HDTV Almanac - DIY 2D->3D

[alfredpoor]

Conventional wisdom holds that people won’t buy 3DTVs by the millions because they don’t want to wear the goofy glasses and there isn’t enough content available. I’ve already addressed the first item, but let’s look at the second one for a moment.
According to the 3D@Home site, Hollywood plans to release about 40 movies – new [...]

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[retinadoc]

I almost never watch a show I've seen before. Maybe I would for the initial thrill of it but don't know if I'd keep coming back. Maybe if they turned their tricks on shows yet to air but were recorded in 2D. I leaped into 3d recently with a Mitsubishi TV and DirecTV programming and I am impressed with picture.

[alfredpoor]

I almost never watch a show I've seen before.

Me neither. However, there are lots of shows and movies that I missed the first time around. For example, I only discovered Firefly last year. Now I'm watching the first year of Law and Order: CI because I didn't start watching it until the second or third year. Would I go out of my way to see them in 3D at this point? No. If I had a 3D set, would I appreciate them more if they were available in (good) 3D? Probably. And there are dozens of movies from the past 10 years that I haven't seen that I'd probably enjoy watching.

Alfred

[retinadoc]

That's a good point. Tudors. Mad Men.

[hharris4earthlink]

I'm skeptical. Remember that a 3D movie contains much more information that a 2D. Consider a 2D movie shot from the inside of a passenger car. Through a window you can see telephone poles, buildings, trees and people moving by. The telephone poles are the easiest. Since all telephone poles have similar sizes, a computer algorithm can deduce relative positions. People are harder but there are ways to make good guess. Buildings are hard, especially if there are no clues like standard window sizes. But consider that this is a very simple example, and it only takes one goofy mistake to ruin the picture. I doubt any computer algorithm is going to be fool proof, surely resulting in weird effects that will take the viewer out of the story and into the realm of unintended comedy. What his means is that the cost of transfer to 3D has to included a lot of human interpretation. So the question is . . . is it worth the added cost?

[alfredpoor]

True about mistakes, but human encoders probably are even more likely to make mistakes.

As for the lack of information, you'd be amazed at how many depth cues are contained in a single 2D image. I won't turn this into a tutorial, but relative size, overlapping objects, perspective lines of regularly shaped objects, changes in patterns and textures, and haze are just a few. And if you have adjacent frames to use in the comparison -- which is the case with video -- you add motion parallax and relative motion, which are powerful cues. Remember that most people do not rely on stereoscopic vision for depth perception beyond about 30 feet; you get almost all your depth cues beyond that distance from monoscopic images. So a computer actually can be trained to go a pretty good job, especially if you don't require "negative Z" (in front of the screen) 3D effects.

Alfred

[hharris4earthlink]

Fascinating! Perhaps we can look forward to one day seeing historical films translated into 3D as the preferred format. This technology might also be a tool for the police. 3D translation might reveal spacial relationships not obvious in 2D that could conceivably give police or witnesses better a understanding of the crime.

[alfredpoor]

I suspect that some intelligence agencies are already using this. As for historical films, at the Society for Information Display conference in Seattle last May, I attended an evening of 3D cinema demonstrations, which included a clip from "Robinzon Crusoe", a black and white fillm from Russia from 1947. This technology definitely can be applied to older titles. ("Here's look at -- and around -- you, kid!")

Alfred

[Roger Halstead]

Although I'm usually an early adopter, the glasses both passive and active give me a whale of a headache after wearing them for a while.

I've worn bifocals for nearly 30 years so it's not wearing glasses that bothers me, it's the way those glasses work. That and they need to be broadcasting in 1080p and I'd need a good 60" screen in place of the fireplace which is unlikely to happen any time soon. By then I'll probably be so old I'll need the 60" screen just to see what's going on. So, a new, large screen TV may be in the offerings within a couple years, but the 40" is in warranty for another 2 or 3. Even then my interest will be HD rather than 3D. There's just not that much on that I'd like to see in 3D. Hopefully they will be replacing HDMI with CAT5 or 6 cables by then.

[ronnie]

Fortunately I don't have to worry about the problems and expense to go to 3D. My wife and I watched a demo and it made her dizzy after a few minutes of an action scene and she refuses to have on in the house.