3D Vision Blog

This summer should be big for all the major TV brands that are going to release the new wave of 3D-capable HDTVs, or at least everyone hopes it to be like that and expects this to happen, but will it turn out as expected or not is another thing. It very much depends on how many early adopters will go for the 3D technology on a TV for more general use and not just for specifics like gaming in stereoscopic 3D which is something that you can even do at the moment with a 120Hz monitor. A 3D-capable HDTV will bring you a bigger screen which is best suitable for movies, but you’ll be getting the whole thing – 3D photos, movies and games.

If you’ve been watching closely nobody besides Sony is talking about stereo 3D gaming, but Sony is doing this related to their PlayStation 3 console only, but what about the PC users? I mean at the moment playing games in stereoscopic 3D is the best thing you can do on a 3D-capable display and this is just because there is enough content. Basically almost all 3D games can easily be played in stereo 3D with the help of special software such as Nvidia’s 3D Vision, DDD’s Tridef Ingnition or iZ3D’s Driver and you don’t need games that are specially made for S3D, although that does help. Unfortunately there is no information regarding how and if we are going to be able to use these new 3D-capable HDTVs along with out computers to play games in stereo 3D or watch 3D movies! And considering that at the moment S3D gaming is the major driving force for the adoption of 3D-capable monitors why it seems that the TV manufacturers tend to completely ignore the most important factor?

Regarding videos things are not looking so bright, there is practically very little quality movies and other video content available in a stereoscopic 3D format and that is a serious issue. Hell, there are not even stereoscopic 3D trailers being officially released for movies that are being shown in 3D cinemas, something which is considered promotional material as should get you interested to go see the full movie in a cinema. There are mostly amateur stereo 3D videos that are being freely distributed or very few short demonstrations and that is all, the free content I mean, but even if you are ready to pay you are still out of luck. You’ll have a very hard time finding anything good in the form of stereo 3D movie that you can enjoy on your 3D-capable TV, unless if you want to go for crappy anaglyph videos, but for these you actually don’t need a special TV. Blu-ray 3D is soon going to be available, but at first there aren’t going to be a lot of movies for it. Starting at the summer we’ll probably have just a few titles by the end of the year, so in 2010 it might not be worth the investment for a 3D-ready HDTV, along with a Blu-ray 3D player just for watching 3D movies and there are not much of these. You might consider going way cheaper and just go watch them in a 3D cinema and wait some more, but that is if we are talking about getting a 3D-ready setup just for Blu-ray 3D this year…

And then comes the 3D TV where I suppose everyone is putting their trust into bringing the interest in 3D-capable HDTVs to a mass level, starting with the FIFA World Cup Football Championship 2010 in South Africa that is coincidentally going to start this summer. And there is a lot of trust put in the sports programs being aired in 3D that are supposed to bring crowds of fans of different sports in front of the TV, instead of them going to the stadium. But hey, don’t forget that not everyone likes to watch football or any other sport so that is leaving a big hole and leads to some common mistakes being done when there are global sports events happening – relying too much on the sports fans for pushing products, services and technologies. I’ll talk about the first 3D channels that we are expecting to start being aired very soon in a bit, but when I do that you’ll notice that all of them do plan to have sports events in 3D and that might just not be enough. After all you know the saying – the content is the king, and without the appropriate content 3D might not turn out so big at the start. And yes, I know there are already quite a lot of 3D-capable TVs available, but most of them are actually not been used even once for displaying 3D content and if you ask why, the answer will be very simple – no attractive 3D content being available. Anyway, let me get to the 3D TV channels that are coming later this year and in 2011 that are already announced and expected to be the first and enough with my pessimism…

Sky Channel 3D appears to be the first of the 3D TV channels that we are expecting to see, but this one goes on air in United Kingdom only, sometime in April. And they already did some interesting tests by broadcasting a football match between Arsenal and Manchester United in a few different pubs in London, Manchester, Cardiff and Edinburgh. And this test received quite good feedback from the people that were lucky to be actually watching the game in 3D. Have in mind that the April launch seems to be only related to having the 3D sports content being pushed to a wider number of pubs and not to the general public. And later in the year, Sky 3D will be made available to all Sky+HD customers with a range of content on offer, that will include movies, sport, documentaries and entertainment programs.

