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Hot Or Not — 3D TV
Several sources have written to tell us that in terms of hype at this year's CES show, there is none bigger than that surrounding 3D TV. Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, and Toshiba all have their own flavors of hardware and ESPN announced a 3D sports channel, but Microsoft seems to be bucking the trend with their apparent lack of 3D interest surrounding the Xbox product. "We're yet to see any major brand at CES pushing a 3D TV that doesn't require them. In most cases these aren't the basic Ray Ban style you might have worn to watch Avatar. In many cases they'll actually require power. For example, Sony's 3D TVs use a 'frame sequential' display method, which involves active-shutter glasses that turn on and off in sync with the images. Some TVs come with the glasses and have the transmitter built in, but again, in some cases you'll need to buy the transmitter and glasses separately."
What do active glasses give you that polarity glasses wouldn't? Why go that road except to eek out a bit more cash from the consumer?
It's technically feasible to build a consumer television that alternates the left/right eye images, frame by frame, in sync with alternate blanking on glasses. All you need is a LCD with a good enough refresh rate and the right electronics.
To use polarising glasses requires a large exotic projector, the space to set it up (think 'theatre' not 'living room') and a massively expensive reflective screen (AFAIK, anyway). Thats why.
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An article on Sony and "betting it all" on 3D TVs was published in the Wall Street Journal, yesterday. A pretty detailed article, imo.
Basically, that article pointed out the fatal flaw:
The challenge for Sony and the other electronics makers: persuading people to adopt 3-D so quickly after hundreds of millions of households just made the transition to high-definition video. Consumers will have to buy brand new televisions, which, according to some estimates, could cost between 10% and 20% more than the high-definition TVs currently on the market.
Not going to happen. People are going to resist this like mad. "New TV? I just bought a new HDTV, and now you want me to go buy a new one so soon which is more expensive? Yeah, go fuck yourselves."
Inflammatory rhetoric aside, what I found most interesting, though, is that CEO Stringer appears to be his push (at least in this arena) against the "Not invented here" bias that is apparently so prevalent at Sony. Most slashdotters will agree--we don't need more proprietary, incompatible Sony formats. Hopefully this attitude is promoted outside the 3D TV realm.
Nvidia is adding support for 3D video/Blu-Ray for all of their GT200/300 video cards via drivers. Yes you do need a 120hz+ display, however a lot of TVs don't do true 120Hz but simply interpolate a 60Hz image twice every frame to achieve "120Hz."
Active glasses are old tech. I saw them demoed about 14 years ago - worked okay, a little distracting. But it wasn't at CES, it was Comdex. Well, okay, it was actually Adultdex, an "adult industry" tech/trade show that occurred at the Sahara during Comdex.
Pron really pushed the tech envelope back then....
Red and Green aren't the same, they are chemically different and the prices of the consumables can affect the cost of each color.
You're delusional if you think TVs haven't changed radically in the past 30 years...
30 years ago you were lucky to have a display capable of 640x480 which is .3MP... Today you can buy a 1080p 2M display, that's a nearly 7x increase in resolution.
You are also highly delusional if you think price has remained consistent with inflation... I purchased my 30" 1920x1200 display for $350... In 1990 dollars that would be $215... You are insane if you think you could purchase a 2MP 30" Display for $215 in 1990.
The other way to do polarization with LCD is Hyundai's way. They use filters per row so you get half vertical resolution 3D per eye, kind of like an interlaced TV signal.
This seems to have the potential to be a lot easier and cheaper manufacturing process. Not only that if you can get LCD panels (or indeed any flat panel display technology) that has twice 1080P resolution in one or both dimensions, there are suddenly very few draw backs as there is no flickering (like shutter glasses), no ghosting (like iZ3D) and no loss of resolution.