Hot Or Not — 3D TV 419
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."
Auto Stereoscopy... (Score:3, Informative)
Just doesn't work... It's headache inducing and problematic with multiple viewers and viewing angles.
Don't expect it anytime soon in a practical and usable form.
3D circularly polarized projectors are probably the best usable tech as the glasses are cheap. However high refresh rate LCDs with active shutter glasses are probably the best tech for PCs.
Re:Auto Stereoscopy... (Score:5, Insightful)
don't you know why this is done? TV manufacturers are running out of ways for being able to insulate the price barrier.
This has nothing to do with 3d being good or bad, it has to do with how every manufacturer has an agreement on artificially insulating price with a new technology. Same was done with flat panel, then LCD, then high def, then hz wars(120! 240!).
All marginal technologies that should normal drive the price down. Instead they'll be able to have 52" TV's be in the many thousands of dollars amount for years to come due to raising it back up for 3d.
Think of it like apple's feature creep, it's the same idea and same reasons, to force price to an arbitrary amount before it eats into their margins.
Re:Auto Stereoscopy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but compare the price of Plasma displays now and when they were introduced, or even regular old LCD TVs... No one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to buy a 3D TV, you can buy a 40-50" regular HD LCD TV for sub-$1000 these days.
Besides, I don't understand what your reply has to do with the actual technology behind 3D displays. I swear, almost every other post here on slashdot has become about how expensive something is or how it's not free or extremely cheap...
Oh wait, I must be new here or something.
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His post explains why the manufacturers are trying so hard to fabricate demand for a feature nobody really wants using technology that isn't there yet.
TFA doesn't ask what the tech is, it asks if there's demand for it given that you have to re-buy everything and wear funky goggles to watch it.
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I understand what his post is about, I was simply answering the problem stated in the article of no TVs being released that do not require glasses. His post is completely tangential to mine.
From TFS:
"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-shutt
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I don't see any manipulation unless these companies were making an a lot of money over the manufacturing cost of the sets...
Technology improves and most of the time the new technology costs more money to implement.
People need jobs and something to work on, so they spend their time improving the technology. I hardly doubt it's some grand conspiracy.
Yes the manufacturers want to push 3D as the next new thing so that they can continue to sell expensive TV sets, but it's not as if the new sets don't cost more
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I am claiming that a small oligopoly of companies would rather maintain artificially high prices through ridiculous and undesired 'features' than let the prices fall naturally
Those features aren't forced onto consumers however, again I have to point out that one can purchase a 45"+ TV for less than $700 these days, and the advent of 3D TVs will not increase the prices of those cheaper sets anytime soon. These features aren't added to the exclusion of cheaper lower cost TVs, if there is a market that desire
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If not for the issue of lacking a tuner (I actually don't mind using an external tuner as it often makes setup with a reciever and other inputs simpler when the TV is nothing more than a dumb monitor), a computer monitor would be perfect for what I want. I don't want speakers (the stereo has them), I don't want internet junk (the computer/xbmc/other appliance has that), I just want a screen. It just seem
Re:Auto Stereoscopy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you implying in your example that they didn't improve the antenna? Or are you trying to imply that they already had the design for an improved antenna but decided to wait to push the technology? Or are you cynically implying that they had the technology and capability to introduce the improved antenna at the same price point but decided to create an artificial barrier?
Because I would say all of that is Grade A BS spoken from someone who has no knowledge of actual engineering and product development.
Yes, there are only a handful of LCD manufacturers, one of them being Sony, LG, and Samsung... All of whom are trying to push 3D. However a clueless individual like yourself might assume that since there are only a handful of manufacturers, that every LCD that comes from these manufacturers is exactly the same. That would be a highly ignorant statement. Companies who purchase the Liquid Crystal Displays for usage in TVs for example have the choice of purchasing high quality or low quality components. Usually the components will be run through an automated QA process and the best components will be sold for the highest prices. Also, companies can ask for the components to be produced with higher quality components and tighter manufacturing tolerances.
To assume that all LCDs from one manufacturer are the same is foolish.
You know what's happened with electronics over the past 20 years? They've improved tremendously.
But does it serve a purpose ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you implying in your example that they didn't improve the antenna? {...} You know what's happened with electronics over the past 20 years? They've improved tremendously.
