Consumer 3D Television Moving Forward 127
TheSync writes "Hollywood Reporter claims that SMPTE (the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) will 'establish an industry task force to define the parameters of a mastering standard for 3D content distributed via broadcast, cable, satellite, packaged media and the Internet, and played-out on televisions, computer screens and other tethered displays.' Already, Japanese Nippon BS viewers with Hyundai 3D LCD sets can watch an hour of 3D programming daily. Even your existing DLP TV set might be 3D capable today with the addition of LCD shutter glasses."
Reader DaMan1970 makes note of another developing television technology; telescopic pixel displays. "Each pixel consists of 2 opposing mirrors where the primary mirror can change shape under an applied voltage. When the pixel is off, the primary & secondary mirrors are parallel & reflect all of the incoming light back into the light source."
Fake 3D (Score:2, Informative)
I agree that stereoscopic vision is not going to hit the mainstream big time. It's more of a gimmick than anything else, for all the reasons you name. Television programming isn't nearly as accessible when you have to plunk on some headgear every time you want to see what's on the channel.
True 3D means holographic video, which is existing technology (albeit not in the "help me obiwan kenobi, you're my only hope" sense). What's annoying is that any standard based on stereoscopic vision will be incompatible with holographic needs, assuming we switch to holographic video once the bandwidth reaches the necessary capacity. I would much rather see plain old high definition 2-dimensional TV remain the sole medium for broadcasting until holography is ready to take it's place.
The one advantage stereoscopic vision has for commercial programming is that every viewer sitting in any (reasonable) position will see the exact same picture, from the exact same perspective. That's desirable to directors for framing a shot. However, stereoscopic vision is very limited, and if it doesn't succeed even modestly (which I don't believe it will), pushing it forward now will sour the opinion that both broadcasters and viewers have of 3D media generally. That will retard interest and investment in true 3D technology, which is something that could really reshape our media experience.
In short, holographic video is to current television as the television was to radio. Stereoscopic vision, in contrast, is more like smell-o-vision. Unfortunately, funding for holography is usually split among all other "simulated 3D" technology, and will suffer from the deflected focus.
Still, stereoscopic vision might be a boon for the porn industry, if it doesn't end up making your eyes water.
Word meaning (Score:3, Informative)
No no no, the glasses can GIVE you astigmatism.
Ok, then I don't think you know what the word mean.
The word "astigmatism" is used to represent a very specific type of vision problem, where the eyes doesn't need the same correction between two axis. In other words, you aren't exactly the same short sighted between the vertical and horizontal axis of the eye (or any other 2 perpendicular axis : could also be two diagonals 90Â appart). If one looks a cross-section of you eye from the bottom, one observes one degree of short-sightedness requiring one type of correction, but when looking from a perpendicular cross section (from the side) one sees a different shape of the eye which gives a different needed correction.
The eye in this case isn't perfectly round but has an ovoid shape. And the lenses needed to correct this kind of problem aren't perfectly concave (or perfectly convex for far-sightedness) but also have a somewhat cylindrical component to their shape.
The symptoms are (when tired and the brain doesn't post-process the perceived image) :
you can't never focus at the same time on vertical and horizontal lines. Somewhat there are always lines that are blurry or have a halo.
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the thing you're probably referring to is "strabism" - crossing eyes or seeing things doubled.
It's something that adapts very quickly and is completely benign. People can spend months with eyes train to focus in a certain way, and then switch to something different as a matter of hours. In fact that happens to people who are heavily short sighted : most prescription glasses for them are *really* thick and you start to see spherical aberrations the edge of the visible field are distorted (lines - or at least lines big enough to be visible even with the short sighted-ness - when crossing the edge of the glasses seem doubled). Whereas, contact lenses don't have this, with them everything looks exactly as if seems through "eyes without problems".
With glasses, when looking on one's side, the brain has the habit to focus both eyes in a certain way (due to the thick glasses) and when switching to contact lenses, the brain has to re-adapt because the eyes have to be positioned differently one respective to the other to focus on the same point - all this is only a matter of minutes.
This is due to the fact the most of the eye focusing is done based on the visual input. The pre-wired reflexes only serves for the gross overall direction and to somewhat stabilise in case of motion. Thus if the image changes, the brain is quick to use new focus settings.
If your 3d stereo glasses (or even worse, your head-mounted stereo display) isn't perfectly aligned, the brain will have to focus the eyes to a slightly different position and you'll experience doubled vision when removing the device. A proper stereo display should be configured in such way that infinitely far image align perfectly when looking straight ahead.