Sony To Launch 3D TVs By Late 2010

eldavojohn writes "The Financial Times is reporting that Sony is announcing 3D TVs for late 2010 at the IFA technology trade show in Berlin. It's another glasses-based technology with "active shutter" being employed (the same stuff teased at CES as well as employed on NVIDIA's glasses). Expect to see 3D Bravia television sets, Vaio laptops, PS3s and Blu-ray disc players compatible with this technology."

Comments

porn

[BisexualPuppy]

3D porn, anyone ?

Re:porn

[Velox_SwiftFox]

This is drearily likely to be the driving force behind the growth of the technology.

Look at history. Video cassettes, the Internet, silicone rubber formulae...

Re:porn

[Anonymous Coward]

3D porn, anyone ?

I can't wait to see shemale porn in 3d. That would be awesome.

Re:porn

[westlake]

This is drearily likely to be the driving force behind the growth of the technology. Look at history. Video cassettes, the Internet, silicone rubber formulae...

It would be closer to the truth to say that Disney's support of VHS put a VCR in every home.

Re:porn

[Shikaku]

driving force behind the growth of the technology.

Freud: "Too easy"

Re:porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Me to Freud: "Just like your wife."

Re:porn

[Anonymous Coward]

It might sound like a good idea at first, but just wait until some asshole busts a nut right into the camera.

Re:porn

[hal2814]

I didn't know Disney was in the porn business...

Re:porn

[Lussarn]

Didn't you watch the little mermaid? A rather nice flick about a mermaid trying to get laid.

Re:porn

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

This is drearily likely to be the driving force behind the growth of the technology.

Look at history. Video cassettes, the Internet, silicone rubber formulae...

You mean like it is for blu-ray?

Re:porn

[billius]

They're not, but it's understandable that you'd make that mistake. Miley Cyrus made a similar error.

Re:porn

[lewiscr]

This South Park documentary proves otherwise.

Hrmm

[acehole]

I saw a couple of 3D tvs shown at a tradeshow I went to about a month ago. There were two different types, one I looked at closely had a different type of glass on the front which made the image behind 3D. The other by sony didnt have it as far as I could see and looked just like a normal TV.

Sucks to be me though, I've got a dominate eye so I can't see the 3D stuff. Just looks like an out of tune tv. Guess i've got that to look forward to when they go mainstream :P

Re:Hrmm

[FlickieStrife]

I'm the same way, practically blind in my right eye. If someone could explain the difference to me, say compare whay a full HD tv would look like by a 3D tv, that would be great.

Re:Hrmm

[eldavojohn]

Sucks to be me though, I've got a dominate eye so I can't see the 3D stuff. Just looks like an out of tune tv. Guess i've got that to look forward to when they go mainstream :P

Um, almost all of the population has a "dominant eye" with a very small fraction having no ocular dominance at all. I haven't had the chance to demo any of these technologies but if you're asserting that ocular dominance renders them useless then I think Sony's market is drastically small. I'm not an optometrist but are you saying you experience ocular dominance far more than the average person? To a debilitating extent?

Re:Hrmm

[acehole]

To clarify, one eye is significantly weaker than the other to the point I can't read things if I close my other eye to see out of it. My vision primarily is out of the one eye.

Re:Hrmm

[Cyberax]

Try glasses or contact lenses.

Re:Hrmm

[Hognoxious]

There's different degrees of dominance. He's probably got an extreme case where the other eye is mostly disregarded by the brain, possibly because it's defective. The eye, I mean.

Re:Hrmm

[clang_jangle]

Kind of an idiotic thing to say, really. While they do help many, corrective lenses are certainly not a panacea (nor are the surgical options, which for many of us don't even exist). Like many, my vision with corrective lenses is extremely poor in one eye. Looking at "3D" is not only ineffective, it gives me a blinding headache. Probably there are enough people for whom this is true that "3D" display technology based on 2D devices will fail in the marketplace.

Re:Hrmm

[geekoid]

Everyone has a dominate eye.

Re:Hrmm

[Cyberax]

I wear glasses, and one of my eyes is significantly worse than the other one (I also sometimes use contact lenses, but I really like glasses).

If it's impossible to correct vision in one of your eyes, then it sucks to be you. But most people still can use 3D-glasses with contact lenses or regular glasses.

Re:Hrmm

[jeffb (2.718)]

Probably there are enough people for whom this is true that "3D" display technology based on 2D devices will fail in the marketplace.

Just as red/green status and traffic lights have failed because of the wide prevalence of red/green colorblindness?

It's a binocular world out there, and I don't think the rate of anomalous depth perception is high enough to change that.

Re:Hrmm

[Lord Ender]

You should have said "I am mostly blind in one eye" instead of "I have a dominant eye." This would clear up the confusion.

Re:Hrmm

[clang_jangle]

Bad example -- the colors of traffic lights are not the only cue, the position also informs. There will be no widespread adoption of 3D displays until they get holovision working right. Stereo vision != 3D, it's just a simulation (tied to silly looking glasses) and thus it will remain a novelty.

Re:Hrmm

[mcgrew]

My ex-wife has strabismus, which is probably what the GP was referring to. She couldn't see 3D either.

Re:Hrmm

[TheRaven64]

It's not defective, it's just that the eye is generating 32-bit values and the brain is expecting 16-bit ones, so there's an overflow and it aborts.

Re:Hrmm

[Urban Garlic]

> It's a binocular world out there...

It really isn't. Binocular stereopsis is not the most important depth cue that human vision uses, it's just a fairly compelling one that's easy to produce mechanically. Real-world vision uses a combination of relative size, parallax and relative motion, illumination, focus, and binocular cues to figure out depth information. There are one-eyed folks out there with excellent depth perception, and two-eyed folks with poor depth perception. Almost all of the depth action is visual-cortex post-processing.

One of the causes of eyestrain from typical binocular 3D systems is that the images mix up the binocular and focal cues -- the binocular info says that the stuff is a few meters in front of you, but the focal cue says it's all in the same plane.

I personally seem to be sensitive to the focal cue, for some reason -- I seem to get full-on migraines from ViewMaster[tm]-style binocular 3D viewers, and noticeable eyestrain from desktop-scale 3D systems, but can watch theatrical 3D movies comfortably, which I think is due to the differing screen sizes and distances.

Re:Hrmm

[spazdor]

If it's impossible to correct vision in one of your eyes, then it sucks to be you.

Insensitive clod.

Re:Hrmm

[spazdor]

It could be that 3d films are intentionally shot with depth of field which is chosen to mimic the focus of a human eye.

Re:Hrmm

[rnelsonee]

I have a very dominant eye as well, but this new 3D that's coming out isn't too bad, because you need goggles to view it.

That's good for two reasons: 1) No widespread adoption - putting on goggles will work for some home and commercial use, but I'd say at least half of the eyeballs-on-screens will not have goggles. And 2) it should work with people like us - the screens switch inputs on and off, so you will still see the normal screen out of your good eye. They're not using colors, or separating one image into composite images or anything - it's one full frame on for half, then another full frame on for the second, then back to angle 1, etc. So you'll see a 60fps 3D image rendered in 2D at 30fps.

Re:Hrmm

[Merls the Sneaky]

He probably (like myself) has suppression of one eye.

Re:Hrmm

[BagMan2]

It shouldn't be any worse for you than real-life is. I mean, when you look down the street and see a car approaching, does it look like a 3D scene to you? Probably. The eye with bad vision doesn't have to be able to focus clearly on the image for the brain to process the 3D aspects properly. The good eye provides the focus and the bad eye (even though the image is blury) is used as a crutch by the brain to provide the sense of depth. The image your brain ultimately composites will appear to be in-focus and in 3D.

The same would be true of these shutter glasses. It doesn't matter if the one eye is getting a blury picture, your brain is already trained to combine that blury picture with the in-focus picture to get a nicely composited 3D image.

If the entire real-world seems flat to you, then yeah, maybe you are screwed, but otherwise you should be fine.

Re:Hrmm

[FesterDaFelcher]

She couldn't see 3D either.

But she can now, or is she dead? (Just messing with you on the use of past tense.)

Re:Hrmm

[vertinox]

Sucks to be me though, I've got a dominate eye so I can't see the 3D stuff. Just looks like an out of tune tv. Guess i've got that to look forward to when they go mainstream :P

I have the same problem to so when I wear 3d glasses I wear an eye patch.

