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Sony Announces First 3D Blu-ray Disc Players
angry tapir writes "Sony has announced a new 3D Blu-ray Disc player and upgrades to existing players so that they will be able to show high-definition 3D movies too. The company introduced the BDP-S470 Blu-ray Disc model and upgraded existing home theater systems, which will be able to play Blu-ray movies when related firmware for the devices is released later this year. Movies based on the Blu-ray 3D specification, which was finalized by the Blu-ray Association in December, can be shown on the players."
Can the TV industry all stand behind the new HDMI or Displayport spec?
Having the media standard and players are nice, but until I know I have a TV that will support a standard (that will be around for more than 2 seconds) is somewhat important as well.
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I thought the PS3 would be the first one to have BR 3D support, since it was announced when the spec became ready.
Let me know when they release the first 4D Blu-ray disc players.
The X-Prize brain-computer interface will make this obsolete in only 40 years.
Sony and Blu-Ray are behind HDMI, as is every other media company around. Any TV that does not support HDMI will have no market share.
Finally, a 3D blue-ray player! I keep losing my 2-dimensional player when the wind blows it under the couch. It's impossible to see from the side, since it is infinately thin, so I have to move the couch to be able to see it from the top or bottom. They should have made them 3 dimensional in the first place!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
It's yet another HDMI version. They were supposed to even have larger connectors that transferred more data, but I see those nowhere. I'm not seeing why a 24 Hz movie can't be doubled to 48 Hz for 3D when it transfers at 60 Hz anyway usually. I think the tremendous amount of bandwidth needed for those black bars around movies means we all have to upgrade.
Including the launch PS3 (I think they were 20/60 GB)? Only so much you can do with a system update.
Is anybody else bothered by the false advertising that well funded corporate marketing and headline-seeking news is shoving down the public's collective throat?
Claiming that a stereoscopic picture is the equivalent of a 3 dimensional projection is the equivalent of presenting a stereo entertainment center and claiming that it is surround sound.
I gotta say I can't wait for 3D BluRay discs to come out. I keep accidentally losing the 2D ones between the atoms of my couch!
The enemies of Democracy are
I'd been struggling along with a 2D one which was an absolute nightmare to find when viewed end on...
This extra dimension you refer to interests me, do you have more information in the form of a pop up book?
everyone will just keep several extra sets of funny glasses around so when company comes they can
Hard to say if their plan is to profit off the "everyone brings their own $200 sunglasses" model, or the "every house has a stack of paper plates" model.
I could see this as a path to get everyone to upgrade their glasses... baby boomers aren't getting any younger, they probably all wear glasses, and its time for the corps to shear the sheep again?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
They mean "holy shit that's popping out of the screen" with glasses and specialty devices.
"Damn that's some nice graphics" has no impact on the source media or display device.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Holy shit, that's popping out of the screen.
Awesome, thanks. I was wondering if they'd come out with some way to release movies like Avatar in 3D soon since most people are saying that's the only way to see it. Good to know.
:P
on a side note, hooray for being labeled off topic for trying to clarify what the new technology is
A 3-dimensional player would have been nice. All I have is a 2-dimensional Blu-ray player.
Figuring out the physics behind how to convert a 3-dimensional Blu-ray disc into 2-dimensional space and back so it could work with my 2-dimensional player was a bit tough, but once you get the hang of it it's not so bad.
Oh wait.... you're talking about stereoscopic video, not the actual spacial dimensionality of the physical player.
Sorry.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
>> 4) Keep changing formats so people have to buy new players *and DVDs of the same movies*
Fixed that for you.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Which 3D spec is it?
The tech is incredibly immature right now, there's about 3 different methods of doing 3D - some require glasses, some apparently don't. How is it encoded on the disc, can the disc still contain the regular 2D blu ray movie. Is it the same spec as the other companies? What about the TV guys, is it the same spec there?
They (not just Sony) are really praying for this 3D thing to take off and cause a whole new run of consumer idiot sales, we aren't falling for it this time, the 1080p fiasco was bad enough (it was never an official HD spec, it was added later) you expect us to sell out 1->30 month old HD TV's for a 3D one when the spec is a complete shambles?
I think a 'lol, no!' should suffice here. I'm definitely waiting this one well, well out.
The usual term is "stereo" or "stereo-3D." It's been around since shortly after the invention of photography.
I love stereo-3D myself, and have a collection of it in various forms including an antique Stereo-Realist camera that can take action stills in stereo. It's also quite easy to take stereo stills with any digital camera, providing there's no movement involved in the subject-- just by taking the picture, moving over about a foot, and taking another framed the same (and hopefully, with the same exposure). Viewing can be done with budget viewers from your LCD video monitor, side to side, or using the crosseye technique, etc.