I think the parent is trying to say, that although constant "improvement" are happening, none of these was called for in the first place.
The new antenna is better that the older, but older one already did pretty well the job.
Lots of these improvement are only solutions trying to find a non-existing problem to fix. They are used by the marketing department, so they have something to present as "new" on their product line and sell at an increased price. Otherwise we would all still use the same technology fro
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Movie theaters must move to 3-D! Television screens and sound systems are approaching the point where the theater experience has nothing to really offer the viewer. 3-D gives us a reason to go to the theater.
Totally anecdotal, but my wife actually went with me to see Avatar twice! We usually wait for movies to be released on DVD before we see it a second time if it was any good. We don't have 3-D so we must go to
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Competition (Score:2)
I don't buy that. All it takes is one hungry smaller company that decides it doesn't need to try to milk consumers with gradual feature creep to produce a product that costs the same but has more features. Implementing 3d on tvs should be no more complex that cranking the refresh rate up, and selling overpriced polarized glasses.
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if 3d is not complex, then why do you think it's somehow not going to raise the price of tv's enormously? or as the old concept goes "why does the red one cost more than the green one? it's the same thing."
Go look at a specific size and/or brand of TV for the last 30 years. Go watch how little has actually changed. like I said, small resolution leaps, and such. Meanwhile, the price has remained very consistent with inflation regardless of things being cheaper to produce. Oh you will notice one thing though.
Re:Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
30 years ago, you could hardly buy a television that wasn't a CRT, and if you wanted something over 30", you had to be very prepared to bust out your wallet. Today, a 30" LCD costs $750 (or whatever, I'm probably within $250, which is fine when you consider that the 30 year old television probably cost $2,500, and those numbers don't bother to account for inflation).
You are delusional.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'd pay $2500 for a good CRT.
It's the best display technology available to man.
I hear ya. It would go great with my Commodore 64 - the best computing platform available to man!
Re:Competition (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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30 years ago you were lucky to have a display capable of 640x480 which is .3MP
There are two ways to think about this. In 1980, most personal computers had very low resolutions. The Apple II, for instance, had a resolution of 280×192 in HiRes mode. The IBM PC came out later (and even then, its graphics capabilities were nothing to write home about).
But if you had a graphics workstation, dual 1280 x 1280 displays were available. [intergraph.com] Of course, such a system might have cost tens of thousands of dollars.
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I think we see those companies and TVs all the time.. but they are called "no name brands" and other bad names. People like to buy brands they've heard of, even if the product isn't as good.
Re:Auto Stereoscopy... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think 3D will end up being an almost free feature you can use or ignore. And since having somewhat of a 3d revelation watching Avatar, I'm looking forward to it.
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ps2 and ps3 are not similar at all. Look at PS3 at the different hard drive sizes and the actual cost of those hard drives, and then you are more accurate. You're overthinking.
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Good point. It's like TV manufacturers are getting so good at driving the price down that their products are becoming actually cheap, so they have to find a way to bump the price back up. One of the things that I've noticed starting to creep in is Internet connections directly on your TV. I can see the value if your TV had built-in Netflix streaming, but I get the sense that they're moving more towards something like, "You'll be able to see eBay ads directly on your TV!"
I often look at this stuff and th
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You're weakening your point in writing this because it shows that you don't know very much about Apple products if you think they are known for feature creep. Case in point: the most recent version of OS X (snow leopard) removed a substantial number of additional features. Or do you not remember the touted 7Gb savings when upgrading? The most consequential being the ability to run on powerpc architectures. Secondly, they als
Active glasses? (Score:2)
Re:Active glasses? (Score:4, Funny)
I don't understand.... Isn't that the whole point?
Sincerely,
PHBs at Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, and Toshiba
Re:Active glasses? (Score:5, Informative)
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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There are technologies that allow you to do polarized 3D from an LCD display such as that used in the iZ3D monitors.
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There are technologies that allow you to do polarized 3D from an LCD display such as that used in the iZ3D monitors.
Now that is interesting, I didn't know that...
Just been looking at a description of the technology here: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/monitors/display/iz3d.html [xbitlabs.com]
The fact remains though that active glasses allow the use of a 'normal' LCD panel as a display though. Will one system win out, or will there remain a variety of technologies? Time will tell.