Re:Hrmm

[93 Escort Wagon]

But she can now, or is she dead? (Just messing with you on the use of past tense.)

Is it beyond possibility that Hans Reiser would have a Slashdot account?

Re:Hrmm

[RabidMoose]

If he did, it wouldn't surprise me if he were in the 5-digit club, as GP is.

Re:Hrmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe she can, maybe she can't. How would he know? She's his ex-wife.

(wtf... captcha: married)

Re:Hrmm

[Clever7Devil]

I empathize. I had cataract surgery (lens removal) at a very young age. At the time replacement was not an option. My brain never learned to use binocular vision. As it's now a nuerological issue, medical science has a way to go for me. I too am eagerly anticipating 3-d video that doesn't require two healthy eyes.

Re:Hrmm

[Dan9999]

Red lights are square and green lights are round. There is no failure for colorblindness... possibly full blindness though, but I haven't had the chance to ask any blind drivers about this.

Re:Hrmm

[jeffb (2.718)]

Where? They certainly aren't different shapes in the US. Here, at least in my part, it's positional (red at top, green at bottom), and there's enough blue in the green light to let most people distinguish them.

Still doesn't address the broad cultural prevalence here of red/green status indicators, which have persisted even though ~5% of the population has trouble distinguishing them.

Re:Hrmm

[clone53421]

3D is an illusion. Your eyes focus on one object, and anything at a different depth will appear in double. Your brain learns that this is depth, and automatically shifts the focus of your eyes to the various depths of objects as you look at them. (The eyes tilt inward – slightly cross-eyed – so both eyes are pointed directly at whatever it is you're looking at. If you're staring at the bridge of your nose, you'll be completely cross-eyed; if you're looking off into the distance, they'll be nearly straight ahead.) Someone who can only see properly out of one eye has never trained their brain to process this information and will be completely unable to envision it. The closest you could come to knowing what 3D looks like would be to envision seeing double, and that will be a flawed understanding because your brain won't know what to make of it anyway.

You could try going to a 3D movie (the kind that's projected using polarized light) and looking at the screen without wearing the glasses. That will allow you to see the double image that a person with stereo vision would see, but since you're unable to shift the superimposition (which 3D-sighted people do unconsciously as they aim both eyes at the object they're looking at), you still won't be able to bring one object "into focus" as I could.

As far as comparing a normal TV to a 3D TV, you'd be able to discern no difference. They'd look the same. The same goes for movies projected in 3D using polarized light: as long as you wear the glasses, your sighted eye will only see one picture and you won't be able to tell the difference (it'll look just like a normal movie to you).

Re:Hrmm

[Krneki]

Hi Leela. :)

Re:Hrmm

[Jared555]

I have the same problem (legally blind in my right eye). And before people start making the comments 'oh, so we should hold back technology for the relatively small number of people who have that issue, etc.' that is not what I think. All I hope they do is put in a bypass option so the TV functions as a normal TV even if it is receiving a signal for a 3D picture. (Also nice if someone with full vision doesn't feel like wearing the glasses). This is probably a feature that will be added for other reasons of course but someone will sooner or later release a screen that can't display non 3D correctly.

Also nice is when theaters projecting in 3D have a second screen that is just regular digital or film. For me the '3D' picture degrades from the quality. The glasses still change the picture if you move your head and there is usually a ghost image from the glasses not completely eliminating the other picture.

Re:Hrmm

[clone53421]

The glasses still change the picture if you move your head

There's a new polarization technology that allows you to tilt your head without the pictures bleeding over to the wrong eye. It uses circular polarization and no, I haven't the slightest idea how it works. All I know is that I watched "Up" projected in 3D with this technology and it was pretty incredible.

Re:Hrmm

[StikyPad]

No wonder he hated her...

"God damnit, look at me when I'm talking to you!"

I joke, I joke.. it's actually refreshing that he saw past her superficial flaws. Lord knows she saw around his.

Re:Hrmm

[mcgrew]

Exil-X isn't dead, evil never dies. But she's dead to me and out of my life (at least when I can avoid the bitch).

And actually, I'm not sure if she can see 3D now or not, she had surgery on her "lazy eye" to straighten it out, but I don't know how useful that eye is.

Re:Hrmm

[Anonymous Coward]

He has, under the name "Hans Reiser" IIRC. He used to post on the ReiserFS discussions.

Re:Hrmm

[mcgrew]

No, I'm not reiser, I'm mcgrew.

Re:Hrmm

[memco]

The same goes for movies projected in 3D using polarized light: as long as you wear the glasses, your sighted eye will only see one picture and you won't be able to tell the difference (it'll look just like a normal movie to you).

That's my problem with this tech-it looks just like any other 3D to me, it's nothing special. At least this is one area in which I won't be overcome by my obsession with new tech. Hopefully by the time this tech becomes commonplace they'll have figured out a way to stop this from inducing headaches in those of us who cannot process the effect.

Re:Hrmm

[Hatta]

Can you see in 3d in reality? If so, why are these displays worse?

Re:Hrmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone else read that as "stabby-much"?

Re:Hrmm

[Jarik C-Bol]

and of course, the red top green bottom is not always the case, as some cities mount their traffic lights horizontally. (in which case, its USUALLY red left, green right)

Re:Hrmm

[Dan9999]

interesting, I had always thought it would have been more advanced down in the US. I'm in Quebec and we have shapes as well as positions. Vertically same as you and horizontally the red is always at both ends, and the yellow is diamond shaped. Good thing we don't have diagonally positioned lights or the red and yellow would be a bit confusing. I couldn't even tell you if it's the same across the country here though.

Re:Hrmm

[Samah]

It's not defective, it's just that the eye is generating 32-bit values and the brain is expecting 16-bit ones, so there's an overflow and it aborts.

That's not the problem, it's that one of the eyes is generating 8-bit indexes, but someone alt-tabbed and messed up the palette.

Re:Hrmm

[Techman83]

Indeed that would probably the case, it was always disappointing being one of the few kids that couldn't work out the pictures in those "Magic Eye" books. It also certainly makes driving at night very interesting!

Re:Hrmm

[Techman83]

Although mod'd funny, that's certainly an informative post. Personally my right eye is ignored (during daylight hours at least, night time the brain tries to collect all the signals it can, so that brings other complications into ones vision) because it just isn't pointed in the same direction as my dominant eye (being the left one obviously). Magic Eye books, depth perception, 3D movies, reading distant signs, night vision are all things that get negatively affected. Sometimes in my case for example, the situation could have been avoided if the first Eye specialist didn't convince my parents that I'd "Grow Out of It".

You learn to live with it, but I feel that the simple things are getting harder (parking, lane changing etc) as I head towards 30 (am aware that's not old, but things seemed much easier a few years ago!)

Re:Hrmm

[KDR_11k]

You notice that some things are closer to you than others (your brain does the interpretation), the effect is more of a novelty though, not really useful when you're not really trying to determine aposition in 3D space (which you won't in a movie, maybe a 3D platformer videogame but I found that moving the camera and looking for paralaxing like an owl works better and doesn't require fancy TVs, just working camera controls). I've got practically no depth perception though, only for the most extreme cases (the literally in-your-face 3D).

Re:Hrmm

[Anonymous Coward]

There will be no widespread adoption of 3D displays until they get holovision working right.
Stereo vision != 3D, it's just a simulation (tied to silly looking glasses) and thus it will remain a novelty.

Perspective is also 'simulation' of 3D and it doesn't seem to hinder the popularity of visual expression that utilize it.

Heck, any kind of moving picture is a 'simulation' of real people moving and acting.

Re:Hrmm

[mcgrew]

Lord knows she saw around his

It took me a while to get that. Great pun!

Re:Hrmm

[lightningstriketwice]

how will the 3D tv work to create an 3D image with people who have eye sight issues?

Re:Hrmm

[gabebear]

The problem for you is probably that you don't change the depth that you focus for purely stereographic 3D displays. If you try to focus on an object that would be further away the effect is lost.

Computer generated holograms are getting better, but compressing holographic video is still a long way away. http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/31/researchers-develop-a-360-degree-holographic-display/

Re:Hrmm

[coolsnowmen]

Except for those annoying intersections where the lights are horizontal...::grumbles::

It's not 3D

[Omnifarious]

Unless I can move my head to look around something, it's not 3D. If they want to call it 'stereo' TV, that's fine, but it's not 3D.

