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Consumer 3D Television Moving Forward
Posted by
Soulskill
on Tue Jul 22, 2008 01:02 AM
from the don't-tag-this-porn dept.
from the don't-tag-this-porn dept.
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."
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First Use (Score:3, Funny)
Why else would you want a 3D experience?
Not all porn should be 3D (Score:4, Funny)
Why else would you want a 3D experience?
Goatse and Tub Girl in 2D was disturbing enough.
Parent
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I'm waiting for tub girl in smell-o-vision.
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Many years ago (about 25 if memory serves) I saw 'Emmanuelle 4' in 3D. It was very... strange. I am sorry to say that absolutely nothing and no-one came flying out of the screen.
Format Wars and Standards (Score:4, Interesting)
This was CLEARLY a joke! (Score:4, Insightful)
Man, those moderators get weirder en weirder...
Parent
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I wouldn't buy this until the Queen of England knights the inventors...
Ah finally!! (Score:2)
TV used to be so relaxing (Score:3, Interesting)
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indeed. TV is "noisy wallpaper" to me.
I grew up in a loud household, and silence is uncomfortable.
I will not, however, wear goofy glasses (especially because i wear prescription eyewear as it is) just so jon stewart pops out at me.
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I will not, however, wear goofy glasses (especially because i wear prescription eyewear as it is) just so jon stewart pops out at me.
In Soviet Russia, you pop out at Jon Stewart.
Unfortunately hard to take-off (Score:5, Insightful)
Motion sickness
Astigmatism
Eye strain
The fact some people just can't plain see it despite having 2 eyes
Battery life of wireless shutter glasses
Looking like a nerd
There's some serious patience required to adjust to it, its not natural to focus your eyes direction at one depth, and change the actual focus to another. When what your looking at is far away (like a movie screen), its a lot easier. When its a TV or computer screen that is just a few feet away, its harder to adjust to, and for a lot of people if they don't instantly "click" with something then its hard to get them to want it.
Speaking of the obvious thought of porn, I'm surprised magazines haven't tried using stereoscopic pictures. This is a really easy 3d trick anyone can do- simply take two pictures of a static object side by side with the camera pointing towards a certain object (make sure its the same object in each one!). Put them next to each other, then slowly cross your eyes until they merge. It'll form a 3d picture, full color, no special equipment required, no red/blue glasses to give people headaches. The further apart the pictures are taken, the more pronounced the 3-d effect. You'll want to use the cross-eyed effect as opposed to the "looking into the picture" effect because it allows for a larger picture.
Re:Unfortunately hard to take-off (Score:5, Interesting)
Well if you use a compatible DLP projector (such as those listed here: "http://www.stereo3d.com/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?3177/3347") instead of a pc screen with the shutter glasses, and make the screen very large, the 3d effect is just as if you are looking just as you would normally. Space faring games such as Eve or X3 look the most impressive since it appears that you are floating in infinite space and very massive objects are in your neighbourhood. The cave exploration scenes from Half Life 2 episode 2 were also quite gobsmackingly fantastic; if you put the room light on it appears as though there is a cave system adjunct to the room! And the imposing obsidian combine walls do cause claustrophobia. Stalker had the most detailed 3d models I've seen however, I stood walking around the busted old bus shelter for hours in amazement at it's realism. So did my friends and even my mother, so I think it does help to have a very large screen.
Parent
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 incompatibl
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slowly cross your eyes
No matter how technologically advanced porn gets it's still bad for your eyesight.
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Speaking of the obvious thought of porn, I'm surprised magazines haven't tried using stereoscopic pictures.
Whenever I feel stupid, I'll make sure to picture myself staring at a monitor with my eyes crossed and my hand down my pants.
What about stereoscopic games and movies? I mean, I don't have shutter glasses, but I have several widescreen LCDs that could easily fit two images.
Current trends... (Score:3, Interesting)
several issues will keep 3d from mainstream:
{...}
The fact some people just can't plain see it despite having 2 eyes
Colour blindness hasn't stopped the introduction of colour TV. (BTW: Are people lacking stereo vision legally allowed to drive in the USA ?)
Astigmatism
This is a problem of using correct prescription glasses/contact lenses. In short, nothing to do with a stereo screen.
Battery life of wireless shutter glasses
Looking like a nerd
Well, if you have followed the trend on /. recently, it seems that most hardware maker are working toward cheap auto-stereo display (things that look 3D without glasses, just like the lenticular holograms on some DVD boxes). Which just look like plain s
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Astigmatism
This is a problem of using correct prescription glasses/contact lenses. In short, nothing to do with a stereo screen.
No no no, the glasses can GIVE you astigmatism. I've very much noticed this phenomena after using the shutter glasses for extended periods of time. Its temporary but noticeable. It makes me worry if there are any long term effects that may occur if I used this significantly more often than I did.