That said though, I think in this case it's a cheap excuse to try to sell more BluRay players since the market just hasn't been taking off-- HD doesn't get you enough over SD DVD for many people to bother to spend the money (including me). Unfortunately, 3D will get the short-shrift it always does, and when it doesn't explode into an "everybody's gotta have it right now" craze, the producers will tire of spending money in the production for insufficient results. So we'll have a couple of wowzer stereo films (Avatar and one or two others, probably), but not enough to justify converting your entire video system over unless you've got too much money or you're a total gadget geek.
A "Ted Turner" could start taking old content and producing artificial plane-separated synthetic stereo from existing media, and that might pull it a long for a few more miles, but even then I seriously doubt it'll be enough to carry it along. And it likely won't be quite as easy or as cheap as "colorization" was, at least to do well.
I'd love to see stereo become mainstream, but we've been down this road before, and I don't see anything new here, just the dollars involved are bigger (which itself doesn't bode well, because for too many people, it's just non-essential)...
If stereo computer monitors got cheap enough I might get one of those so my 3D modelling work can be done in full stereo, but I don't get paid for that so I'm not willing to spend a whole lot over what a plain-old 2D monitor costs.
I'd like to see it, I really would, but I just don't expect it to happen. There's just not enough momentum. It looks to me like a last-ditch attempt for a few desperate folks in tinseltown to give the public a reason to pay more for their stuff. It's just not a good enough reason, frankly. And even if we weren't in a recession, and digital entertainment hadn't lost a whole lot of it's value over the last decade due to the glut of content and its distribution, I just don't see it becoming any more than an expensive parlor-trick...
Future generations will have genetically engineered polarized corneas for the purpose.
Our Verizon DVR doesn't like our Samsung flatscreen. Lots of loss-of-synch's over HDMI, and that's not very unusual. HDMI is sort of like TIFF that way: so many options that it's a wonder any sender and receiver can sync at all. So there's a difference between supporting plugs and basic protocols and actually working well together.
Fortunately, our PS3 plays Blu-rays flawlessly to the Samsung... so far.
If 2D BluRay comes on a flat disc, does 3D BluRay come on a sphere?
I had my nvidia shutters a long time ago (10 years or so), and while it was really fun I do not see myself getting into this new tv new glasses thing.
I would expect to have an affordable at least 720p (1280x720?) glasses (per eye) tiny displays with a light helmet/head mount by now, but no... most headsets are still 640x480 or 800x600 .... 1024 costs a lot more..... Just do not get it......
Technology is there and I think they would sell too......maybe I am just part of a crazy crowd who thinks that others would pay for such a thing.... then again, I am not the movie goer, a movie is not a social event in my dictionary....
Hmmm... No mention of the PS3. Time to sell?
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
A few Years ago, I bought a large screen TV - Rear projection. At the time, I was not worried about HD as there was no HD content available for broadcast and the BluRay HDDVD battle (I can hardly call it a war) had not begun. It did have 1080i which I later found out was a HD spec. Cool I thought. I am ready for when this starts happening. Then a few months later, I hear very little about 1080i and lots about this 1080p stuff. Then start to hear I hear HDMI input. This monster box has coxial, Svideo, component and composite. So in theory, I have a nice large screen television that is HD capable, but no way of utilising this function. Thank you Panasonic. Just last year I bought myself a bigger, Plasma screen - This time 1080p with many HDMI inputs and I have been enjoying HD - However, Damned if I am going to buy - yet another - high end Television (there is no way I am going smaller) in the next few years only to be obsoleted so quickly.
. .
Remember when 3D used to mean they had two dimensions and a story!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Unfortunately, the Wonka bar is still very, very small. Ah well.
--
Toro
You going to give us glasses for this? I doubt I can use the RealD polarized glasses with my LCD TV.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Speaking of expensive parlor tricks...
About half of the stereo features hitting theaters this year will be last minute planar projection fake conversions in effort to jack up the ticket price. Offshore stereo conversion companies are sprouting up like weeks in the VFX industry currently.
So, you've got stuff like Up and Avatar that actually start driving demand for theatrical stereo, soon to be followed by an avalanche of headache inducing cashgrab.
The industry seems intent on sabotaging itself.
Aside: I'm a VFX artist these days, and I get to work with headsets and stereo monitors on occasion. Save your cash and preview depth with anaglyph glasses for short periods. The tech just isn't there yet for a working "3D" display that is easy enough on the eyes for you to last an entire workday. Maybe soon, but not just yet. But even then, the user won't have a director tweaking inter-occular depth etc to prevent strain.