DIRECTV (names unknown), backed up by Panasonic should be starting up 3 dedicated 3D channels in the USA. They should be available beginning in June 2010, with customers of the DIRECT TV HD service getting a free software upgrade enabling them to have access to the new 3D channels through their 3D-ready television sets. DIRECTV’s new 3D channels will deliver movies, sports and entertainment content. Also DIRECTV is currently working with AEG/AEG Digital Media, CBS, Fox Sports/FSN, Golden Boy Promotions, HDNet, MTV, NBC Universal and Turner Broadcasting System to develop additional 3D programming that will debut in 2010-2011. At launch, the new DIRECTV HD 3D programming platform will offer a 24/7 3D pay per view channel focused on movies, documentaries and other programming, a 24/7 3D DIRECTV on Demand channel and a free 3D sampler demo channel featuring event programming such as sports, music and other content.

ESPN 3D is another channel that will be offering sports programs starting this summer (in USA), beginning June 11 with the first 2010 FIFA World Cup match South Africa vs. Mexico. The network plans to feature at least 85 live sporting events during its first year, but they’ll probably have other non-live sports content to fill in the holes, but the channel will most likely not be airing content 24/7 at first. Among the planned sports events to be aired live in 3D are up to 25 World Cup matches, the 2011 BCS National Championship Game, college basketball and football and the Summer X Games.

Canal+ 3D will be the first 3D TV channel in France with a launch date planned before Christmas 2010. The new 3D channel will broadcast movies, live events, sports and animation. With the current set-top boxes available to satellite subscribers of Canal+ said to be already compatible with the upcoming 3D broadcast, the only thing that remains is for the viewers to get a hold of a 3D-ready TV set.

3D Pictures is set to launch its own 3D TV channel by the end of this year in Spain. The new channel should be made available to the users via IPTV, satellite, cable, different mobile devices and so on. The channel is currently negotiating with suppliers of content such as sports, movies, concerts, entertainment, documentaries, animation, plays, circus, current affairs and high profile live events.

Discovery 3D (most likely name) by Discovery Communications, partnering with Sony and IMAX is another 3D TV channel competitor expected to launch in 2011 (in USA), but with plans to have content 24/7, unlike some early competitors. The program of the channel will feature high-quality premium content from genres that are most appealing in 3D, including natural history, space, exploration, adventure, engineering, science and technology, motion pictures and children’s programming from Discovery, Sony Pictures Entertainment, IMAX and other third-party providers.

But what happens if you don’t happen to live in USA, UK, Spain, France or Korea for that matter as they seem to be always ahead in terms of new technology – no 3D TV for you at least for now. Of course the major TV networks will soon have their 3D channels available in other countries too with localized subtitles, but that might bring other issues as 2D subtitles will not always look good over all 3D video content. And even then, there is the matter with you having to wear glasses every time you want to watch TV and that is also something that will take some time to getting used to for most of the people that are new to 3D. So in the end there are a lot of unknown factors yet ahead of the wider stereoscopic 3D adoption that everyone is betting on for starting the summer of this year.

Two weeks ago Sony and RealD officially announced their technology partnership aiming to provide immersive 3D home entertainment to consumers beginning in 2010. The pact includes Sony licensing the stereoscopic RealD Format (side-by-side 3D format), know-how in producing active and passive 3D eyewear and other RealD technologies. Sony and RealD have been closely working together to create a better 3D experience at movie theaters for years. The parties will now join forces to deliver a similar premium 3D entertainment experience to the home.

“Sony has its proprietary LCD panel driving technology to reproduce full HD 3D images on the screen of new “BRAVIA” LCD TVs, which will work in sync with new 3D eyewear based on RealD’s technology. We are excited to work with RealD in bringing 3D to the home,” said Hiroshi Yoshioka, Executive Deputy President, Officer in charge of Consumer Products and Devices Group, Sony Corporation.

A week later JVC Kenwood also had announced its partnership with RealD, but in professional 3D imaging product and not for consumer products, but who knows their partnership could as well be extended. JVC Kenwood already has a track record of producing professional 3D-imaging devices including GD-463D10, a full HD 3D LCD monitor for professional use. Launched earlier in 2009, the monitor quickly earned acclaim for its soft gradation and true color reproduction, and is now being used by Hollywood movie studios, theaters, research institutes and other enterprises involved with professional 3D imaging.

“We are delighted to establish a partnership with RealD, the global leader in 3D technology for cinema, which will allow us to build on our solid track record of technological development for Hollywood and related markets,” said Haruo Kawahara, Chairman, President and CEO of JVC KENWOOD Holdings, Inc. “We hope this will lead to a dramatic increase in our 3D-imaging device business.”

And yesterday Samsung and RealD announced their partnership, with RealD’s 3D technology to be integrated into Samsung’s new line-up of 3D TVs. It seems that Samsung will also support the proprietary stereoscopic RealD Format for the delivery and display of high-quality 3D content. The two companies will also work jointly on active eyewear technology and New Passive Display technology to promote the adoption of quality 3D TV.

“Our collaboration with RealD is helping bring a new dimension of TV entertainment to consumer households around the world,” said Dongho Shin, Senior Vice President of Visual Display Division, Samsung Electronics. “Together, we are committed to enhancing the TV viewing experience with the best that 3D technology can offer including immersive lifelike depth and a new realm of color clarity.”

Other companies may follow the lead very soon and it seems that RealD is on track to becoming the standard to be used by the new wave of 3D TVs that are supposed to be coming out this year. Have in mind that RealD is not only producing passive polarized glasses like the ones you see in 3D cinemas that are also using company’s technology, but also active shutter glasses like Nvidia’s 3D Vision. And the wave of consumer-oriented 3D TVs we expect to start hitting us pretty soon seems to be on track of using active shutter glasses, instead of passive polarized solutions. This however raises an interesting question – how many pairs of glasses you’ll get with the TV and how will you be able to buy additional 3D glasses if you need more people to watch simultaneously. And unlike the PC where you usually need just one pair, because you are alone playing a game in S3D to watching a 3D movie, when 3D moves to the living room and on TV (with 3D TV broadcasts also starting to appear soon) things change a bit – the whole family would want to watch in 3D and will need glasses.

I’ve already written about the interesting DirectShow 3Dfier filter that is doing quite well with realtime conversion from 2D video to stereoscopic 3D. After playing a bit more with the filter I was able to make it work with live TV feed coming from a TV tuner, but I had to use the Stereoscopic Player instead of Nvidia’s 3D Vision Video Player as only the first one supports the Live Video mode for use with TV tuners and other video capture devices. That said I should also note that I was able to make things work with NVidia’s player too, but with a bit of workaround which is making it a bit harder and not so convenient. If you use VideoLAN (VLC) for capture of the live stream from the TV tuner to a file and then open the video file in 3D Vision Video Player you are still good to go, but with just a little bit of a delay.

And since the Stereoscopic Player is a multipurpouse stereoscopic 3D video player that supports much more than what Nvidia’s player offers, you’ll have to open the File menu and then Settings in order to configure the player to use 3D Vision as a viewing method.

Then you need to go to the Decoder menu and there under the Video Processor category Add the 3Dfy 2D-to-3D Transformer. This is actually the DirectShow 3Dfier filter (download it here) that is going to be used for the realtime 2D to stereoscopic 3D video conversion, unfortunately as I already said this is not a free filter and has some limitations for use. I still haven’t gotten any response from the authors of the filter…

The last thing you need to do is to open the File menu and form there to go to Video Properties in order to setup the incoming video stream. By default it will be a monoscopic source, but after adding the 3Dfier filter it will be converted into a Side by Side format, so you need to change the Format Layout to that mode. This is the last step in the setup process, what is left is only to open the Live Video stream from your TV tuner. After you do that you’ll have some additional settings for the TV tuner that will be available in the File menu, you need to use these in order to select the TV channel and to configure the TV Tuner. You can also just choose the right settings from your TV Tuner software, select the needed channel and the close the software and open the Stereoscopic Player to have the tuner settings already applied. It might not be the most convenient way, but still you get pretty nice results from this realtime 2D to stereoscopic 3D conversion from the live TV feed. As always if you try this, please report your experiences in the comments below…