Re:It's not 3D

[mcgrew]

Yeah, I saw the title and thought "wow, holograms". Instead they have glasses with shutters? Far less practical and realistic-looking than polarized lenses.

I already have a "3D TV" (actually, as you say, stereo), and an old videotape with a "3D" movie. Of course, it's the old red/green stereo technology.

Re:It's not 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously don't work in marketing.

Re:It's not 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless I can move my head to look around something, it's not 3D. If they want to call it 'stereo' TV, that's fine, but it's not 3D.

If the "money shot" makes me duck, I'll consider it 3D.

Re:It's not 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless I can move my head to look around something, it's not 3D. If they want to call it 'stereo' TV, that's fine, but it's not 3D.

The term "3D" predates home computers by decades. Although not technically accurate it's a legitimate marketing term. If you called it "Stereo TV" most people would assume Stereo Sound not picture. The average person wouldn't have a clue what you meant by Stereo Picture but everyone knows what you mean by a 3D picture. Holographic displays have been promised for decades but it's still a long way off from making an appearance in your living room. 3D displays are possible with current technology.

Re:It's not 3D

[elrous0]

The 3D on this TV is so good that not only will the money shot make you duck, it'll give you an STD too.

Re:It's not 3D

[tecnico.hitos]

Correct. This is 3D, by the notable Johnny Lee:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

True 3D involves more than just a screen and glasses, and I doubt it would work for several people. Unless, of course, they can send a different images to different angles or use the glasses as the actual screens.

What we have now is just an illusion of depth. It's not even a new concept, it's just that the glasses aren't colored anymore, and became way more expensive.

I understand "active shutter" is a different execution of the concept, but it has been done already and did not become popular. It's too gimmicky...

Re:It's not 3D

[Aladrin]

With a decent 3D display and the video cameras they are now pushing for consoles, a single-player experience really -could- be 3D. I'm talking about the Johnny Lee demo where he moves around and the camera tracks his head, changing the angle of everything on the TV.

With a really, really good 3D display they could do it for multiple players. But I don't really see that happening any time soon.

Re:It's not 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

When the hell is the money shot ever directed towards the one filming?

Re:It's not 3D

[GameMaster]

Actually, it works just fine. They use a similar technique in the new 3d projectors theaters have been installing for movies like James Cameron's Avatar. They use passively polarized glasses instead of the active shutter glasses in this article, but it's the same basic effect. They wouldn't be wasting the money to install them if a significant portion of the population wasn't capable of seeing the effect.

Of course, for dynamic content like video games, you could increase the effect dramatically by pairing it with head tracking technology like that demonstrated by Johnny Lee. In fact, there's even an Open Source project called FreeTrack that uses standard webcams and simple LED circuits to do exactly that at extremely low costs. They've had a stable release version out for a while now.

Re:It's not 3D

[Lord Ender]

Wrong. Depth is the third "D", and this tech provides depth perception.

Re:It's not 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

In 3D porn.

(Seriously. I have such a video.)

Re:It's not 3D

[clone53421]

That would be stupid for a TV anyway. Everyone in the room would see a different angle of the broadcast.

Re:It's not 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you can do both. Just because someone comes up with something cool, doesn't mean you can't call them on their bullshit.

Re:It's not 3D

[erko]

For multiple tracked stereo views, the really good display would need much higher refresh rates and specialized emitters and glasses.
Multiple tracked people seeing their own tracked view would divide the refresh rate in half for each extra person. For example, two persons' view (with 2 stereo eyes each) requires four images. A 120Hz refresh divided by four only appears as 30Hz. Maybe having two views is reasonable, but more than that is not likely (there are limits to eye and glasses refresh rates).

Re:It's not 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever see the Russian 3D holographic movies from the 80's?

Re:It's not 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

even if u look stright it is 3d u dont have to move ur head(define 3d

Re:It's not 3D

[Omnifarious]

They are possible with current technology. Everybody just has to have a location sensor in the glasses and the glasses have to be high-res displays of their own.

Now, getting 3D of a live broadcast would be really tricky and likely impossible with current technology. There are algorithms for building 3D models of things from a bunch of pictures, but I don't think they can be done on the fly, much less a technology for the model data to be transmitted and updated real time.

Re:It's not 3D

[Omnifarious]

Just give each pair of glasses its own PS3 and have them network together to keep the model of the world they're displaying updated.

Re:It's not 3D

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Unless I can move my head to look around something, it's not 3D. If they want to call it 'stereo' TV, that's fine, but it's not 3D.

We already have 'stereo' TV. Call this a 3D TV and call what you're describing 'volumetric'.

Re:It's not 3D

[Aladrin]

I did say 'really, really good', didn't I?

Anyhow, that assumes current technology, anyhow. Until recently, we didn't have 3D TVs at all. (Yes, we had some harder on PCs that emulated it with a CRT, but that's not -quite- the same as having it built in. And some of the new TVs don't require shutter glasses, either.)

Re:It's not 3D

[erko]

I didn't say you were wrong.
The (active) stereo glasses are nice, especially with head tracking. It generally gives a good 3D experience.
The autostereo (no glasses) approach is a good idea, but I haven't heard of great experiences with them yet. They will probably eventually be more useful.

Re:It's not 3D

[erko]

That is a good idea. It's not quite the same experience as viewing them on the same display, where both people could point at the same object in the same 3D location in front of them.

Re:It's not 3D

[Omnifarious]

If you had some kind of tracking of people's movements in the room you could have their hands show up on the display. Of course there would be minor discrepancies in the exact position of their hands and that might become interesting if people's hands touch.

I wonder if people's brains would just adjust, or if it would completely freak them out? I know people can react very strangely to mirror images of hands set up to be in a similar position to their actual hand.

Re:It's not 3D

[Anenome]

What you want is Johnny Lee-style head-tracking. Watch this and be amazed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

Re:It's not 3D

[Omnifarious]

That is what I want, and it's really impressive. :-)

Re:It's not 3D

[Anenome]

That tech will end up on one of the next generation console systems, and perhaps soon after on PC.

Johnny Lee was actually hired by Microsoft recently for their Xbox divions, so it's more than likely that Mr. Lee is working on this system to exploit his software and techniques for the next Xbox :)

With head-tracking and circular-polarization, true 3D is completely possible. Too bad circular polarization is very difficult to pull off. Although, I suppose it would work for a rear-projection screen TV? Doubt it would work for LCD TV's. To make it work on an LCD, you'd need some way to electrically switch polarization on individual screen elements. It might even require twice the number of pixels for the same screen space, each with a different polarization filter. I'm no expert.

Re:It's not 3D

[Omnifarious]

Sadly, I tend not to do consoles. I'm allergic to DRM. :-( I own a PS/2, and that's my main concession.

Re:It's not 3D

[Anenome]

And if you split a 120hz signal 4 ways, you get a corresponding decrease in emitted light by half as well. So, the screen would appear half as bright for those 2 players than if just one person were viewing.

Yay!

[Quiet_Desperation]

And, of course, there is a industry-wide, agreed upon standard for the 3D encoding and formats, right? Right??

Re:Yay!

[Chrisq]

Yes .... Blueray 3D and HD 3D!

Re:Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

C'mon, of course there is. This is Sony we're talking about, after all.

Re:Yay!

[Rolgar]

If their machine works, and wins the format war, it will BECOME the industry standard, and everyone will have to license the right to use their formats.

Thing is, I don't want a 3D TV. I want my 2d setup until we get holographic 3D that you can move around and choose your own perspective.

Re:Yay!

[dubbreak]

Excellent point. Sony doesn't have a good history with the industry adopting their formats or standards (e.g. beta, minidisc, ATRAC).

Personally I'll be waiting for the open standard not invented by Sony.

Re:Yay!

[elrous0]

The industry wide standard for Sony is whatever flaky new proprietary format Sony happens to be behind at the moment.

Re:Yay!

[clone53421]

holographic 3D that you can move around and choose your own perspective.

Producers would probably hate that. They're trying to perfect the angle of the shot, but only one person can actually see it from that angle because you have to be in the exact middle of the viewing area in order to see it. Plus, any sort of distance shot would be un-viewable from anywhere significantly off-center because the target of the scene would be out of the picture at that angle. They'd have to move it into the foreground, spoiling the distance effect.

Re:Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, to avoid developing rival formats and confuse the market for 5 years, they adopted the existing free, open-source solution like they always do... ;)

Re:Yay!

