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Sony Teases 3D Playstation 3
Ars Technica has a brief report from CES, where Sony demonstrated the work they've done to bring 3D technology to the PS3. Quoting:
"The idea was just to show the technology to people, to see if they would be interested in sitting at home, wearing a dorky set of black glasses, watching content in 3D. I couldn't pry details about how the 3D affect was achieved, or if the display could turn any source into 3D, but what's clear is that, glasses or no, the 3D affect is amazing. Sony showed off Wipeout HD running in true 3D, and I was ready to whip out my credit card right there. Frank and I both agreed, this was one of the best demos of 3D technology we have ever seen."
But it's not just the tech that's needed for these new fangled televisions and PS3s... it's the content. The whole world archive of tv/film footage would most likely be useless for conversion to 3D and I just can't see the point of buying a new TV and another bloody playstation to watch a couple of mediocre films and play a few games. If I want good 3D I'll go to the theatre (or a specialst cinema).
Do we really need to move on from HDTV already?
HDTV lag has yet to be solved, meaning tons of old game consoles must be played with input delay. HDTVs are also still too expensive for many people to afford. And once you buy an HDTV, you need something that outputs in HD, digital cable, a Blu-Ray machine, a PS3, those aren't cheap either.
I still use my SDTV for gaming or watching DVDs as upscan converters or scalers look horrible on my HDTV. Because HDTV lag and upscaling are problems I am forced out of necessity to keep an SDTV around to play old video games without lag.
I would rather see HDTVs perfected than a move to 3D.
... they do something?
At first I was only a little incredulous that someone loved Sony products so much, but then I saw the dead give-away:
You got greedy.
Do we really need to move on from HDTV already?
I'd say we haven't moved to HDTV at all.
Not a lot of people I know actually have an HDTV. They are indeed still expensive, but more importantly, they don't really offer anything that people need or want. The difference between standard TV and HDTV is just not large enough for people to actually care about.
HD-DVD is already dead and Blu-Ray doesn't seem to be doing all that well either. More evidence that people just don't care.
What I'm hoping for is some actual innovation when it comes to television. On-demand streaming content, where I am no longer dependent of the exact time a tv show is aired, is a feature I'm missing. 3DTV sounds interesting to me as well. I'm certainly more likely to buy a new TV for those new features, than just to get crappy reality tv shows in a slightly higher resolution.
There was a demo by NVidia for this kind of technology for any PC game earlier this week. It apparently uses the Z buffer information and glasses with active shutters. This is likely something similar.
So is it just me or does this bear a striking resemblance to Nvidia's recent demo of shutter glasses combined with a 120Hz HDTV. To me the black glasses are a dead giveaway.
As far as the "any source" part is concerned, let's not be silly here, you need concrete depth information. Sure our brains can infer this information but the sheer processing grunt required for a computer to do this means it will not be done any time soon at least not in realtime on full motion video.
I am embarrassed for Ars Technica and more than a little disappointed.
It's the top result returned from this search.
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
My theory is that the success of HDTV and BluRay is entirely due to the ridiculously easy access to credit over the past few years. People get credit cards with huge limits and can suddenly "afford" thousand dollar TVs, so they go out and buy them.
HDTV and BluRay adoption rates will slow dramatically now that the credit market has collapsed, especially since HDTVs are still far too expensive for the average person to buy without credit.
Not a lot of people I know actually have an HDTV.
This may be in your country, at least in sweden it's pretty much impossible to buy a TV set not capable of at least 720p. Most people I know already have at least 720p.
They are indeed still expensive
Expensive compared to what? Have you managed to find a non HDTV on sale somewhere. Are you sure that wasn't a firesale.
, but more importantly, they don't really offer anything that people need or want. The difference between standard TV and HDTV is just not large enough for people to actually care about.
Sure, and upscaled DVDs looks as good as blueray also. Have you ever seen HDTV material? It's very easy to see the difference. Even my GF complains about the picture when there is a good movie to watch and we only bought the DVD, the blueray was sold out when we bought the latest Narnia. If you're used to HD material DVD looks like shit, no definition at all.
Go download some Trailers to see what all the fuzz is about.
That isn't new, though, because you've been able to do the same thing for some time. 120 Hz LCDs are fairly new but 120 Hz CRTs have been around for some time and the "on a flatscreen!" thing is no more valid than the "on the internets!" patent suffix.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Seriously, anything that can get some more decent exclusives for Sony is a good thing. I bought my PS3 two years ago hoping for a lot. And so far I've used it mostly as a blu-ray player only. Metal Gear Solid 4 was good, as was Warhawk (Little Big Planet is supposedly cool too, but I haven't played it). But, other than that, it's mostly ports of games that end up looking and playing better on the cheaper Xbox 360 (and it doesn't help that I like Xbox Live and the Xbox controller better too). As a big fan of Second Life, I even had high hopes for Playstation Home. But even that ended up being a huge disappointment.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This may be in your country, at least in sweden it's pretty much impossible to buy a TV set not capable of at least 720p. Most people I know already have at least 720p.
In my country (the alleged disposable consumer driven hell of the USA) most (by a HUGE margin) people have TVs over 5 years old, so even though 720p has been pretty much the only option for any non-really small TV for a couple of years, still the vast majority of people have SDTV.
