long as the synchronization of the glasses works properly flicker should be minimal if even perceptible at all.

The biggest problem facing full color home 3D is the new equipment required to run it. Too many people have HDTV sets, Blu-ray players, etc. that are still fairly new, if not brand new. I am skeptical any HDTV sets currently available, even the true 240Hz ones, will be compatible. A whole new breed of Blu-ray players, PS3 consoles, etc. will also be required.

If 3D movies like Avatar, Toy Story 3 among others turn out to be huge hits it could help drive sales of 3D capable TV sets and Blu-ray players to those who haven't already upgraded to HDTV or have HDTV sets that are more than a few years old. My $3000 TV set isn't even 2 years old yet. I'm in no hurry to upgrade.

Posted by Karl Borowski (Member # 5424) on 09-23-2009, 02:04 PM:

Umm, bad idea?

Maybe even a really really bad idea?

Talk about getting greedy. Last I heard, only 10% of homes in the U.S. had HD. Don't know what those figures are like in the rest of the industrialized world, probably slightly better or comparable.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 09-23-2009, 10:37 PM:

When the DTV transition date was being changed last February I saw figures between 30 million and 40 million US homes having at least one HDTV set. That's certainly better than a mere 10% level of American homes.

It is now common for new movie arrivals on home video to see 10% to 20% or even more of their total disc sales coming from Blu-ray. Nowhere near everyone with a HDTV set has a Blu-ray player at this point.

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 09-23-2009, 10:44 PM:

If somebody has a 3D TV and the 3D version is free, I'm sure lots of people will watch it. But.........

If the 3D Blueray is $5 more than the 2D, how many people will pay the extra money?

The studios aren't going to release 3D versions for free. If people won't pay for it at home then they are better off making 3D a theatrical exclusive where they can get extra revenue for the 3D presentation.

Posted by Karl Borowski (Member # 5424) on 09-24-2009, 01:13 AM:

I have to admit, I don't have a Blu-ray player myself.

IDK how many homes are in the U.S., but there are 300 million people, so maybe 20%? That's still only 1 in 5.

That's on par with color televisions in the early '70s, pretty abysmal.

So how do they possibly think they are going to pull out another "spectacle" when the previous "wow" item hasn't even reached parity with SD TV?

Posted by Jack Theakston (Member # 4484) on 09-24-2009, 01:47 AM:

There's simply not enough content to keep something like this going.

Seriously-- sporting events? The technical limitations of shooting something like that are astounding. The interaxial necessary to get *any* sort of depth would be ridiculous.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 09-24-2009, 03:52 AM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
As to the complaints about "field sequential" this or that, I don't understand the problem. New 3D TV sets, Blu-ray players, etc. will likely be running on a 240Hz clock, providing 120Hz quintuple-flash for each LCD lens. That's quite a bit faster than the human eye can see frames of motion.

It's not about the eyes seeing the individual frames of motion. It's about the brain being able to tell that the information for one eye is slightly behind the information for the other eye. I don't know what your brain's tolerance for that is, but mine is significantly higher than what's possible on all of the sequential systems I've seen so far. Enough so to make me think that sequential will never be fast enough to look right to me.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 09-24-2009, 09:31 AM:

As long as the 3D shutter glass system was working properly (in prop sync with the movie disc, hardware, etc.) it would take a person's eye sight running at significantly better than 120 frames per second to see any flicker. No human's eye sight works that fast.

And I say better than 120 frames because of the factor of persistence of vision. Every person has that. If we didn't have persistence of vision we would not be able to tolerate watching a 2D movie projected at a mere 24fps. It would be like watching a strobe light for 2 hours.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 09-24-2009, 01:40 PM:

I don't see flicker. I used to describe it that way because I didn't know how else to describe what I was seeing. Now I know what I'm seeing. I'm seeing that the eyes are out of sync. Thanks to persistence of vision, one eye is retaining frame #1 while the other eye is seeing frame #2. Some people aren't bothered by it or don't see it I guess, which is fine. But it does bother me.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-24-2009, 01:45 PM:

3-D might be the one thing that they can't duplicate decently for the home...but they'll still give it a good try with crappy approximations. Look what they did for arcade games in the '80s.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 09-24-2009, 09:09 PM:

The first attempts at copying coin-op arcade video games were indeed pretty pathetic. The graphics quality sucked and so did the sound effects. By the end of the 1980s and early 1990s home gaming consoles really started closing the gap.

Today, home gaming consoles and run of the mill PCs can duplicate those games with 100% authenticity. Same exact graphics, same sound effects. That all seems great, well, until you look at a Namco classic game like Pac Man, Galaga or Dig Dug rendered perfectly in a tall rectangle inside a larger, horizontal HDTV picture. Or you see Robotron: 2084 authored perfectly in Shockwave Flash, but again only taking up a small part of the computer screen.