[Yvan256]

So, is it Memory3D or 3Dstick? Or 3DStickPro? Or... (list goes on and on)

Re:Yay!

[Yvan256]

You forgot their dozens of types of Memory Stick. I'm not sure but I think that all their Memory Stick types are more numerous than all the other flash memory types combined (SmartMedia, SD, CompactFlash, xD).

And yes xD is completely stupid, not only for the fact that there was already many formats of Flash media types on the market, but especially for the fact that they have both "regular" and "widescreen" memory cards.

Re:Yay!

[Narishma]

Counter examples: 3.5" floppy disc, compact disc, trinitron, bluray.

Re:Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, that's the first thing I thought of, when I saw the word "Sony." It isn't going to work with anything else. If someone else were introducing it, there might be hope that it would at least be a proposed standard, or a defacto standard that a lot of vendors end up using. But it's Sony, which means it is already a dead end. Like the iPhone, it's a technological demo, perhaps even a nifty and inspiring one, but not a usable product.

Let's hope there aren't too many patents preventing the technology from advancing, so that we don't have to wait 20 years for the real deal to become available.

Re:Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

3D, huh? Gives new meaning to the term "Boob Tube"...

Heh Heh

Re:Yay!

[b4dc0d3r]

Probably doesn't matter, since the video gets encoded, not the 3D. Current technology could generate a picture from over/under or side by side frames, (1080P, normally 1920x1080, would actually be two images @ 1920x540 or 960x1080 and the images stretched to fit). With a few tweaks it could take interleaved video (1920x1080 3D would mean one frame is 1920x2160 and split as above, only this time not requiring stretching).

I don't see a need for a standard as long as it's not obfuscated in some way - the logic can take care of it.

Of course, side-by-side (with the left eye image on the right) would allow either cross-eyed viewing or translation to a 3D display. Lower res, more use cases. Interleaved or over/under would require split-screen (or discarding one eye to make it 2D).

Re:Yay!

[dubbreak]

Compact disc: sony originally had their own standard and phillips had their own.. ended up being a combined effort.

3.5" floppy: The adopted version (mass produced and used) was a variant of the sony 90.0 mm X 94.0 mm disk. The sony design was not adopted.

bluray: Sony started the spec but it was a collaboration between many companies.

trinitron: did anyone actually license that technology? Yeah sony sold a lot of trinitron tvs, but was it a common adopted standard or did people wait for the patent to expire to use it? Also it isn't a technology that has to be compatible... like any 2d tv you just use your eyes and it takes a normal NTSC/PAL signal.. the 3D tv won't be the same case (specific glasses and programming material).

Re:Yay!

[93 Escort Wagon]

Not to mention 3D-R, 3D+R, and 3D-ROM.

Re:Yay!

[commodore64_love]

PS1 and PS2 can also be considered a "format" because you could not play the games without the player, each of which sold ~110 and ~150 million units... more than any other console. (The next best-selling console was Super Nintendo at 60 million.)

And then there's Umatic and Betacam, which were THE standards used by professionals. When you watch an old 70s, 80s, or 90s show you're probably watching Sony Umatic or Betacam. Although both these analog formats have been phased-out, Sony still produces DigiBetacam for capturing SD and HDTV.

Re:Yay!

[commodore64_love]

>>>bluray: Sony started the spec but it was a collaboration between many companies.

By that logic, no company has successfully "won" with their spec... not even JVC (VHS).

Re:Yay!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

And, of course, there is a industry-wide, agreed upon standard for the 3D encoding and formats, right? Right??

It is a work in progress. SMPTE has already defined the requirements, and is working on actual specifications. Sony likes to be proprietary when they can, but I doubt they would ignore a SMPTE standard. They aren't the only manufacturer that's been talking up 3D in 2010.

Re:Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

Producers would probably hate that. They're trying to perfect the angle of the shot, but only one person can actually see it from that angle because you have to be in the exact middle of the viewing area in order to see it. Plus, any sort of distance shot would be un-viewable from anywhere significantly off-center because the target of the scene would be out of the picture at that angle. They'd have to move it into the foreground, spoiling the distance effect.

And can you imagine what a nightmare it would be with Christian Bale on the set?

Re:Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

Holographic 3D would work well for sports though.

Re:Yay!

[penguinchris]

It would be a gimmick in movies (and I assume you mean cinematographers and directors would hate it, not the producer, who probably wouldn't care as long as it drew large audiences) - but it would be interesting and useful for video games and certain other things.

Re:Yay!

[GWBasic]

holographic 3D that you can move around and choose your own perspective.

Producers would probably hate that.

That sounds like the arguments given against recording music in Stereo, or against filming in color. I have a feeling most producers would find the trade-off worth the extra artistic expression; but some will stick with 2-d just like some stuck with mono or black & white.

My TV is already 3d....

[electrosoccertux]

not sure what dimension you guys are living in but my tv has both width, height, AND depth. Already 3d.

Re:My TV is already 3d....

[L4t3r4lu5]

You want one of those modern flat-screen TVs, then.

You know, like this one from e Beam inc.

Re:My TV is already 3d....

[poetmatt]

you mean the ones that have width, height, and less depth?

Re:My TV is already 3d....

[Chris Mattern]

I've been finding that TV has less and less depth for some time now...

Re:My TV is already 3d....

[geekoid]

Apparently you haven't seen the New Samsung ultra-ultra thin TV. Only exists on a 2d plane~

Re:My TV is already 3d....

[bertoelcon]

not sure what dimension you guys are living in but my tv has both width, height, AND depth. Already 3d.

Does it exist in time too? If so then its 4d.

Re:My TV is already 3d....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure which century you're from but the TVs now only have 2D with width and height. Haven't you heard about the new display technology based on strings that's just 1D?

Re:My TV is already 3d....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still waiting for some one to add time to my programming.

How much longer till we get 4D TV?

Re:My TV is already 3d....

[Culture20]

Well said. Of course, that means Sony has developed TVs that exist for the merest fraction of a moment. Imagine the space savings! I could own a TV that exists on the showroom floor at 15:30:31.908 2009-09-02, you could own the TV at 15:30:31.909 2009-09-02, and someone else can own the TV at 19:01:59.910 2009-09-03 that takes up space in my living room! It *seems* like one 4D TV, but it's really an infinite progression of 3D TVs!

A more interesting proposal is that they've developed a TV with height, width, and time, but no depth. That would be awesome.

Re:My TV is already 3d....

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a projector, you insensitive clod.

Re:My TV is already 3d....

[UncleTogie]

It *seems* like one 4D TV, but it's really an infinite progression of 3D TVs!

So it's TVs all the way down now, is it? At least the turtles will have something to watch now!

Have they wondered...

[rodrigoandrade]

> It's another glasses-based technology with "active shutter" being employed.

Great, but I wonder if these companies ever think about people with eyesight problems (yes, talking about myself) who can't properly eperience glass-based 3D movies.

Re:Have they wondered...

[commodore64_love]

What kind of eyesight problems do you have which prevent you from seeing 3D? My father is missing an eye (accident as kid), so he obviously doesn't see three-d but still can enjoy the movie.

aside -

I still have the stereoscope glasses from when I saw Disney's Lost World 3D theatrical movie. Do these things have any monetary value, or should I just toss them?

Re:Have they wondered...

[Chrisq]

I think that cinemas are realising it. A lot of people have difficulty with 3d for one reason or another. When 3d films first arrived there was no choice. Now often there are showings in 3D and showings without. My wife has a lazy eye and 3d looks as though it has a feint shadow image to her and gives her a headache.

Re:Have they wondered...

[Anonymous Coward]

I still have the stereoscope glasses from when I saw Disney's Lost World 3D theatrical movie. Do these things have any monetary value, or should I just toss them?

Go hide them next to wherever you stashed your sense of self-respect and your Eagles LP's.

Re:Have they wondered...

[Drummergeek0]

I have both of my eyes, but due to an alternating strabismus, I have no depth perception making 3D useless. However, the effect you have to wear glasses to get I get from normal TV because that is how everything looks to me anyways.

Re:Have they wondered...

[CrimsonAvenger]

> It's another glasses-based technology with "active shutter" being employed.

Great, but I wonder if these companies ever think about people with eyesight problems (yes, talking about myself) who can't properly eperience glass-based 3D movies.

No, what they're thinking is "we can sell a pair of glasses to EVERY VIEWER!! They won't be able to just invite the neighbors over to watch the game on their 82" TV, now the neighbors will have to buy their own 82" TV! Or buy a pair of our entirely reasonably priced 3D glasses for only $249.99 each..."