4 years ago my parents purchased a 30" SDTV for $299, 2.5 years ago I purchased a 32" HDTV for $800, theirs is just as tall, so TV shows are the same size (but not as nice looking, this ignore the wide screeniness, since TV is still shot for 4:3).
Expensive compared to what?
Compared to the TV you already own they are incredibly expensive.
Sure, and upscaled DVDs looks as good as blueray also. Have you ever seen HDTV material? It's very easy to see the difference. Even my GF complains about the picture when there is a good movie to watch and we only bought the DVD, the blueray was sold out when we bought the latest Narnia. If you're used to HD material DVD looks like shit, no definition at all.
This is very true, but I still don't own a Blu-Ray player because of cost (price of disks primarily).
In fact the only "HD" content I now watch are upscaled DVDs, and that is when I put in the effort to press the button on the remote.
I generally watch SD Digital cable (the WORSE picture imaginable), and the zoom it, since it is 4:3 letter-boxed usually. This looks awful, but it saves me a lot of money every month.
When I lived closer to a city, I had no cable and watched OTA. This looked great, and I miss it, but not as much as I miss one lunch purchased out a week, or 3-4 TV season boxed sets a year ($240 month savings).
I also watch a lot of DVD's that are 480P progressive scan xvid, and then converted to 2500kps DVDs, with all settings towards speed, not quality. They looks terrible, but I get a lot on a disk, which is nice since my player has trouble with DVD-RW.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
In 2006 Ken Kutaragi proclaimed that with the PS3 came "4D gaming". It seems that his retirement from Sony in August 2007 has stripped the PS3 of 2 entire dimensions. Sony engineers have only now been able to recover one of the lost dimensions via the use of specialised goggles, and it is not clear if the PS3 will ever return to 4D status.
When asked for comment, Mr Kutaragi noted that "Dimensions are but an illusion. Inside all of our souls is the true energy of dimensionality," before deep-throating the microphone and phasing back into the universe from whence he came.
For LCD HDTVs, most of the input lag comes from all the processing hardware, not the LCD panel itself. Many TVs now come with a "game mode" that disables certain processing features to decrease lag time at the expense of noise reduction, or upscaling quality, or whatever.
When I play Guitar Hero on my Sony LCD TV, I get about 60ms lag with the TV in its normal operating mode (as measured by GH's lag compensation feature). When I enable game mode on my TV, the lag effectively drops to zero. With game mode enable, many of the picture optimization features are not available, but that doesn't generally bother me since I usually disable them anyway.
Damn I wish I had some mod points. Cue me getting twenty in the morning.
A lot of people are proclaiming blu-ray as a success because of all the PS3s sold that no-one watches blu-rays on. Show us actual disk sales, not player sales. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if because of the PS3 including a blu-ray drive there have been more blu-ray players sold than blu-ray disks :P. Ok, that's not likely, but you can see how much the PS3 could skew the results by.
Or even the title.
Sony Teases 3D Playstation 3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3#Stereoscopic_3D
Stereoscopic 3D
In December 2008, SCE confirmed that they intend to support stereoscopic 3D games and Blu-ray movies in 2009.[186] This functionality will be introduced to the PlayStation 3 via a firmware update making the first and only games console capable of generating high definition 3D images.[187] This technology was first demonstrated publicly on the PS3 in January 2009 at the Consumer Electronics Show. Journalists were shown Wipeout HD and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue in 3D as a demonstration of how the technology might work if it is implemented in the future.
As for refresh rate and glasses...
HD does not go over 60Hz at the moment. And that only with 720p and 1080i.
And while 120Hz TVs are relatively new - 100Hz TVs have been around for a decade or more.
So, unless your TV's remote comes with a cord - there are pretty good chances it has a rather comfortable refresh rate.
Which is actually - irrelevant.
Those "no shutter job or anything" glasses are actually circularly polarized glasses.
In fact, if you look closely at the photo in the original article you can make out the Real D logo on the glasses.
Circularly polarized glasses
To present a stereoscopic motion picture, two images are projected superimposed onto the same screen through circular polarizing filters of opposite handedness. The viewer wears low-cost eyeglasses which contain a pair of analyzing filters (circular polarizers mounted in reverse) of opposite handedness. Light that is left-circularly polarized is extinguished by the right-handed analyzer; while right-circularly polarized light is extinguished by the left-handed analyzer. The result is similar to that of steroscopic viewing using linearly polarized glasses; except the viewer can tilt his head and still maintain left/right separation.
Real D Cinema System (used recently with the sterescopic Disney movie, "Chicken Little 3D") uses electronically driven circular polarizers that alternate between left- and right- handedness, and does so in sync with the left or right image being displayed by the (digital) movie projector.
So, refresh rate - irrelevant. If it works in 2-D it will work in 3-D.
So, that "massively higher cost" you are talking about comes down to $1.95 for the glasses while that "lower image quality" does not even exist - since it is the case of only displaying a "doubled" image as can very well be seen in the photo in the article.
Unless you refuse to fork over those 2$ cause it is an outrageous case of bait and switch making the consumer spend extra on hardware just so he/she/it could play the game.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens