Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2010 seems to have many themes, and one of
the biggest one is 3D TV. It seems like just about every company that has
anything to do with video is showing off a 3D-something. I had a good idea that
3D was going to be a big thing before going into CES; to be honest, I wasn't
blown away by any of the 3D I saw, but it was cool nonetheless.
I saw two different kinds of 3D technology in use. The first one I saw uses
glasses, and of this there are two main kinds of glasses: active
and passive.
The second kind doesn't use glasses. If you want to watch 3D, that means that
you need to somehow send one picture to the left eye, and one to the right.
This means for every picture you now need two, which means some sort of trade
off. This trade off is in the form of either lower resolution, or lower frame
rate. To compensate either, you need to double the resolution or double the
frame rate.
I only saw a couple of sets that did not require glasses, the most notable
by Samsung. The 3D  TV without glasses uses a special lens called a lenticular
lens, which works sort of like venetian blinds. When you look straight on
at this lens, the slight angle between your eyes can be used to direct video to
one eye or the other. To do this, it means the even lines would be for one eye,
while the odd lines would be for the other; this results in noticeably lower
resolution. Another thing is that you need to stand in the right place to see
the effect. The TV I saw had 8 angles where the effect would work. I found that
the 3D effect worked, but made me dizzy, and made me really dizzy if I was not
standing in the correct position.
The active glasses method requires special glasses that either has wires
connected to them, or has a battery and is worked by remote. The glasses method
cuts your frame rate in half, so to compensate, TV makers have upped the
refresh rate. The idea with the active glasses is that the glasses effectively
have shutters in them, such that they alternate between left and right eye. At
the same time, the screen alternates between the left and right eye. The main
advantage to this method is that it requires the least amount of specialized TV
hardware.
The passive glasses work with polarization; some use clockwise and
counterclockwise circular polarization, while others use horizontal and
vertical polarization. In this case, the image has been polarized so that each
eye gets the correct image. With circular polarization, you can tilt your head
at any angle; with the horizontal/vertical, you have to keep your head straight
or the 3D effect goes away. The disadvantage to this is that it requires the TV
to be built with the ability to polarize the images.
Now the bad news: it seems like no matter what the method, you are going to
need a TV that has been designed to work with 3D. I went into CES excited to
see how 3D was going to be in all our living rooms. After seeing what is
available, I don't know how quickly that will happen, or how satisfied the
general consumer will be with current solutions.
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Re: 3D TV at CES 2010 (Day 1)
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