Well well well, I appear to have been beaten to it! I always said that 3DTV will never catch on because of:
- The stupid glasses that you have to wear whether you want to watch sport, films or even the adverts
- The lack of parallax in current systems for more than one viewer at a time
- The fact that the edge of the screen is still the edge
I recently visited the NEC in Birmingham for ‘Focus On Imaging’, an annual photographic showcase of the latest innovations in photography and digital imaging. As I walked past the Panasonic stand, I was offered to view their newest 3DTV, the appropriately-named TC-P50VT20.
I had to wear these stupid glasses that were both heavy and uncomfortable (and battery-powered!) to watch two 3-minute 3D films.
The image that the system gave was quite impressive, but if I moved ever so slightly to try and trigger parallax, the effect was ruined. After the films had shown and everyone had left, I took my chance to talk to the girl from Panasonic about the system. The method used was quite crude and I don’t think it will catch on. The screen would show alternating images for the right and then the left eye at 120Hz and each time, send out an infrared signal to the glasses, which would use LCD technology to cover the appropriate eye. This is just a LED/LCD version of one of the oldest 3D techniques.
I quizzed the girl on the lack of 3DTV standards and the response I got was: “We’re hoping to set the standard…” – WRONG! That’s not how standards are set! Go back 2 years and we can see 2 companies trying to ‘set the standard’ in the form of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Roll back 30 years and we see a similar story with Betamax and VHS. Now imagine the same scenario with more than 5 or 6 media giants trying to set the standard. Nothing good will happen and it will inevitably be the system with the most money to back it up winning, rather than the best or the most efficient.
One company that has solved 2 out of my 3 gripes (which is twice as much as any other company!) is Holografika, who have created a 3DTV that features parallax AND you don’t have to wear a pair of glasses to watch it. The price for this privilege? £26,265! The other downside? you have to have 4 video sources, typically 4x DVI-I or DVI-D signals.
The hardest problem to solve is the border problem. It really annoys me when 3DTVs are shown with things ‘coming out’ of them:
Until someone solves all 3 of these things, the 3DTV will never reach its full potential. We will all end up looking like complete idiots, sitting in our under-furnished white-walled homes wearing heavy, bulky glasses that cause headaches watching giraffes on a TV that ISN’T 3D…
I close my case…