There doesn't seem much point for TV. It would be nice for computer desktops though where I actually could find uses for a 3D desktop model.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I don't know about anyone else, but I do NOT want to wear any kind of glasses just to watch TV, especially shaded glasses. I would prefer to see them use existing technology to make 3DTV's that require no glasses at all. I have a fine tuned vision that i am used to, why obstruct my vision with lame shutter glasses?
I don't really see it that way.
Rather, this is the typical theater vs. home wars, bumping up to the next level. It's clear that Hollywood, Inc. has discovered that "3D" in films, when used to actually enhance the film (rather as the gimmick it's been in the past) is fairly compelling. More people saw "Avatar" in 3D than normal, and this film is now the highest grossing in history, and the first to pass the $2 billion mark. And that's just box office.
The 3D thing is really overblown, anyway. It's largely a change in software on the Blu-Ray player, as the upgrades from Sony illustrate. It will work with some of today's TVs as-is, but a 3D aware television may offer better results, as would higher speed interfaces.
Most people are completely happy with Blu-Ray, and really do appreciate the difference between HD and SD (the difference between Blu-Ray and DVD is greater than the difference between DVD and VHS... and Blu-Ray is growing faster than DVD did at the same point in its evolution). What they're not ready for yet is $250+ for a player. So player sales only grew 67% in 2009 over 2008. Most industry watchers predict the crossover in media sales in 2012 or 2013. Today, Blu-Ray accounts for 10%-30% of media sales, depending on the release. In the last quarter of 2009, Blu-Ray media sales grew by 35% in the USA. DVD sales in the same quarter fell by 17%.
This is hardly an usual thing, but in fact, exactly what you sign up for when you make things based around computers. It was difficult to grow media formats in a compatible way back in the analog days, but for this, the 3D is just an optional add-on. Older players will just play the 2D version, and 3D-aware players will offer you a choice, or perhaps even only offer that choice in the presence of proper 3D viewing gear.
Hollywood, Inc. is already moving on. Most of the digital projectors in theaters these days have been 2K format projectors (nominally 2000x1000 pixels), which is essentially just the same as HDTV. They're moving rapidly to shooting in 4K (nominally 4000x2000), and beyond. Some folks in Japan have already shown off a prototype 8K television (nominally 8000x4000... http://www.nhk.or.jp/digital/en/super_hi/index.html). It just never ends.
Of course, it really does end. You can see 1080p just dandy on a computer monitor... I'm about 2ft away from my dual 1200p monitors here, and I see it fine. But at a normal television viewing distance, you can't tell the difference between 1200p/1080p and 720p. Unless you're Superman, or at least Harvey Birdman. I have a 71" 1080p television in my media room. Most people will see an advantage to 1080p at 10-12 feet from the screen, which is an absolutely reasonable viewing distance, within the THX optimal viewing range, and just a bit short of the SMPTE optimal viewing range (both THX and SMPTE are based on your angle of view).
To get much out of a 4K screen, I'm going to have to sit closer than ft, or get a very gigantic screen. Of course, when I grew up, my parent's "big screen" TV was a 25" Sears console... that was the largest they ever owned, at least while I was at home. Could be some go larger in the future. But how many people really have room for 100" + screens. Ok, if you're offering, sure, I'll make it fit...
-Dave Haynie
Which is of course one reason the PS3 update is expected this summer, rather than now, even if they do have the 3D Blu-Ray stuff working there already. 3D gaming makes perfect sense, anyway... video games are already largely 3D internal, just projected as 2D when rendered. So why not do a stereoscopic projection?
Of course, Sony will also want to have their 3D shutter glasses for the PS3 available at the same time the software's out. I hate to admit it, but I'll probably be in line for them the day they're out.
-Dave Haynie
Only 3D? No thanks.
I had one of those back in the day. I saw it only for a split second and it was gone.
I'm currently holding out until they make a 4 dimensional one... which, quite frankly, they should have made in the first place!
Karma: NaN
For crying out loud, this is the century of the fruit bat! Why can't we have a single remote control for channel surfing.
You can
You don't even need one as good as that though, you can buy Universal Remotes at most dollar-stores and convenience stores nowadays.
Every time they mention 3D TV I think to myself: "DO NOT WANT!!!"
Then I think to myself, gee am I some old curmudgeon that would have been against talkies one the big screen clinging to my black and white TV when color TV's came out?
I hate the idea of having to wear special glasses to watch my TV. I think this new move to 3D TV is a novelty that will wear off, but it won't because it is easier for companies to lock down 3D because of the larger size and proprietary equipment.
Am I just not keeping up with the times? Have I finally gotten to the point where I'm to old for technology? Geez, I'm only 30!
I went and looked at BluRay players the other day, and of the 5 sold at the store I was at, none could up-scale DVD's via component video (all demanded HDMI). I got the impression from that, that none of them could do High Def *at all* via component video, let alone 3D video, and I refuse to support the HDMI "standard".