Re:Active glasses? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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What about people with only one eye? The polarized glasses make it possible for those individuals to still view the movie, though in plain 2D.
I don't know much about the technology, but does the alternating eye thing have a distorted picture on the TV? If so then there are many people who won't be able to take part in the experience.
All this it to me is another way for cable companies to charge another 5 dollars a month for "premium" content, and then another 5 dollars a month for a special cable box to w
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How do you polarize the image from a conventional LCD without significantly reducing contrast ratios and brightness during non 3D viewing?
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For those who may not understand all LCD images are polarized. Try turning your head sideways with polarizing sunglasses on while looking at a conventional LCD display (from a gas pump to your radio to the TV).
LCDs are a polarized light technology.
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Higher resolution. Unlike a projection system, on an LCD screen of a given resolution, when it's in 3D mode, you're going to get half your pixels going to one eye, half to the other. With active shutter glasses, each eye gets the full resolution (just at half the framerate, but if the content is 60hz, and the monitor is 120hz, it shouldn't be a problem).
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Actually, I may be lying, it depends how the passive is implemented on the LCD monitor. Well... not lying, just wrong.
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Polarity glasses only work if you have a polarized display. With an LCD or Plasma TV, there's no convenient way to flip the polarization 30 times a second or so. Instead, you need the active glasses which can block the correct eye in sync with the TV.
Active glasses could also work with a dvd player or game system without requiring support from the TV. I knew someone who had them for an Amiga 25 years ago.
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No convenient way, apart from a second LCD panel.
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Polarized glasses leak like hell unless you sit in exactly the right spot and look exactly the right direction - or at least they did last time I tried them.
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The linear polarization systems did that. The circular ones don’t.
Re:Active glasses? (Score:5, Informative)
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....
Oh they're older that that. (Score:2)
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They were usable with 3D video games like "Descent" with proper video card support back then too.
Re:Active glasses? (Score:4, Insightful)
porn has neer pushed tech. Pornographers just grab any media type and put porn on it. People don't remember the failure, only success. SO in hindsight it appears as if they are a driving force in tech. They are not,and never have been.
Everymedia that has failed has ahd porn on it, every one that was a success , has porn on it.
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It's a manufacturing problem. In the theater, they use 2 projectors with polarization filters offset by 90 degrees. To do that with TV, they'd have to double the pixel density and the panel would have to be a mosaic of single pixel cells.
So instead, they use shutter glasses that need power and a synch signal from the display.
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LCDs themselves are switchable polarizing filters, so all you need to do is stack 2 LCD panels on top of each other. That way you can have one that does color and one that changes the angle of polarization.
In fact, that's exactly how the iZ3D monitors work.
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It's a lot cheaper to produce two tiny little squares and some drive electronics than to add a whole additional layer to a 32"+ diagonal TV, especially now that it has become easy to drive the TV to the refresh rates required. (And even the approach you suggest would still require the TV to have the high refresh rate needed for shutter style glasses.)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
More expensive yes, but the glasses are cheaper and a much easier sell if they're passive.
As to the second point, you can change the polarization at a pixel level. Because of this, you can display two images simultaneously and avoid flickering completely.
The iZ3D monitors vary the polarization per pixel so a particular pixel can be seen more or less by each eye - so you have a single brightness (per color element per pixel). This gives you the full resolution, but gives you a ghosting effect as pixels can b
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I mean, effective half vertical resolution.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I totally agree that active shutter glasses are a hard sell, and I don't think there is any way they will become mainstream in the living room... but the cost to manufacture a polarized LCD display for a large screen TV is WAY more than the cost to make a couple active shutter glasses (and glasses don't even have to affect the TV margin much, since they could be sold separately after including 1-2 with the TV, just like game console controllers).
This is especially true given that the hardware changes for th
New TV or not? (Score:2)
On the PC, all I need is the Nvidia glasses and a display that can do 120 Hz. I heard that with TVs, you can do the same thing. So, do we just need a TV that does 120 Hz, and let the receiver do the rest, or do we need a special TV?
DirecTV hasn't said what their 3D receiver will be yet.
Re:New TV or not? (Score:4, Informative)
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."
My brain/eyes are incompatible with 3D TV/movies (Score:4, Interesting)
When watching 3D movies, I tend to go cross-eyed and get a headache very quickly. I think it's because everything I'm seeing is on the same focal plane, but my eyes attempt to adjust for parallax based on different apparent distances of objects. I had to walk out of Avatar 3D after about 10 minutes, I just could not watch it like that. Does anyone else experience this?
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I found, when watching Avatar, that it was important to look where the director wants you to look. Real cameras have real focal distances, so you can't look wherever you want and expect to be able to get everything in focus. Up was an easier viewing experience, but with a less extreme 3D effect.
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The problem is the Camera systems being used work similar to the eye, they have to focus on a specific part of the image. When you try to look at an area that is out of focus, your eyes make a futile attempt to focus the image which ends in a headache and nausea.
Basically, focus on the part of the image that's in focus.
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To be fair, this is the director's fault too -- the movie should not have your attention being drawn away from the focal point of the shot.
Bad focus pulls in cheap movies and TV shows cause me headaches too, because the wrong face is in focus during dialog, etc.
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It's finally happened...a tech I will not use (Score:2)
I'm in the same boat; 3D gives me splitting headaches almost instantly. It's bad to the point where I simply will not go to see a 3D movie, period. Have fun guys, tell me how it is when you get back.
I've been reading/hearing about all this interest in 3D everywhere and I realize that I'm just not going to go along with this particular tech. Apart from my issues with 3D, where did all this 3D-love come from all of a sudden? It seems this particular tech was relegated to IMAX nature movies at the local scienc
Re:My brain/eyes are incompatible with 3D TV/movie (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, you have a girlfriend. Are you going to get married?
Do you love her?
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At least credit xkcd when you rip-off its comments: http://xkcd.com/684/ [xkcd.com]
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If you’re trying to say it was funnier exactly the way it was, then I think I agree with you.
I work in a production facility. (Score:4, Interesting)
We just got two 3D monitors from Hyundai, one smaller one that goes in the production area, and a huge one to show to clients. The networks, especially the ones that generate a lot of their own content, are scrambling for 3D content... not necessarily because they want to push it, but because everyone is scared to be left behind.
The Hyundai monitors use passive glasses, and the image is quite good. I can see 3D, especially with passive glasses (where you can buy replacements or extras for reasonable prices), really taking off.
meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who wants to wear an extra pair of glasses just to watch TV?
This whole 3D video thing smacks of a industry money grab disguised as a fad...
Exec: "Well everyone and their gramma has a 'flatscreen' jumbotron at home, what do we do now?"
R&D: "Gentlemen, we've reached the limits of this plane of entertainment, we must go to the next dimension"
*dramatic music*
Re:meh. (Score:4, Funny)
Just wait, once 3D tv gets old, we will move on to 4D tv, which will be totally awesome!
Re:meh. (Score:5, Funny)
Except it'd totally ruin the ending.
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By 2025 it'll be Smell-O-Vision split-screen Cinerama IMAX with tingler support.
If non-killer robots haven't been perfected by then, midgets will tilt your couch with the on-screens action!
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4D? As in, the images change not only with width, height and depth, but also with time? That's genius! Why hasn't anyone thought about this?!
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Can 3D be sent over 3G? Or do I need 4G for HD3D?
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Who wants to wear an extra pair of glasses just to watch TV?
It's difficult enough in the theatre. I have to wear glasses over my glasses. Keeping them comfortably balanced is an ordeal, and then there's the problem of reflections bouncing back and forth between the two shiny surfaces.
Makes me wish I wore contacts.
I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
I just don't see the benefit in 3D TV. I know the technology is getting better, but the 3D in Avatar was just good enough to not be a distraction from the movie- it certainly didn't add anything to it, besides $5 for the ticket. The point is that for most of the movie, I did not perceive anything different than a normal movie, and those moments when I did were distracting and jarring. I have seen a couple imax movies in 3D and I think I tend to mentally flatten the images- except for the parts where the snake jumps out at you, which is just distracting and cheesy.
So, if I'm going to be mentally flattening the images anyway, why bother?
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I have seen a couple imax movies in 3D and I think I tend to mentally flatten the images- except for the parts where the snake jumps out at you, which is just distracting and cheesy.