I loved a lot of those classic 1980s coin-op arcade games. But honestly, they are very primitive. The only way they really hold their charm is when you encounter them in an authentic coin-op game chassis that still works.

I don't expect full color home 3D to work perfectly right out of the gate. But that isn't to suggest RealD and Dolby3D work perfectly either. They all have some sort of compromise.

From the technical standpoint the home 3D system's biggest challenge is maintaining proper sync between the Blu-ray player, the HDTV set and the 3D LCD shutter glasses. I'm not sure how the electronics companies are going to manage that. But it's also worth mentioning that synchronized LCD shutter glasses technology is not new. The first IMAX 3D theaters were built back in the early 1990s and they featured IR controlled LCD shutter glasses. Perhaps the technology is more mature than we know. Computing technology is continuing to make big leaps.

Really, perhaps the biggest hurdle full color home 3D has in front of it is the matter of getting enough customers to open their wallets and buy the stuff.

Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 09-28-2009, 03:04 AM:

We had a 3-dimensional tv. It was at least 20 inches deep.
We now have a flat screen model.

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 09-28-2009, 03:50 AM:

That was terrible! [Wink]

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 09-28-2009, 10:57 AM:

All I want is a way to play the left eye and right synchronized out of separate outputs. I can take it the rest of the way from there by using dual projectors and a passive set of polarizers.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 09-28-2009, 11:32 AM:

quote: Mark J. Marshall
I don't see flicker. I used to describe it that way because I didn't know how else to describe what I was seeing. Now I know what I'm seeing. I'm seeing that the eyes are out of sync. Thanks to persistence of vision, one eye is retaining frame #1 while the other eye is seeing frame #2. Some people aren't bothered by it or don't see it I guess, which is fine. But it does bother me.

Mike, I was just wondering if you've ever seen 35mm dual strip/dual projection 3D. If you don't see that phenomeon when watching dual projection 3D, then yes, you may be one of small percentage of the population which has trouble seeing 3D. The range is from almost total lack of depth perception to a slight difficulty processing the two images when there is a time disparity, as in all frame-sequential and over-under 3D systems.

But you can be confident that even if this is a problem with a small percentage of people, that will not stop the home video system from being put rolled out. Just like no one was worried about that small percentage of people who said they could hear the sampling steps in CDs and that made it sound horrible to them. And you have to think that all those people sitting in theatres watching frame sequential 3D without any hint of discomfort will be the market the industry will be selling to; they won't be worried about the few who can't deal with 3D. Just like the fact that there is a given percentage of people who are color blind didn't stop the advance of color tv.

My gut tells me that whether or not adults find problems with the glasses, the younger generation seems to fair a lot better with adapting to new technologies and I will put my money on them embracing 3D TV quite easily. I mean come on, if they can watch movies on an iphone and it doesn't bother them, having to wear glasses to see 3D will be a walk in the park. And rest assured, the producers of 3D content will be 120% behind the hardware launch because that opens up the whole home video market to their 3D product. Studios who have a library of 50s and 80s 3D product will have a pure profit return from such 3D video releases on disc. And what parent is going to resist their darling little brat screaming that they want to see UP or TOY STORY or whatever in 3D once he sees 3DTV at his friends house or sees Disney hawking 3D video releases in a TV media blitz ad compaign? Samsung has alread started an ad campaign for their 3D tvs in time for the holiday season.

The demand in that all-important 14 - 25 demographics will be what drives it, not us old farts whining because they have to wear glasses.

I'll bet it's here to stay, nitche market though it may be. Laserdiscs were a nitche market and only a small portion at that, but it held on for decades. 3D video may be the same kind of thing, although I would bet it will be a much bigger chunk.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 09-28-2009, 12:37 PM:

If you're addressing me, then yes. I was at Jeff's first 3D expo, and also at Suffern, NY's follow up 3 day expo. Only two problems noted with regard to this issue...

1. Gorilla At Large went out of sync by one frame. For those that don't know that story... About half way through the second hour there was one long shot of two guys talking. Apparently one of the negatives was missing one frame from that shot. So when they struck the prints one of the two prints was missing one frame in the middle of that shot which threw the rest of the movie off. I saw that when it happened... ie in the middle of the shot.

2. While at the Suffern festival their interlocking mechanism apparently slipped a bit when they started Spooks - which ironically was attached to Gorilla At Large. I noticed that it was out of sync in the black before the picture faded in on the Columbia logo. Yes, I saw it while the image was all black on the screen - well actually I guess it was on the curtain while it was opening. It was nowhere near a full frame out - I knew what that looked like from the last Gorilla At Large problem. Sure enough, they stopped it, rewound it back, fixed it and re-started it. It slipped again, but not as badly. Saw that too, also while in the black. Confirmed it later with Bob F.