Re:Have they wondered...

[geekoid]

Of course they do, but 3d movies [pack people in, so people like you are a tiny demographic.
If this is l;ike the demo I say, it will be an option built into the screen and firmware, not the only way to look at the screens.

Re:Have they wondered...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you do not have working binocular vision, then you cannot see in 3d without technology far more advanced than what is being proposed here. Beethoven wrote music that he could not hear since he knew it would be beautiful for those who could, who knows what he'd do today.

Re:Have they wondered...

[Aladrin]

They also don't worry about blind people being able to see, or deaf people being able to hear. You aren't the target audience and your disability doesn't prevent you from playing the game.

Re:Have they wondered...

[clone53421]

the effect you have to wear glasses to get I get from normal TV because that is how everything looks to me anyways.

No, you just never get the effect...

Re:Have they wondered...

[Dr_Barnowl]

Shutter based solutions should be equally viewable by people who are visually impaired all the way up to blind in one eye.

Ok, they only get the 2D experience. But that's all they would have got anyway, if their binocular vision is impaired.

Anaglyphic 3D would look crap to the monocular, but shutter and polarised 3D should look almost as good as the equivalent 2D presentation.

Re:Have they wondered...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Great, but I wonder if these companies ever think about people with eyesight problems (yes, talking about myself) who can't properly eperience glass-based 3D movies.

What if Henry Ford and his ilk had decided that it wasn't worth trying to get the automobile to the masses because some people don't have legs or arms?

Re:Have they wondered...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait till your blu-ray disc is licensed for only 2 viewers .. but of course there will be an option at the start of the movie to buy additional licences for 4.99 each for the next 24 hours.

Re:Have they wondered...

[93 Escort Wagon]

Great, but I wonder if these companies ever think about people with eyesight problems (yes, talking about myself) who can't properly eperience glass-based 3D movies.

Based on the responses I see here to comments such as yours, a lot of people are blissfully unaware that some of us have limited-to-no depth perception.

I'm one of those people, being born with strabismus. Though the eye problem was eventually (mostly) corrected with surgery, it happened too late for my brain to develop a true ability to perceive depth cues. As I understand it, that has to happen within the first 5 years of life, more or less. The brain learns to compensate, of course - I can catch a ball, can judge distance based on size, etc. - but my eyes don't really work together, so to speak (no, not like a chameleon; but that'd be sorta cool). At any time I'm seeing basically with either one eye or the other - not both.

Re:Have they wondered...

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife has a lazy eye and 3d looks as though it has a feint shadow image to her and gives her a headache.

well my wife has a lazy ass and everything looks like cake to her and makes her hungry.

Re:Have they wondered...

[Jared555]

The annoyance is paying extra money to see something you not only get no benefit from but actually degrades the quality of the picture. (they still haven't perfected the glasses)

I know people with full vision that prefer to watch the films in 2D (a few of them actually work at the theater so it isn't just the cost factor)

And regarding deaf people, they do have the assisted listening and some theaters will project some shows with closed captioning.

Re:Have they wondered...

[MrBandersnatch]

and gives her a headache

She used THAT old line and you bought it?

Seriously though, 3D gives me a headache too and I'm betting theres a significant percentage of people who cant view 3D for any great length of time. Apart from the lack of material I think thats going to be the main reason for this technology being a flop.

Re:Have they wondered...

[Hatta]

If I go to a 3d movie and close one eye, it looks fine. 2d of course, but fine. Why do you have a problem with it?

Unless Avatar changes my mind...

[kieran]

... I'm not much interested in 3D until the glasses ARE the display, to be honest. Should be great if you're doing 3D design though.

Re:Unless Avatar changes my mind...

[RiotingPacifist]

TBH, i don't mind wearing 3d glasses (they will help by stopping me looking elsewhere), my real problem is that so far 3d is used as a gimmick. If taken seriously:
*most content would be as good (although on a slightly smaller screen and with the hassle of putting on the glasses)
*some content will look slightly worse as the director looses some of the control of where you look
*some content will look slightly better as 3d aspects matter (sports,wildlife,news,etc)
*some content will look amazing as it can use new techniques (the same way that sin city actually uses the medium of file as compared to just telling a story on it, the same can be done on 3d)

Glasses? Nah...

[Arrawa]

I refuse sitting in my living room wearing those nasty 3D-glasses. I'll wait untill Philips opens up its WOWvx department again. I've seen this live and my initial reaction was, well, WOW!

Re:Glasses? Nah...

[Arthur B.]

Hum, WOW. I've seen one viewer stereo TV, but here they claim multiple viewers + some foreground against background parralax. Do you know what's the tech behind it ?

Re:Glasses? Nah...

[TheRaven64]

Have you ever been to a science museum and seen the demo where they have a large concave darkened reflective surface, so it looks like you can shake hands with yourself? The basic idea is the same, but rather than reflecting light, each point on the surface emits light and you see a different subset of the pixels depending on where you are standing. Unlike glasses-based approaches, it supports multiple viewers and doesn't cause motion sickness when you move your head.

Re:Glasses? Nah...

[Arthur B.]

Hum I know the trick when you put a small object close to the focal point of a concave mirror and you see it appear somewhere else but you're starting with a 3d object in the first place here... how do they create the image ?

Re:Glasses? Nah...

[Zerth]

Lenticular overlay. They add a grayscale heightmap to the video stream to adjust the displacement.

Re:Glasses? Nah...

[enriquevagu]

Every pixel in the image is actually divided into 9 "light sources". These 9 "points" are in a convex (or is it concave) line, so they target different locations in front of the TV. A micro-lenses system makes that only one point on each group is seen at a time from a given angle, and the viewed point depends on the horizontal viewing angle. With such mechanism, our two eyes receive different information (from different pixels in each group of 9) and there you get the 3D effect.

drawbacks? you need to be at a given distance (too far and both eyes get the same image), you cannot lie down on your side watching 3D TV... But you don't need any silly glasses!

Re:Glasses? Nah...

[Arrawa]

True, you have to be in a certain area. But this can be quite large. When I viewed a demo on the IBC, at least twenty people were inside the 'zone'. All were 'Wowed ' :-)

Re:Glasses? Nah...

[Anonymous Coward]

You do not need to have special glasses for this TV, just blink your eyes very fast - with multiplexing.

Re:Glasses? Nah...

[Finite9]

me too. I can't see *that* many people wanting to wear 3D glasses in the long run. Cool for the first two times then tiring. What happens when you get 10 friends to come over to watch the football, or the entire family wants to watch a film? 6 people wearing goggles? I don't think that will take off anytime soon. Im aware of the fact that 6 people sitting around a TV all silently watching a movie in their own little bubble could be seen as strange--in some families or cultures, terrestrial or otherwise--as 6 people sitting around a TV wearing goggles, but I think it's got to go through the social acceptance challenge first.

Not 3d

[Arthur B.]

Hum, where did I put my pedant hat... hum not here, not here... ah there we go. Hum hum

That's stereoscopic television, not 3d TV. I personally don't enjoy that much stereoscopic images, they don't look really believable to me. Stereoscopy is only one way we build a 3d model of our environment, the parallax created by our recent movements creates an accurate map too. Sure if you lose an eye, you'll have much poorer depth perception, but you won't lose it all. If you cover one eye, the world outside doesn't start looking like a TV image immediately... if you stay still for a long time it will, because you forget the parallax information you gathered.

Look at the wii headtracking videos on youtube... even though you're looking at a video of a guy simulating 3d on a video screen, it'll look 3d.

A real 3d TV would be holographic... it's waaay more complicated to make than movies this way. Rendering 3d animation in holographic format is doable but would require much more memory and rendering capabilities on the playback machine. The device is also much more complicated to build, but with 3 colored laser and a dlp system fine enough to change the phase of each pixel, it's doable.

To the point... where's my holographic tv!!

Sky TV sets or LSD?

[NSN A392-99-964-5927]

There was another /. comment regarding Sky doing this and attempting to lock you in to fake high definition 3D TV sets you can buy for a few thousand next year. 3D TV of the future is Hologram's The idea's are there, but you cannot do it right now and it certainly is not profitable. These ideas' have been floating around since the 1870's with stereo vision cards and glasses/lenses/photographs/viewers 3D is not new and is an alterted perception. Maybe dropping a few LSD tablets would be acceptable to be 3D. Thankfully I to see things without distortion :)

Re:Sky TV sets or LSD?