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 ty
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I'm surprised magazines haven't tried using stereoscopic pictures. This is a really easy 3d trick anyone can do- simply take two pictures of a static object side by side with the camera pointing towards a certain object (make sure its the same object in each one!). Put them next to each other, then slowly cross your eyes until they merge.
That never ever worked for me. Different coloured glasses are what it takes for me to see reliable 3D from 2D printed material. (3D cinemas can use polarization, or could except I tend to watch films with my head at a slant...)
However, I have seen a 3D display which worked by projecting different images at different angles, so that you could see things without any glasses or other special stuff. It worked really well. This was with display technology that was hot stuff back in 1993 or '94, so I'm sure we ca
Excellent! (Score:2)
Back in my day we had 1D television.... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Back in my day we had 1D television.... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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negative dimension which means (Score:2)
which means that you lived in the hole [citebase.org] in the mandelbrot [wikipedia.org] fractal [wikipedia.org]
Theaters must win on features, not performance. (Score:5, Insightful)
The big news in the movie theater business is that Regal, AMC and Cinemark are closing a deal with Hollywood to pay for digital 3D projectors going into many of their theaters so the big summer movies of 2009 can look better than anything an HDTV can do. But if HDTVs will do stereoscopic 3D in a few years, then Hollywood and the theater chains have just blown a huge amount of money on tech that'll only get customers out of their homes for a few years.
This is why theaters need to stop pushing performance and start pushing features. With digital projection, movie theaters can theoretically show everything that's popular on TV: live sports, live news, talk shows, religious shows, long running scripted dramas and comedies. It's even technically possible for theaters to connect video game hardware to the projector and run controllers down to the audience so people can play a video game on the big screen. Of course, it'll be hairy for theaters to get the rights to show any of these things, but the relentless progression of home market tech, especially when it comes to screen size and picture quality, means it's just too expensive for theaters to stay ahead. Theater digital projectors are big and not mass produced, so even if they only perform a little better than home market projectors, they're vastly more expensive and won't come down in price. The last thing theaters need is to blow a huge wad of cash on a new projector, then have to buy another one in a few years.
What's much smarter for theaters to do is buy the least expensive Hollywood-approved projector they can (Christie's CP2000-M is 2.2 megapixels and is bright enough for screens up to 35 feet wide), then feed it with every conceivable kind of content. News reels died in the 1960s not because people don't want to drive to theaters to watch the news (the communal setting actually improves news just as much as it improves movies), but because only TV could show news live. Now theaters have most of the tech they need to show live news, but it hasn't occurred to them to ask the TV networks for content. Theaters still think Hollywood is the only sugar daddy they have.
It's great news that HDTVs will soon get stereoscopic 3D. I just hope Hollywood and movie theaters don't use it as an excuse to replace their projectors yet again. They need to compete against the home market creatively, not by throwing more dollars at the projection booth.
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I think theaters will just die.
They will work for a while until prices of large screens go down. It's not a big deal, the money will go to a different business model, the space will be used for live performances of whatever else. And the world will go on.
It has a long tradition and has had a great impact but, let's face it, putting hundreds of people in a single room just to see recorded media only makes sense until people can see that same media in a quality similar enough, at home.
The key is in the "simil
Re:Theaters must win on features, not performance. (Score:5, Insightful)
Theaters are a place to go, a thing to do, an experience to enjoy. They will never go away.
Parent
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People have been saying that since the VHS home rental market sprang up. Most people were satisfied with that. There is no quality threshold that the stay-at-home crowd is waiting for, it already came long ago.
I think it's a matter of amount of difference. People said that before because the ability to actually see the movie seemed to be the main function. Then we discovered that quality was important enough to grant going to the theater for the best products (movies) and leaving the rest for the home systems.
To dodge the new menace of equal quality we would have to discover the other thing about theaters that make it worth to keep going. And here we reach your other point:
Theaters are a place to go, a thing to do, an experience to enjoy. They will never go away.
Let's see if theaters could reach the ti
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I think theaters will just die.
What, you don't like sticky floors, being locked in with hypercaffeinated brats who yap on their cell phones all the way through the picture, and the chance of acquiring whatever airborne maladies the sickest of your fellow theatergoers might be suffering from? Man up - what kind of consumer are you? (j/k)
The idea of using a central location to display entertainment content won't die out entirely until one or more of the following happens:
1. The viewing experience can
And just when we got rid of flicker (Score:4, Interesting)
After decades of annoying flicker, strobing, and bad pans at 24FPS, we finally got LCD panels that don't flicker at all. Some monitors even time-interpolate to get the frame rate up, and framefree compression [framefree.com] is just starting to work. Now people want to crud it up with alternating-frame stereo. Bleah.
Stereo vision doesn't really do much beyond about 4m or so, and it scales badly for anything that isn't its real size.
There are some very cute 3D systems that are sensitive to head position, so you can move your head and have the scene adjust accordingly. But that doesn't work in theaters.
why? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't get why people want this. Most real-world 3D perception (the kind of scenes you see in movies) derives from motion parallax, not binocular stereo. Trying to use stereo for those scenes is completely unrealistic and visually disturbing.
