Look out, Panasonic and Sony, you’ve got another player walking onto the court. And LG is a force to be reckoned with. According to a report in Reuters, the company is drawing a bead on the emerging 3DTV market. LG has stated that it intends to sell 400,000 3DTVs in 2010, then skyrocketing to 3.4 [...]
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HDTV Almanac - LG Aims at 3D
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alfredpoor
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videograbber
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I'm tempted to say this sounds like a really asinine announcement, but instead, I'll merely say "I'm confused".
How do you sell 400k 3dTVs, much less millions, when there is no content (and there isn't, yet), much less the standards have not even been defined, and are still being developed? Perhaps someone could explain this to me?
Do you do it in the typical industry-sleazy fashion, by promising compatibility with something that will (may) materialize in the future? So basically they intend to sell lots of 3DTV-"ready" sets? If so, thanks!, I already have one of those (and it may well not even play whatever 3D-standard is someday settled on).
- Tim
How do you sell 400k 3dTVs, much less millions, when there is no content (and there isn't, yet), much less the standards have not even been defined, and are still being developed? Perhaps someone could explain this to me?
Do you do it in the typical industry-sleazy fashion, by promising compatibility with something that will (may) materialize in the future? So basically they intend to sell lots of 3DTV-"ready" sets? If so, thanks!, I already have one of those (and it may well not even play whatever 3D-standard is someday settled on).
- Tim
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alfredpoor
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Standards are overated
The lack of "standards" for 3DTV is not the roadblock that too many analysts have made it out to be. (And way too many technology press writers and bloggers are blindly parroting the position.) 3DTV is stereoscopic content: two views of each frame. That means you have to either convey the depth information for the scene, or both frames, or (this is what I think will eventually win out) one frame and the differences for the second frame. But the point is that it's a software problem, not a hardware one.
Beta versus VHS was a hardware issue; you can't read the tape if it's the wrong dimensions and has the data physically written to it in the wrong way. But that's not what's happening with 3DTV. When you watch a video clip on the Web, what format is it? AVI, WMF, MOV, MP4? And within these major choices, there are maybe dozens of different codecs (encoder/decoder algorithms). I bet most people don't know which one they are using; they just click on the Play icon and watch the clip. That's because the software is making the choices for them and figuring out how to show the images. It will be the same for 3DTV; if a new format becomes popular, it will probably require just a simple firmware upgrade -- delivered automatically from the Internet -- and the user will never know there was a problem.
So let's dispense with the myth that we'll never get 3DTV until we settle on a standard. (Standards certainly are required on the production side, so we can have a common format that can be turned into whatever delivery format you want, but that's already been settled by SMPTE.)
However, I tried to make it clear that I think these efforts to sell 3DTVs are premature. Notwithstanding the fact that Sky satellite service in the UK will have an all-3D channel, I agree that we're way too light on content to make the industry roll. But hardware has always led software; how many years did we have USB ports before they did anything useful? And now we can't figure out how we had computers without them.
So these companies will sell "3DTV-ready" sets, just as we had "HDTV-ready" sets not so long ago. And I expect that they will work fine with the 3D content that comes along eventually. I'll even go so far to say that I expect that your "3D-capable" set (assuming it's one of the Pansonic or Samsung rear projection models) will work just fine with 3D content. Check back with me in 2013 and let me know if I was right or not.
Alfred
Beta versus VHS was a hardware issue; you can't read the tape if it's the wrong dimensions and has the data physically written to it in the wrong way. But that's not what's happening with 3DTV. When you watch a video clip on the Web, what format is it? AVI, WMF, MOV, MP4? And within these major choices, there are maybe dozens of different codecs (encoder/decoder algorithms). I bet most people don't know which one they are using; they just click on the Play icon and watch the clip. That's because the software is making the choices for them and figuring out how to show the images. It will be the same for 3DTV; if a new format becomes popular, it will probably require just a simple firmware upgrade -- delivered automatically from the Internet -- and the user will never know there was a problem.
So let's dispense with the myth that we'll never get 3DTV until we settle on a standard. (Standards certainly are required on the production side, so we can have a common format that can be turned into whatever delivery format you want, but that's already been settled by SMPTE.)
However, I tried to make it clear that I think these efforts to sell 3DTVs are premature. Notwithstanding the fact that Sky satellite service in the UK will have an all-3D channel, I agree that we're way too light on content to make the industry roll. But hardware has always led software; how many years did we have USB ports before they did anything useful? And now we can't figure out how we had computers without them.
So these companies will sell "3DTV-ready" sets, just as we had "HDTV-ready" sets not so long ago. And I expect that they will work fine with the 3D content that comes along eventually. I'll even go so far to say that I expect that your "3D-capable" set (assuming it's one of the Pansonic or Samsung rear projection models) will work just fine with 3D content. Check back with me in 2013 and let me know if I was right or not.
Alfred
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videograbber
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alfredpoor
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Great set
Thanks for the kind words, Tim; I'm glad I was able to offer a reasonable explanation.
Also -- you've got a great set. It was on my short list of large screens; I'm a huge fan of rear projection and still think that they represented a great bargain. And the model you have with the Luminus Devices Phlatlight high brightness LEDs was one of my favorites; solid state and energy efficiency lighting makes so much sense for rear projection (and now it's appearing in front projection as well)!
Alfred
Also -- you've got a great set. It was on my short list of large screens; I'm a huge fan of rear projection and still think that they represented a great bargain. And the model you have with the Luminus Devices Phlatlight high brightness LEDs was one of my favorites; solid state and energy efficiency lighting makes so much sense for rear projection (and now it's appearing in front projection as well)!
Alfred