HDTV Almanac - CES 2010: Do We Need 3DTV Content?

[alfredpoor]

As I mentioned yesterday, we will need a sufficient quantity of 3D content in order for 3D channels and 3D television sales to succeed, but only a limited amount is available at this point. But maybe that’s not the obstacle that it would appear to be.
At the press conferences at CES on Wednesday, two companies [...]

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[BobDiaz]

My own personal feeling is that 3D TV is going to be the next big flop.

(1) You must wear the special glasses.

(2) We're still recovering from the worst recession and at best, 3D sales will be so so.

(3) There's still limited programming.

[videograbber]

Alfred,

thanks a lot for sharing your experience! This may be the best news of all in the 3D arena, for this show. Like yourself, I considered the paucity of 3-D content to be the Achilles heel, and wondered if they weren't jumping the gun. I don't expect there will be any significant quantity of "real" 3-D to justify these sets for at least another year, if not longer.

However, the ability to convert 2D to 3D, especially dynamically, in real-time, sidesteps that problem neatly and makes 3D sets viable immediately. I'm not really surprised that it's possible to do so, considering what todays GPU chips are capable of. Taking one HD image, and doing shift and scaling ops to create 2 separate stereoscopic images isn't overly difficult, and exposes the latent dimensionality inherent in the 2D source material. I.e., it triggers those receptors in the brain that perceive "depth".

What I am a bit surprised about though (and quite pleased) is that they've chosen to make this capability available, right out of the box. And the reason for that surprise is that while it makes the sets themselves vastly more attractive, it makes less critical the necessity of producing "true" 3D content, at significantly higher prices to the consumer (which I think a lot of studios are counting on). But this makes a whole lot more sense to me than the upcoming "3D channels", which will likely contain significant amounts of 2D-3D converted material, just like many "HD" channels today contain a lot of upconverted SD that's labeled as HD (TBS, TNT, ad infinitum). If I can 3D-convert (or upscale) at home, why do I need these channels wasting bandwidth to do it for me? (Answer: I don't. And, in fact, I likely have larger 2D libraries to draw on than they do.)

I'm especially happy to hear that your reactions to the 3D-conversions were so positive:
- "my skepticism was erased by what I saw",
- "it made a noticeable difference on the 2D source content",
- "resulted in a very attractive and watchable image",
- "...looked really good",
- "I would prefer to watch the content in the “simulated” 3D than in the original 2D",
- "it looked more natural".

This bodes well for the future.

[Now my only question will be: when (if ever) can I just buy a black-box, containing the electronics from the sets you reported on, with HDMI in and HDMI out, that takes 2D HD input and generates the 3D output for my Samsung "3D-ready" LED-DLP RPTV set? I can do this already with a PC, and I've got the glasses and emitter, but only for SD content from DVDs, using the kit from Samsung. And I'm not willing to sacrifice HD for 3D.]

- Tim

[regman]

3D, with the glasses, wasn't exactly a big hit in the 50's either. It's a gimmic that people will tire of really fast. I had a computer game with 3D LCD glasses and it made me sick after 30 minutes.

I'll wait until they have perfected (and cheapend) laser holography...

[eliwhitney]

alfredpoor . .

Mr. Poor - -

Please share your opinions as to in what ways this "3D" will or might be affected w/ the coming Bandwidth limitations?

{IF downloads, etc., as opposed to only cable connections become involved, etc..}

Thanks!

eli

[hharris4earthlink]

This is the worst idea since color filters were marketed to turn black and white TV into color TV. Just like that horrible idea, turning a 2D picture into a 3D picture would involve assumptions about what was on the screen. If it's at the top it's far away. If it's at the bottom it must be close. Combine this with some assumptions based on relative motions and you're guaranteed to get an unwatchable mess much worse that the original 2D. But no doubt some people will buy it, use it once and then we'll be reading about how the public was ripped off.

More formally, the second law of thermodynamics says:

In any closed system, the entropy of the system will either remain constant or increase. QED