News and Reviews....

    Three D When and Where     January 2010

By Robert Lieto

There has been a lot of talk going around concerning 3-D TV. Some say its the "Next Best Thing" , some the "Savior of the CE industry" and some saying the next "Waste of Time and Money". Or all of the above, depending where you sit. I do believe it might be the next best thing for the commercial movie theater to attract back its customers, but the methods and differences of the many players in the industry, makes it another WATCH, Wait and SEE from my standpoint. 

First off, the expected penetration of 3-D into the home depends on the many industry players coming up with a STANDARD that all can follow. We have seen in the past how that approach has caused perfectly good mediums to fade away. Recently, we witnessed the BLU-RAY take-over of HD-DVD. Now Blu-ray is trying to acquire all DVD sales by lowering the player and disc prices. Asking the public to once again change its library of software over to another format. The public is not responding and Blu-Ray might go the way of the Beta-Max due the download capabilities of the Internet. (Ironic that both the Beta-max and the Blu-ray was an approach by SONY to sew up the industry with their exclusive products) I have been very cautious in our designs for the BLU-Ray works best on the HDMI interface which in itself does not work all the time. I have offered our customers the Up converting DVD players to make use of their standard DVD libraries on a HDTV screen. The HDMI Licensing board will meet this month to add an additional 3D format (tentatively named "Top/Bottom" to the HDMI specification, supporting the use of the 3D format over HDMI. Legacy set-top boxes (those that are already deployed in the market) are required to comply with the HDMI Specification version 1.4 requirements for 3D functionality even if only implementing one or more of the 3D formats in Appendix H of the specification.

The download abilities of the Internet and the simultaneous development of the Flash Drive Storage will create the Home Library of the future. Flash drive storage is not there on a large scale as yet and Hard Disc Drive is the storage medium of choice now. It is still in the Analog Realm due to the mechanical nature of the Hard Disc Drive and susceptible to mechanical failure. The Movie servers of today still use the Mechanical disc drive but stack them in a RAID configuration to prevent loss of data from mechanical drive problems.

3-D is expected to take to about 2014 to gain a reasonable percentage of in home displays. I have read that LCD (Liquid Crystal Display), whether it is backlit with CFC or LEDs  is not as good as Plasma for 3-D due to the technology itself. Many Plasma companies including Panasonic which is the plasma leader are developing their method for 3-D using glasses that shutter one eye then the other in sync with the 24 - 30 frames per second of film recording. There are others that have glasses with the RED / GREEN lenses, and ones that have other lens polarizing effects. So it is going to be some time for the powers that be to come up with a STANDARD. Will it ever arrive as a forceful option or be taken over by some other new and greater revelation remains to be seen.