See I have had a similar experience when watching 3D movies, but I don't think it's because you're "mentally flattening" the image. It's because when you're looking at a 2D image, you're "mentally 3D-ifying" it. (I'm sure there's an actual term for this, but since I don't know one, I'm going to use "3D-ify".) For example, look around the room you're sitting it. Now cover 1 eye and look around the room again. Did you suddenly get the idea that you're looking at a flat world? No, because your brain uses
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Then don't buy it.
I don't see the benefit in a big screen TV. I don't watch TV and don't watch too many movies. So I don't buy one. It's pretty simple. :)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
You just explained why colour TV and colour movies are useless. Watch a black and white and within a couple minutes you'll forget you're watching black and white.
The short answer is "because we can". It won't be too long before 3D technology brings prices down so that it's as cheap as 2D is now. Just like when colour first came out, people were initially using it for whiz-bang "look what we can do" effect and it took a few years before it just became nothing special. So it will go with 3D.
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Yeah, keep whining. I'll be miserably playing 3d video games on a daily basis. It's painful, but I keep doing it. Progress sure does suck, huh?
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I agree, 3D imagery in Avatar turned out to be primarily "blurry vision" with some parts that jump out at you. And the stuff that does jump out at you, isn't all that important. I'd rather see crisp clear video without the gimmicky distractions.
I suspect the movie & TV industry are attempting to find a way to provide unique content to keep people going to movie theaters instead of just watching it at home on TV. And the TV industry wants to find a way to beat out the downloaders with unique better qu
You answered your own question (Score:3, Informative)
it certainly didn't add anything to it, besides $5 for the ticket.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Your tastes are not universal. Considerable experience has demonstrated that a commercially-significant number of people do find that 3D adds to the entertainment value of various forms of visual entertainment.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
See, I think this is actually a sign that the 3d was done well.
I've seen movies where the 3d jumped out at me. Boing, giant monster in my face, sproing, 3d gizmos in the face, hey look at how many things we can jam in your face.
Avatar didn't do that. It wasn't a 3d tour de force, it was a movie that happened to be in 3d. Most of the time, you're right, I just didn't notice - and that was its strength. Instead of being a pile of 3d special effects, it was a movie that just happened to be deeper and realer due to the use of 3d.
It's like HDTV or, as some have mentioned, color. If you don't notice it, it's doing its job. Sometimes its job is just subtle.
nice product (Score:2)
This will remain a high-end niche product like Laserdisc. 3D simply won't become mainstream until they can pull it off without glasses. The only question, is that even possible?
DVD offered such a significant advance over VHS adopting it was a no-brainer. Same goes for HDTV over standard def. But 3D TV might also resemble BlueRay where there's just not enough market penetration. People aren't seeing a compelling argument for abandoning regular DVD's. BueRay still sells but is not market-dominant and I don't
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This will remain a high-end niche product like Laserdisc. 3D simply won't become mainstream until they can pull it off without glasses. The only question, is that even possible?
Not until we figure out how to do holographics easily.
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It certainly is, and Sharp even manufactured and sold a product that did it. A no-glasses 3D 17" LCD. It was radically expensive. The difficulty is the transition; most content isn't 3D. A 3D display is basically always a 3D display. It's not something that can be turned off. So the monitor has to include internal software and silicon to synthesize a compatible image out of 2D data.
Flicker comes back (Score:5, Insightful)
We finally get a display technology with zero flicker, the LCD, and the 3D crowd has to put it back. Yuck.
Killer app: porn (Score:4, Insightful)
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You saw the preview for Piranhas 3D before the movie too? :)
Not Parallax?? (Score:3, Informative)
I've used 3D shutter glasses for my PC that work with nVidia drivers/cards for well over a decade. Any 3D game can render this way... the tech works okay, but nowhere near as lovely or convenient as the Captain EO / Avatar method which uses polarized projection and unpowered polarized glasses... and 3D eyeglass-free monitors that use parallax have existed for about a decade as well now... None of the new TVs do this? You can add field-sequential, shutter-frame tech to your PC and a good CRT for under $50... for the last decade. Fun for immersion... a bit of an impediment for high accuracy things like sniping in a FPS though.
3D has no appeal to me or many I know... (Score:3, Insightful)
Mostly it is due to the glasses and the effect the glasses have on the wearer.