[mcgrew]

I'm sorry, but your post annoyed me so much I'm going to have to give you an Unwanted education. I hope English isn't your native language.

Re:Sky TV sets or LSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope English isn't your native language.

You're hoping his problem is ESL, I'm guessing his problem is LSD...

details that were omitted

[jjeffries]

The Sony 3D TV will only play back Beta tapes and DRM-ed content off Memory Sticks(TM), and it will install a rootkit on every device in your house before committing seppuku.

Re:details that were omitted

[Anonymous Coward]

what!?

no Blu ray? stingy bar stewards.

Re:details that were omitted

[mnky-33]

Actually Sony is one of the few companies which have changed their ways. Most of their tech is fairly open and compatible, they've got better since the rootkit fiasco.

Re:details that were omitted

[Anonymous Coward]

Words are very cheap, like your employer knows.

Re:details that were omitted

[Anonymous Coward]

stupid fuck...
still hanging onto rootkit???
DE

this is to slow you form copying and recording

[Anonymous Coward]

thats all end of storey and remember the SONY ROOTKIT

Polarized will always win - iz3d

[b4dc0d3r]

http://www.iz3d.com/ is glasses-based, but it's polarized light instead of shutters. I think motion sickness is a bigger risk with shuttered glasses. Polarized light looks better, feels better, and costs $300.

I want one of these :)

Re:Polarized will always win - iz3d

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sony TVs also used polarized glasses, they DO NOT use shutter glasses.

It was demoed by ArsTechnica at this years CES
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/01/ces-2009-sony-teases-with-high-quality-ps3-3d.ars

In Amerika, TV reasons for you!

[Anonymous Coward]

In the technotronic society the trend would seem to be towards the aggregation of the individual support of millions of uncoordinated citizens, easily within the reach of magnetic and attractive personalities effectively exploiting the latest communications techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason."

-Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1970, Between Two Ages : America's Role in the Technetronic Era

Projectors?

[goombah99]

What I don't understand is why we are not seeing cheap 3d for projectors using polarized glasses. It would take less than $20 worth of parts to take a standard projector and make it a 3d projector. Just replace the spinning color wheel on the projector with one that has the same colors twice with different polarizers on each side.

This cheapo solution of course lowers the luminance and requires either a slower color wheel or twice the frame rate on the DLP. for a little more money you could even recapture the lost luminance, but it would be simpler to use a brighter bulb. Neither of those are serious issues because projector luminance has more than doubled for the same price in the last few years, and so have color wheel speeds, so it's a tiny degredadation to use 3-d mode. Moreover it's demostrably tolerable to viewers since there are people who sell retrofits for projectors (that go over the front of the lens) that do exactly that. But the retrofit approach is expensive compared to just changing out the color wheel.

The question then is how do you drive it but that's all a software issue.

Re:Projectors?

[Snowspinner]

Because you need a screen that will reflect the light back in a polarized fashion. In film terms, you're talking about a screen with silver crystals in it for reflectivity. But those screens are enormously fragile - which is part of why 3-D keeps flopping over in theaters - if one person throws their drink at the screen, or even touches it, the screen is wrecked for good and needs to be replaced.

That's not technology suitable for home usage. Which is why home systems have always been based on field sequential systems of 3-D.

Re:Projectors?

[FooAtWFU]

Wow. What idiots populate your local theater such that "throwing their drink at the screen" is a serious problem to worry about?

Re:Projectors?

[TexVex]

I personally can't stand shutter glasses. My vision is very sensitive to flicker. It's not a matter of refresh rate but one of how much time is spent in blackness between frames; 3D necessitates a relatively long blanking of each eye.

Theater screens using circular polarization work extremely well. The glasses are super cheap and do not require electronics. Without needing to black out the image to each eye for half of each frame, my personal flicker issues are avoided. The circular polarization allows the viewer to tilt his head off horizontal and not mess up the 3D effect. It seems to me that circular polarization is a clear winner over shutter glasses. What is the potential of circularly polarized 3D LCD displays?

Also, what about DLP? I have great love for my DLP TV, and would be very much interested in a 3D DLP display. Does the screen screw up polarization there as well, and would one that could preserve the polarization suffer from the fragility you speak of?

Re:Projectors?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the light of the lamp is higly diverging, multi-color and totally out of phase (ie. it is not lasing) the 'cohorence' length of the light is far shorter then the distance from the projector to the screen.

In other terms: by the time the light from your projecter reaches the screen it is no longer polarized.

for coherence see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherent_light

Re:Projectors?

[goombah99]

Even white paint retains 50-90% polarization on reflection depending on the angle.

Re:Projectors?

[StikyPad]

Except that it's hard to polarize a projection when the polarization filter is rotating. At best, it would happen so fast that instead of seeing varying intensities over the duration of each frame, you'd instead have significant bleeding of each left/right image into the other, making the glasses all but useless.

But any 3D technology that requires glasses is a gimmick. They're fine for using for a couple of hours, a couple of times a year when you take the kids to the cinema, but in everyday use they'd get dirty/lost/scratched/broken, and they preclude casual viewing. FFS, people watch TV to be lazy, not because they want to do chores. Additionally, you'll have to buy 3D-specific recordings, which will probably end up being in some crazy nonstandard format that costs more, isn't available from most vendors, and only has a handful of titles.

If/when holographic projection becomes possible at an affordable price, then maybe, maybe casual 3D would make sense. Until then, my prediction is that 3D TVs will be no more popular than shuttered glassses and VR helms for 3D gaming.

Re:Projectors?

[LionMage]

This explanation doesn't pass the smell test for me. 3D projection in movie theaters most certainly does not require laser light sources or anything approaching them, and the projectors involved have simple circular polarization filters these days. My local theaters all have at least one screen apiece which can project 3D films, and these same screens can be repurposed at will to project conventional 2D films. The optics are not as exotic as you seem to be making them out to be.

The article you cite clearly indicates that white light always has a short coherence length, such that it is generally referred to as incoherent. If your argument were correct, it would apply equally well to a movie theater 3D projection system that relies on polarization (the vast majority of modern systems now), not just the GP's notion of a DLP projector using a color wheel with polarizers and double the colors.

Re:Projectors?

[Physics Dude]

Except that it's hard to polarize a projection when the polarization filter is rotating.

Ever heard of circular polarization filters? Orientation is NOT an issue. :)

Re:Projectors?

[goombah99]

your explanation is not even wrong. It's incoherent.

Re:Projectors?

[goombah99]

As long as the wheel is big compared to the light diameter, the change in angle of the moving wheel should be not a concern.

And the same system will work for 2 ans 3d movies so it's not a special purpose machine.

Re:Projectors?

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply replacing the color wheel is not the only change. You will also need to double the refresh rate of the LCD in the projector to provide the normal 60Hz for each eye. This is very expensive, and the main reason what you suggest is not done. To properly do 3D on a CRT monitor, you need one that can handle 120Hz refresh rate, which is much higher than what most consumer devices can handle. Some LCDs can do this, but certainly not all.

Re:Projectors?

[StikyPad]

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that circular polarization filters create circularly polarized light, which is not useful for 3D glasses.

Re:Projectors?

[StikyPad]

1) But they're NOT big relative to the light source. Moreover, inaccuracies will be greatly amplified between the wheel filter and the projection surface, and the projection surface IS the light source for the viewer.

I don't know about some of the newer color wheels (and color wheels have been largely phased out in favor of colored LED light sources for DLP anyway) BUT the older wheels were 4-segment: Red, Green, Blue, and White, and each color is projected throughout the duration of the rotation for each color. With 4 segments, that's 90 degrees of rotation, which is completely worthless. Even if you double the number to 8 segments, that's 45 degrees of rotation.

And finally, a sanity check: if it were as easy as putting filters on a wheel, don't you think the cinemas would use that instead of forking out the cash for two separate synchronized projectors?

This idea is the equivalent of those hokey "big screen TV via Fresnel lens" projects. It might work, but it won't work well, and people almost certainly aren't going to pay money for it.

--

2) What I meant wasn't that people would need a separate TV for 2D, just that I don't see this taking off. In order for movies to be released in a new format, you need a large audience, but you won't get a large audience unless you release lots of movies in the new format. It's exactly what happens to Sony over and over with their proprietary media formats. Every once in a while they catch a lucky break, like with BluRay, but they have a lot of MiniDiscs and Memory Sticks in their portfolio as well.

Re:Projectors?

[mattack2]

Maybe they're all Rocky Horror Picture Show fans?

(ok, I don't actually know if that's done in the participation, but I know they throw food & I think squirt water guns.)

Re:Projectors?

[goombah99]

Sure that would have problems but no one would do it that way. You'd have the light going through a small sector of a few degrees on the color wheel. the polarizor would be segmented too so that it was always nearly perpendicular over the 2 degree light aperature.

Re:Projectors?

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung has had 3D-capable DLP sets for a while.
http://pages.samsung.com/us/dlp3d/index.html

Re:Projectors?

[cowtamer]

No, the screen does not screw up the polarization in a 3D DLP TV. It is an active shutter glass technology, but also some of the best 3D I've ever seen (reference: Samsung 120 Hz DLP TV with NuVision cinema glasses).

If you like passive, try passive-polarized monitors (Arisawa P240W, Zalman Trimon, etc. Some of them suffer from parallax issues where there is a "sweet spot" for viewing, even with glasses, but otherwise the glasses are cheap and the 3D is good). They are also very easy to drive (interlaced stereo input)

Re:Projectors?

[Rocketship Underpant]

I suspect you need to do a lot better than even 90%, otherwise both eyes see both images and you get double vision.

Re:Projectors?

[Hal_Porter]

Actually Circular polarization works better than linear polarization because the viewers can tilt their heads without seeing a mix of the left and right images

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscopy#Circularly_polarized_glasses

Re:Projectors?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your DLP TV can do stereo 3D, but unfortunately for you it requires shutter glasses. If it has a mini-din3 connector on the back you can feed it checkerboard-interlaced image pairs through HDMI and it will handle all the frame-sequential flipping and output a sync pulse through the din3 port. The wireless shutter glasses from tridef.com will work with it.

Actually it can be

[goombah99]

Unless I can move my head to look around something, it's not 3D. If they want to call it 'stereo' TV, that's fine, but it's not 3D.

Well even a hologram goes away when you move past the film. What you mean is you want the image to change depending on your position in the room up to a point (where you are behind the hologram).

And indeed some TVs can do this. the ones with linticular lenses in principle can offer different views to different parts of the room. the stero headsets however don't.

Why binocular "stereo" approaches WILL fail

[jeffb (2.718)]

This tech will fail because simply sending two image streams isn't good enough -- it encodes assumptions about eye spacing, viewing distance and angle that are too restrictive. People aren't going to jump for a system that shows you a distorted and headache-inducing scene if you aren't sitting precisely in front of the center of the screen.

I've tried out a more sophisticated system that generates five points of view (from a 3D model) and fans them out with optics that don't require glasses. This greatly reduces the viewing-angle problem -- but it STILL sucks, because shifting between discrete views as you move your head is too disorienting, and because with current tech generating five views reduces your resolution by a factor of 5.

Real 3D won't dominate until it's being fed to a head-mounted display (or the equivalent), and/or we're shipping true 3D data (not just two fixed viewpoints).

True Volumetric Displays

[RevWaldo]

Will we ever have that trope of nearly every near-future sci-fi story - the true volumetric display with an image that appears in midair like a living statue made out light, no eyeglasses, panes of glass, contact lenses, volatile gases, or brain implants required? Is there anything in the labs today that make this a true definitely-maybe-keep-your-hopes-up-sure-to-have-it-twenty-years-from-now technology, like fusion reactors?

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope!

Re:True Volumetric Displays

[jeffb (2.718)]

No, not really. Photons have to come from somewhere, and they travel in straight lines unless they're diffracted, refracted or reflected. For holograms, you've got to have a panel either in front of or behind the virtual image. Same thing for "3D TV", either with or without glasses. You can focus enough laser power to make the air itself go nonlinear and emit or reflect light, but lasers at that power level entail, shall we say, certain risks. And at that point, you could argue that the air has become a "volatile gas".

So, sorry, no hologram projectors that shoot a three-foot 3D image into midair from a little lens.

Re:True Volumetric Displays

[ledow]

You can do some tricks with curved mirrors (like some arcade games from the 80's did with FMV) but in general, no. There's got to be something to "bounce" the light off to start it heading towards your eye. Possibly a light fog would make it "possible" but the practicalities behind getting a controlled, smooth fog to hover in mid-air aren't worth the effort.

You will always (at least with current tech) be required to sit in a certain viewing angle, to look at a certain device and for that device to be tailored to you (eye-distance, viewing-distance, flicker tolerance, etc.) to achieve perfectly convincing 3D. That's why it's never taken off despite being around for *decades*.

Re:True Volumetric Displays

[RevWaldo]

Possibly a light fog would make it "possible" but the practicalities behind getting a controlled, smooth fog to hover in mid-air aren't worth the effort.

The one possible way that occurred to me would be a cloud of nanomolecular real-life "voxels" that self-assemble into a three-dimensional grid, drawing power and image data inductively. The image would be generated by the cloud itself and not from a projection. (Whether such a thing would be physically possible is another question though.)

The technology is all fine and dandy...

[shock1970]

but until they create a COMFORTABLE set of glasses that can rest on my face, there's no fricken way I'm buying into any of it!

DLP has had "3d" for years

[falzbro]

DLP has had 3d for a long time. I think my TV has it. This is an interesting trick. Other than that, no one cares.

Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, Acid has made my TV 3d for years. And it only cost $5!

All I can say is...

[Anonymous Coward]

W007z0R 4 Xtreme Pronz!

Program support?

[kheldan]

And who exactly is going to be creating programming to watch on these so-called 3DTV's? Anyone? Bueller? Will I be able to watch Mythbusters in 3D this fall? Next fall? Fall of 2020 even?

Re:Program support?

[JasterBobaMereel]

No it will be like the Current HDTV, a small number of the most popular programs, in 3D at extra cost, with no new content at all ...

What is the point, the program on a small screen, on a large screen, on and HDTV, in Steroscopic 3D all look basically the same to me, and in most cases the program itself is so badly written and acted it is not worth watching ....

Re:Program support?

[micromuncher]

You don't have to do custom programming; you can use a modification of edge detection to generate a texture map; effectively same color at different luminosity would drive the topology mapping.

Do we really need Rootkit mentioned

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? I know it's good LOLZ for a lot of you, but in what way does the Electronics arm of Sony have to do with Sony's music department? And in what way does it relate to something that happened a good number of years ago??

I think I'm going to start mentioning the fact Nintendo killed the GameGenie by suing them into oblivion. Because apparently WE CANT LET THINGS GO. I mean sure it happened before a lot of people were probably born here, but it's still relevant, right?

I think my samsung does this.

[Lectoid]

My samsung LED DLP tv I bought over a year ago has a 3D feature that you use with an additional component. I'm not sure about the details, but here is the site that explains it

http://www.dlp.com/hdtv/3-d_dlp_hdtv.aspx

I hope this isn't another proprietary thing where you have to have all Sony equipment.

Re:I think my samsung does this.

[supermegadope]

I have that in a 61" and remembered hearing about its 3D capabilities. Have you ever seen it in action?

Re:I think my samsung does this.

[Lectoid]

No, I didn't want to buy the equipment and get screwed again like I did with HD-DVD (I know there's still a market for that, but still)

PS3 games in 3D

[smooth123]

Cant wait to play games on the PS3 in 3D, now that PS3 the PS3 motion controller is due in 2010 as well. Will I ever get out and play again. Looks like I have to go on the hunt for a stronger couch.

Do not want flicker

[Animats]

We finally get displays which have no flicker whatsoever, and now these people want to put it back in. Do not want.

Hollywood still thinks 24 FPS is good enough. Many home screens are now capable of delivering much better frame rates. The day is close when "direct to disk" will be better than theater quality. Video games may get there first.

Re:Do not want flicker

[Jared555]

Depending on the method of projection, 3D may run 6 times (or more) the frame rate of the original source picture. It will alternate between the left and right side showing each 3 times for every frame so you end up with 144 frames per second. This is actually the primary reason theaters charge more for 3D movies as projection costs are higher.

how about 4D?

[Anonymous Coward]

My TV is already is already 4D, it has WxHxD and lots of wasted time!

Interesting Historical Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA, if you replace "3D" with "Color television" you get an article similar to what you may have seen half a century ago (ignoring the company names):

"[Color television] technology looks set to hit the home consumer market next year, with Sony today announcing plans to sell [Color] televisions globally by the end of next year.

