3-D TV Garners Interest of Hollywood Animators

Animators Envision 3-D TV – excerpt from Wall Street Journal

Before we get to the article, here’s a quick note about 3-D TVs and the current technology available to consumers….I still can’t find hard evidence that these 3D-ready TVs are actually capable of serving 3D images as I’ve never seen a consumer actually watch 3D TV at home (tech conferences don’t count!)  This is clearly putting focus on the interlacing of two images and special “shutter” glasses as the technology of the future – I DISAGREE.  It is however, a great first step.

Anyways, I found a couple TVs with this 3D-ready capability.  Here’s one from Samsung and I quote, “The HLT generation of Samsung DLP HDTVs are capable of displaying future 3D games, movies, and other programming via 3D compatible glasses and hardware.”  This quote was found for this TV on Amazon Samsung HLT5689S 56-Inch Slim LED Engine 1080p DLP HDTV

Back to the article excerpt (Wall Street Journal):

Animation giants have vowed this year to turn three-dimensional technology from a curiosity to a fixture in theaters. Now comes the attack on homes.

The quest to deliver 3-D versions of television shows, movies and videogames to the living room will be a hot topic at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, which kicks off Wednesday night in Las Vegas. The offerings face some big challenges — including a grim economy and the difficulty of persuading users to wear special glasses associated with most 3-D technologies.

Yet some industry executives see the technology as an inevitable step to generate user excitement now that high-definition TV sets are reaching a mainstream audience. “The next big wave is 3-D,” says Bob Perry, a senior vice president at Panasonic Corp.

Some of the key building blocks have already arrived, and more are expected at CES. (Please see related article.) Companies including Samsung Electronics Co., Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and Hyundai IT Corp. have begun selling what they call “3-D ready” TV sets. Such new sets and computer monitors refresh images at high speed to help reduce the headache-inducing tendencies of early 3-D offerings.

There isn’t much programming yet to exploit the new TV sets. But companies such as Dolby Laboratories Inc. and TDVision Systems Inc. plan to use CES to discuss new formats to encode and distribute 3-D signals, removing a roadblock to creating content.

Many videogames were created using 3-D modeling techniques, making it easy to render them in three dimensions. Chip maker Nvidia Corp., for example, at CES is introducing for $199 special glasses and associated software that it says can play more than 350 existing videogames in 3-D for users with advanced displays. In a demonstration, zombie enemies in one shooting game appear to grab in front of the screen, while players dodge and fire around 3-D bushes and trees.

“When you’ve seen it, you kind of don’t want to go back,” says Dan Vivoli, Nvidia’s senior vice president of marketing.

Simulating three dimensions requires two images, one each for the user’s left and right eyes. One approach used since the 1950s distinguishes the images using colored filters in paper glasses. That technology, known as anaglyph, has recently been used with DVD versions of 3-D movies released in theaters.

But consumer-electronics companies want to create a much richer experience in the home, akin to the eye-popping effects being shown in theaters by companies such as DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. and Walt Disney Co.

Their animated movies exploit a projection technology using polarized light and inexpensive plastic glasses, which creates effects that most viewers prefer over anaglyph technology.

For the home, Nvidia and other companies at CES favor what the industry calls active glasses, with shutters that are synchronized to open and close rapidly with the aid of an infrared emitter. Those approaches require fast-refreshing TV sets or displays and are considerably more costly than the anaglyph or polarized glasses.

for more – check out The Wall Street Journal