Having recently seen my first 3D movie at a theater last night, I can say that yes it does look incredible, but I have significant eye strain, that is still bothering me the next day.
Others I have talked to said they get headaches from the 3D glasses, others just hate having to wear them due to comfort, interfering with their normal glasses or not used to wearing glasses..
Sorry, no one I have talked to is willing to veg out for an hour or 2 in the evenings with 3D glasses on.
I am really not willing to do it for games either. I'd rather have a few hours gaming in 2D, than a short duration with headaches in 3D.
They Have A Point... (Score:5, Interesting)
At least with polarized glasses the power requirement is gone but still, since some form of eyewear is required anyway, why not just get rid of the TV altogether? Is it just because you'll still be able to watch 2D without the glasses?
Don't get me wrong, the prospects look interesting, but it just seems like holding onto the TV for no other purpose than being able to manufacture large and expensive displays.
Sony rescinding "NIH" attitude with 3DTVs (Score:5, Informative)
An article on Sony and "betting it all" on 3D TVs [wsj.com] 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.
not like HD adoption (Score:2)
In response to concerns that there's very little consumer need/demand for 3D TV, many proponents try to draw parallels to HDTV's slow adoption: that we just need to shove it out into the marketplace in order to attract enough early content and viewers to create the critical mass necessary for widespread acceptance. But I think that's an unfair comparison. HDTV was an "easy sell" to consumers: big screens + sharp picture. The slow adaption was mostly due to provider, network, and regulatory BS. 3D TV pr
Do these not suck? (Score:2)
Every technology I've seen so far for 3D television/movie presentation has been teh suck. Why? Because I have one eye. Alas, I am not disabled enough to leverage the ADA, but I'm not the litigious sort anyway. But every technique so far devised to have each eye see something different when looking at one screen has screwed up the case where only one view gets used. I either see both views simultaneously, which is like double vision for "close" objects, or I see things the wrong color (for the old red/green
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see why you couldn't wear the polarized glasses and just see the movie as if it was a normal 2D projection.
Headache making glasses? (Score:2)
I thought those powered blinky glasses were the ones that gave everyone headaches...
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That's why it died for a few years, until display technology improved.
There's a reason why NVidia's new 3D Vision system requires a 120 Hz display - it isn't much different than the old shutter-based glasses for NV cards, BUT it's double the refresh rate.
3d tv never ubiquitous? (Score:2)
The switch from black and white TV was an easy sell: color looks better.
The switch (in progress...) from SD to HD is an easy sell: bigger/sharper looks better.
But I have a hard time believing that everything could/should be in 3d. Action movies? Sure. Sports? Sure. But drama? Sitcoms? News?
What I notice 3d mostly being used for is "gimmick shots" in movies where some object deliberately leaps out at you. I've never seen a movie where 3d offered some consistent, ever-present visual benefit.
A list of 3D TV's (Score:2)
http://www.3dmovielist.com/3dhdtvs.html [3dmovielist.com]
It's still the same (crap) content (Score:2)
The content of the programmes is what people watch - not the fuzziness of the picture, or the brilliance of the colours, nor whether the characters "leap out" of the screen (though how this would work on games shows and reality programmes I do not know). TV nowadays is constrained by budgets and timescales - there's a limited amount of advertising money available to turn into programming and a limited amount of time to spend making each show. These are what limits the qua
Holigrams (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How else do you expect one screen to show each eye a different image than to put some sort of filter in front of one or both of them? And how else do you expect to achieve that without glasses?
Me? I hate 3D because I have only one eye, and no 3D technique yet devised has not sucked in some way for us monocular folks.
Re: (Score:2)
How else do you expect one screen to show each eye a different image than to put some sort of filter in front of one or both of them? And how else do you expect to achieve that without glasses?
Lenticular displays and holograms have been doing it for ages. The main problem with a glasses-less display is they generally have a “sweet spot” where you have to sit to see it properly, thus only one person can watch it and that person can’t move.
Me? I hate 3D because I have only one eye, and no 3D technique yet devised has not sucked in some way for us monocular folks.
...you’re whining because it can’t magically make you see something that you can’t see anyway? Give me a break.
Wii not MS - Re:Why care what MS thinks? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)