Also, flat images are kind of scale free, but 3D scenes are not. If you watch Jurassic Park in 3D on your television, you really do see a bunch of 8 inch toy dinosaurs fighting in a little box. Ooh, scary.
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and LASIK@Home on channel 5 !
HDTV is overrated (Score:2)
Never thought HD was a big step. Just a concession to the cable companies.
Need to perfect TV before you move onto 3d. Need 'photographic tv with higher resolutions and better colors'. Needs to be magazine quality.
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nope, features (portability, simplicity, stereo, 3D, ...) always (often) beat Quality.
Think Tapes vs cassette, Cinemascope vs VHS, DVD Audio (and HiFi even) vs MP3, LCDs vs. CRT (much better image vs flat screens )...
Maybe SHD is better for you : there will be Audiophiles for 2D (maybe they will be called Pictophiles), but if (and there are many good reasons it might not) 3D catches on, Super ultra 2D high def will be a niche.
Now if only ... (Score:3, Funny)
What I want... (Score:2)
Is holographic TV. Time and time again we have seen them try to sell 3D that needs some stupid glasses,and time and time again it has failed. there are simply too many problems inherent with the glasses,especially with battery operated ones like this. And can you imagine trying to keep your kids from messing these stupid glasses up? Not going to happen. With a holographic TV I don't have to worry about glasses,my family trying to get these things on around their eyeglasses, worrying about someone losing or
You're our only hope... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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They'll be too busy trying to grope the female characters for that.
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Simple, cheap and high quality 3D home theater (Score:3, Interesting)
You need:
1. A PC with support for two monitors (most)
2. Two projectors
3. Polarizing filters for the projectors (standard from photography store)
4. Polaroid sunglasses (lightweight and cheap)
I suggest circular right and left polarizes. Now set the two projectors next to each other, and superimpose the two images, put on glasses, and voila, you have a great 3D movie theater.
It it great that video standards are emerging, but it you can also DIY.
Still:You could use two cameras, but one camera in "rapid shoot" from a moving vehicle works beautifully; just take two sequential pictures on the two monitors.
Video: More of a hassle, but basically shoot the scenes with two cameras separated like your eyes, and play them. You will have to use special effect to merge the two videos together to get one that spans both monitors, or use video editing tools to synchronize two separate video signals.
Have fun
The new video 3D video standards will help making this easier.
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Now all I have to do is glue two video cameras together and sell it as a "budget 3-D video camera"...
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You'd also need to rotate one of the lenses in the glasses by 90 degrees, which could be tricky if they're not completely round.
I've wanted a gaming set-up like this for years. Maybe one day someone will start to produce projectors with two polarised DLP chips built in.
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If there were video drivers that supported it (nVidia's could, if they did a little work on them) then I'd be very, very tempted to do this for gaming.
In fact, I'm not 100% sure nVidia's don't already support it... After a little research, I'm left confused about it. It would be really awesome.
In related news,... (Score:4, Funny)
great strides are being made in the use of 3-D DRM. Says Chester Smith of the MPAA, we are now faced with 2 more dimensions to the problem, but I am certain we will prevail.
Of course... (Score:4, Funny)
Of course consumer 3D television is moving forward. Up/down and left/right are already well taken care of by existing 2D television.
In Defence Of We Lazy Fat Bastards.... (Score:3, Interesting)
How's this for an idea?
How about all you entertainment and media companies just assume that after a hard day's work, all I really want to do is just sit there and BE ENTERTAINED. Yes, you can have a wedge of my cash for the privelige of doing so and if you make it appealing enough to me then I might just drag my fat lazy ass into the car so I can drive to the local cinema to go see what you have on offer.
But please stop with all this "interactive" and gimmicky shit, okay? I can quite happily sit here in front of my computer for the occasionally half-hour and be thoroughly entertained by a 20-year-old 48kb game called "Jet Set Willy" and then be equally entertained by pounding alien heads in Half-Life 2. I don't ALWAYS need whizzy graphics & 8GB of installed game to be immersed, sometimes simple shit does fine.
Likewise, I don't need to "Pick N Mix" my own songs for my own CD compilation because I'm more than happy to accept that an army of musicians, producers & media types are a whole heap better at that shit than I am - most of the time, I just want to give you some money, take a shiny disk in exchange, throw it into my hifi and let it play, okay?
So please don't think I am sat here waiting for 3D TV because somehow I need to be "more immersed" in your shit, okay? Believe it or not, most of the time a 2D TV, a pizza and a few beers is enough to keep me happy.
How about we make it simple? You keep offering good quality shit at a reasonable price and I will just BUY it so I can watch/read/listen to it.
Just DANCE FOR ME MONKEY BOY! Okay?
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Aaargghhh... MBA-speak has invaded my last bastion, Slashdot.
Seconded. Irked me too. Although "going forward" would have been a more direct hit.
I have other 'favourites' but it hurts to recall them (and type them).