Sony's decision to throw its weight behind the technology will be an important boost for the [Color television] industry, which has so far focused mainly on cinemas."

Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

Most professional video is recorded on Beta tapes, you insensitive clod.

Among the formats:

Betacam
Betacam SP
Betacam SX
Digibeta

And though they don't share the same name, HDCam and HDCam SR are also "beta" formats.

I want my Paycheck-style 3D TV

[youn]

Seriously, am I the only one who read the article and thought... oh nice, at last a major TV innovatio, it is really going to change... thinking of the 3D TV in the movie paycheck.... then, when they realized it was another 3D glasses version, yawned... lemme guess, they're going to commercialize it, make it terribly expensive, no one will buy them... and they'll wonder why so they'll blame the economy or voodoo forces if need be.

Wait until Rupert Murdoch buys old film rights :)

[timothy]

Casablanca ... now in color, 3D, and animated!

Judgment at Nurenberg -- with a whole new laughtrack!

Tron: Nearly as 3D as before!

timothy

Like trying to

[Anonymous Coward]

describe color to a blind person, or sound to someone born deaf. How can you describe depth to someone who can't see it ?

Re:Like trying to

[VanessaE]

See Mask. There's a scene there which fits this quite well: The main protagonist, "Rocky", is asked by his blind friend to describe what vision is like. As I recall, he's stuck for an answer at first, but later figures out an anology: he has her hold a rock that's been heated. She finds it too hot to handle, of course, and he describes this as "red". Similarly, he uses "blue" for a rock that had been chilled, and "green" for a rock that was lukewarm. While there are certainly limits to this, I'm sure people can come up with ways to extend this sort of "tactile" description, since there are three other classes of senses one can draw on.

Re:Like trying to

[garompeta]

Easy, give them some LSD and turn the music on!

Bloody stupid glasses

[SiliconSeraph]

I guess they're not marketing to those of us who just dislike the idea of bloody stupid glasses becoming a mainstream item. It's a disturbing trend.

Re:Bloody stupid glasses

[Jared555]

They will just create a new market for creating 'cool' looking glasses. Part of the reason the ones at theaters look like crap is because they are trying to make them for as little money as possible because they only have to last 2-3 hours.

you need to change your sig, hog

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey you wanna cool it now with the slagging off of the Castros? thanks, mate.

Re:you need to change your sig, hog

[Hognoxious]

Who died and made you king? I mean, who became ill and made you president?

Anyway, unlike Cuba we have freedom of speech so here's a big fat fuck you.

Perhaps if you logged in you could use the option to hide sigs rather than giving orders you can't enforce.

Re:you need to change your sig, hog

[geekgirlandrea]

Wow, AC on Slashdot is a big step down from dictator. Fidel must not be holding up too well in retirement.

Screw That

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not putting on special glasses to watch TV. Also, what am I going to watch, the meager and uninteresting handful of 3-D films out there on DVD and BluRay? Spy Kids? My Boody Valentine 3D? No thanks.

Ralph Kramden can buy one now

[PingXao]

That was his excuse for not buying a TV for his wife back in the '50s. He was waiting for 3D TV. Of course, he's dead now, and that should be a lesson to tech buyers who put off their purchases thinking it will be cheaper and better next year. OK, so maybe the days of "better" are over, but it will almost definitely be cheaper.

Boo sony!

[chucklebutte]

Well its sony so boo them evil bastards! Back to topic, I wear glasses, I CANT wear contacts (even though i wish i could) am I boned? idk why but ever since i was a kid i have not been able to put in eye drops or contacts im 27 now still cant do either. My eye just shuts up and it wont open aslong as something is near it. The worst is when i get some chemical in there or soap... i cant wash it out cant open my eyes in the water.... and isnt 3D a thing from the 70's and 80's? here is an idea want to get people watching more? kill reality tv (cause its faker than a soap opera) and get some real content on the airwaves worth watching. I know how easy it is to scrape 10 b and c list actors/actresses together put them on a cheesy set for the reenactments of what they "supposedly" did that day slap a rubber stamp that says this is real on there, offer up 1mil for prize money and shoot this shit and spam up my airwaves with it! I get it, the cost is cheap and the sheeple out there eat it up. its not like seinfield where you had to pay that guy 1mil an episode, this is 1mil for the whole season! so while it might make sense in the begining we are pushing 15yrs of this crap isnt enough enough? make more interesting tv shows and you will increase viewers. dont add crap like 35 more of the same local channels the only difference is one is letter boxed one isnt, or crappy wannabe 3D. Tv used to be black and white people didnt need color they wanted an indepth plot and story line not 10 idiots crying over who drank the last of the milk and then have to eat bull penis later that day... no one cares!

Clip ons

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the active glasses come in a clip on model?

But will it run Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

... oh, wait!

Screw you Sony!

[Anonymous Coward]

... or bring back Linux to PS3!

They actually had a demo of this tech at BlizzCon

[LionMage]

This was actually demoed at BlizzCon, except I don't think the TV set was a Sony model. I could be wrong. I do recall that they were using nVidia hardware (big surprise) to drive this thing. A friend was walking with me and glanced over to the booth and made a disparaging comment about how crappy the display was because it was so blurry...

What amazed me was the size of the display. Up until recently, I'd only seen this stuff demoed with desktop-sized LCD flat panel monitors; this display appeared to be living-room sized, by my guesstimate 34" diagonal or larger.

Since nVidia was one of the big sponsors, I think they were the ones pushing this tech, followed perhaps by the display manufacturer. Who knows, maybe this stuff is finally gaining some traction and will go mainstream?

What's the big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you people getting so excited by this?

The content will still be 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999% crap, as it is now.

And let me guess...

[RepelHistory]

...It'll only come with one authorized set of 3D glasses. Just like they do with console controllers, you'll have to buy more and the only authorized ones will come from Sony (you won't be able to use any ol' 3D glasses - remember these use super special "shutter" technology). And they won't be cheap either.

Sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

... but does it run Linux?

Lazy Eye

[Lucidus]

I'm astonished at the amount of uninformed speculation about acehole's "dominant eye" comment (and no, I am not new here). The condition is called amblyopia, and it affects a small percentage of the population, myself included. My left eye is functionally normal, but for some reason the information reaching my brain comes overwhelmingly from my right eye. In my case, the problem has moderated as I have aged, but it caused a lot of trouble when I was young - I had to wear a patch over my dominant eye in elementary school. (Which didn't work, but was, unsurprisingly, fertile ground for taunts and insults.)

Migraine city

[JustNiz]

Why the heck did they go with the lCD glasses technology? its the worst of the lot both in terms of cost and performance.
I experimented extensively with this stuff with nvidia's first-time-round LCD shutter glasses 8(?) years ago.
It suffers badly with cross-eye bleedover (as LCD panels even when black still let quite a lot of light through) and the 60hz alternating blinking in front of each eye gives most people killer migraine after about 15 minutes.

Why cant they go with the much better idea of alternately polarized pixels on the display itself? (similar to IMAX-style 3D). It gives much better results, much less eye strain (as theres no flickering), and would only require cheap passive glasses.

The image in my TV is already 3D.

[Anonymous Coward]

It has height, width and it changes with time.

Maybe they're talking about a TV image with depth -- a 4D TV, that is.

I saw this...

[namco]

I saw this in the Urbis (Videogame Nation event) with the Oliver Twins, who created Dizzy, back in June. They are making Invincible Tiger for the Xbox 360 and PS3. It's the first game to be digitally 3D (using the 3D TV's). It's quite impressive!

I will not wear glasses while watching tv.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me make this clear....I dont want to wear glass while watching tv.

The End.

Ill stick to my 2D HDTV thank you.

Practically. These active glasses, do people with vision correction have to were them over there glasses? Seems annoying.

Not mainstream

[GWBasic]

I doubt this will be mainstream when it comes out. This sounds more akin to early TV that was broadcast over AM waves back in the 1930s. Back then, the entire industry was experimental and viewers were hobbyists. The broadcast technology changed every year. I would expect 3D-TV's technology to evolve for a decade or two before it's ready for mass-market standards.

cable box cost for this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see comcost with

HD 3d box $10-$15 /M

HD 3D DVR $20-$25 /m 250-320g HD.

or maybe outlet + cable card rent / tru2way box fee + HD fee + 3d fee per tv / box.