So, yes I can easily see 3D with no problems when it's right. But when it's out of sync it doesn't give me a headache or anything, it just annoys the crap out of me because the images don't hold together. And my eyes are fairly well trained to see 3D. For example, I can see those 3D Magic Eye things from across the room even when they're on a slight angle. I also used to draw 3D anaglyphic cartoons when I was a kid.

I don't believe that the reason so few people notice the temporal problem is because their eyes/brain work so well together that they are able to correct for it. I just think that they don't notice it for the same reasons they don't notice scratched prints or sound problems. No one has pointed it out to them. And since so few people have access to properly done 3D, most people are just fine with what they have and will never know the difference.

That's fine. But I would much rather be able to do 3D correctly in my home. I'm with Mike. Get me two signals in sync and I'll take it from there.

Posted by Karl Borowski (Member # 5424) on 09-28-2009, 12:50 PM:

I haven't been able to see this problem with 3D projection, but I can tell there is something "odd" about it.

I was able to see what I can only describe as a rainbow fringing pattern with the earlier amateur-model digital projectors, which was, I guess, due to them using a 3-color wheel to form color on the monitor.

Posted by Jack Theakston (Member # 4484) on 09-28-2009, 12:59 PM:

You guys are describing sequential's inherently out-of-phase nature. Properly set up dual-projector presentations should not have phase issues.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 09-28-2009, 01:01 PM:

Gottcha. And excuse the typo -- I meant Mark. Yup, I saw the single frame out in GORILLA at the first 3D expo. And definately it is bothersome. But that is a gross time disparity of a full 1/24th of a second and yes, it is something that I find intollerable. On the other hand, I guess I am not quite as sensitive to smaller incrimental off-sets as you -- in the over/under 80s stuff, I didn't notice any problems. Plus, I have a field sequential 3DTV system using LCD glasses at home and although the flicker is pronounced, that's the only anomoly that bothers me, not anything else. I am assuming the new system will have a much higher flash rate than this crude 3DTV system which uses standard, unmodified NTSC SVHS tape and only adding a double flash for each full frame.

Personally I am hoping this new consumer system rollout works fairly well because I love 3D and am willing to be tolerant of some 3D related artifacts. And here's the thing, if they get content on Blu-Ray, then there is no reason why I won't be able to use dual video projectors and do it that way, completely eliminating any temporal displacement, even if it means using a frame-store box to make sure both frames are fed to the projectors simultaniously. I know 3DTV has such a box that converts their frame sequential to dual signals for two projectors. Should be an easy thing to do once the movies are available in 3D BluRay.

Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 09-28-2009, 03:09 PM:

In contrast to sequential-based TV's, the polarization-based TV screens, like the JVC or Hyundai, don't have this problem (in any significant way), as both frames can be displayed at the same time. Nonetheless, until they are made with twice the vertical resolution, most of them do usually halve the amount of pixels going to each eye.

Other polarization-based monitors, like the iZ3D do have the same full resolution in 2D than 3D and both images are displayed at precisely the same exact time (necessarily). Perhaps they'll come up with a HDMI/Blu-ray 3D compatible TV model or they'll start making TV's with twice the vertical resolution and simply duplicate (or better, interpolate) the lines for 2D and interlace them for 3D. That, to me, would be the ideal 3D monitor.

LCD is good-and-bad at the same time for polarized 3D in that they already use polarized light (that's the plus side) but, on the other side, the optical path is not flat (i.e. they are "thick" and the response changes with the angle of view). This is bad for polarization differenciation and most current polarized-based TV's suffer from limited angle of view before the ghosting starts being a problem.

Ideally, whenever OLED TV's became cheap-and-large-and-bright-and-lasting-and-good enough, they can make excellent polarization-based or even chromatic/interference, like Dolby, 3D monitors.

Not to mention sequential 3D, which they pretty much all can do just fine even today. Better than cinema's RealD/Master Image/XpanD (i.e. +240hz vs 144hz). But this is what we are talking about here: moving away from sequential to simultaneous.

Time disparities do bother me (I suspect just about everybody, even if unconsciously) a bit, but I can ignore them unless they are one full frame (1/24th), of course. I projected non-sync'ed 3D for a while with statistical disparities of 1/100th (1/50th maximun) of a second and it didn't bother me nor anyone I asked.

Over/under disparity is also completely different, yielding something similar to a 192th of a second but with significant periods of total blanking in both eyes and significant periods of full/near-full synched-images in both eyes. It's easier to feel bothered by digital's 144th disparity because you never, nor even for a little while, are watching both images at the same time with both eyes. And the simultaneous blanking intervals are extremely short in digital.

It's like the color wheel issue. Some people are really bothered a lot by it, some never notice what you are talking about. Some can see it a bit, but don't care enough to be bothered. Thankfully, they'll be choices at home including full sync'ed 3D.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 09-28-2009, 10:35 PM:

I hope so. Which of course will mean that it will be possible for people to have better presentations at home than you can get at the local cinema.