IBM Develops New 3D TV Technology

neutron_p writes "IBM has recently announced a new and affordable 3D video system that works with normal DLP (Digital Light Processing) televisions. IBM demonstrated the new system on a 50-inch, flat-screen Texas Instruments rear-projection digital television at the 22nd annual Flat Information Displays conference held in San Francisco this month. This "black box" device can be connected to any DLP projector or television via the common VESA 3 pin stereo connector. Exact details concerning the 3D technology - still unnamed - were not forthcoming, but the company spokesperson said it was compatible with OpenGL and Direct Draw, which is definitely aimed at software developers who make 3D games."

Comments

sex

[tezbobobo]

Yeah, and the sysadmins at IBM just noticed a proliferation of sex sites in the proxy logs,

Sharp3D

[trollable]

I'm not it will work. People don't like wearing glasses, except maybe gamers. OTOH, Sharp3D seems to be a more promising way. What do you think?

Call me when there's news

[aussie_a]

On the downside, you still need 3D glasses to correctly view the image and practically no video is shot in 3D as it requires more expensive cameras, but as price drops and general interest rises, this is sure to change.

Uh-huh. And we're sure to get virtual reality sometime soon as well.

It's great that IBM (of all people) have developed a system to allow 3D movies at home. But the problem is, there's no content. And I doubt just because there's a $1,000 US piece of equipment on the market that content will suddenly come spewing forth. ESPECIALLY when glasses are still needed for this to work.

This is a chicken and egg problem, but unlike DVDs and High Definition televisions, 3D has been promised for quite a while but has yet to come. The article makes it sound like IBM has made a giant break through and 3D movies are about to become common place. I doubt very much this is so (especially while we need glasses for these things). This is a positive step, but it's a small one. The adoption of 3D movies will come one day, but the road towards it will be paved with lots of small steps, and we aren't anywhere near the end.

Re:Call me when there's news

[af_robot]

But the problem is, there's no content.

How about *3D* games? They need no or minimum modification for 3D displays.

Easy code change

[G4from128k]

Creating 3-D games won't be that hard. All the game software needs to do is render each frame twice with a slightly different POV corresponding to the right and left eye. The only downside is that frame rates for the game will probably almost half what they are for the mono version (assuming that rendering is a significant chunk of the total CPU/GPU processing budget).

Re:Easy code change

[reachinmark]

The framerate won't be half - you wrap the entire left eye rendering inside a GL display list and use the cache to render the right eye. In practice the framerate doesn't drop all that much.

There are also techniques for achieving 'fake' stereo rendering by using the depth buffer to extract a stereo pair. The result isn't as good obviously, but it works with existing games.

Content

[goombah99]

This may not be such a thing as chicken and egg. Maybe it's jut that people like 2-D TV. As has been noted many times, esp in regard to the ipod, video+audio is not always superior to video only. Stereo graphic books have been around for 200 years and they did not take over regular books. 3-d movies have not taken over regular movies. Holograms have not take over photographs.

When I wear a pair of Crystal-eyes doing anything elese with my computer or in the room is prohibitive. Somethings just work better as 2-d experiences. Our brains understand that not everything in the 2-d picture should be in focus. But in 3-d everything shoul dbe in focus if we focus our eyes on it--but that won't happen here. only some of this will be in focus so it's going to be mighty strange for our brains.

Re:Content

[ClosedSource]

"Holograms have not take over photographs"

The fact that holograms haven't taken over photographs has nothing to do with people's preferences for 2D over 3D. It's because of the expense, lack of true color and the fact that people can't stand still that long. If you could point and shoot a hologram with full color using normal exposure speeds and the camera was less than $500, they'd be selling faster than iPods.

Holograms also solve the focus issue since they reproduce the wavefront that came from the original scene.

New TV?

[NardofDoom]

Am I the only one who's perfectly happy with his 4-year-old Sony 27" CRT TV? I don't want a Hi Def TV, and I sure as hell don't want to spend thousands of dollars on a TV and then pay extra for content.

Can someone explain to me the allure of buying three or four thousand dollar TVs? Cause I must be missing something.

3d goggles, ps3, this gadget

[dindi]

I wonder why they completely dumped the 3d glasses, that worked just fine in theatres (the colorless polarised ones, not the blue/red)

Also where are the promised VR goggles? I tested one at a computer show with the "descent game" a long time ago, and it had ridiculous resolution (gravis cybermax or something like that), but now my cellphone has a better cheaper display so why aren't they there ?

Oh and where are the LCD shutter glasses? The ones that came with any higher end ASUS nvidia card? I know these were hard on the eye, because technically it halved the refresh rate with terrible blinking (e.g. a 80Hz monitor became a 40Hz output) .... these were fun though for some games, but they are completely gone...

Mentioning 3d every time makes me think what sony really wants with dual video output on the ps3 ... yes duak head ... and maybe "split screen" gaming is finally possible without a split screen on the same box.....

but is dony about to bring 3d thru their dual output? with projection + 3d filter lens? VR goggles.....

We hear so much about 3d LCD, 3d DLP, 3d tv, 3d laptop, and I just do not see these devices on the shelves of stores when I walk in. Am I missing something ?