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 DIRECTV HD service receiving 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.

The above slide is from recent AMD/ATI presentation regarding their upcoming Stereoscopic 3D support for 120Hz displays and the new Catalyst 10.3 drivers due to be released in March. The slide mentions only iZ3D as a middleware partner by name, but suggests that others will also be supported (DDD for example), but don’t get your hopes too high yet. The Bit Cauldron shutter glasses, the ones that are supposed to go along with this solution, should be available around the summer and iZ3D haven’t released a new beta of the driver for quite some time. So things are slowly moving for ATI and the reason for that is that they decided to go for more open solution, but they have more external factors to take into account partnering with other companies to provide the complete solution. iZ3D’s driver currently can work on both Nvidia and ATI hardware, but their shutter glasses support is still in beta and is not problem free – looses sync when the framerate drops below the refresh rate. So with a new version of the driver and all other pieces in place, with Catalys 10.3 or newer being part of all that, we can hope to have an alternative solution that will support ATI’s GPUs for stereoscopic 3D gaming, photos and videos on a 120Hz LCD display in a few months. And as for 120Hz displays there are already quite a few with more expected to be available by the summer and we all expect to have 120Hz capable HDTVs from most major consumer electronics players by that time too. So things will definitely be very HOT this summer regarding S3D and not only…

The usage of Anaglyph method for viewing stereoscopic 3D is still by far the easiest way to get a glimpse of what is possible in the world of S3D and what you can expect from a better solution. Of course there are some issues associated with the anaglyph method like problems with color reproduction or you getting tired even after a little use of the red-cyan or other color filters. But still having in mind that you can try it without the need for special display, glasses or even software that you have to pay is just enough for a lot of people to want to try that first and then go with solutions like 3D Vision, iZ3D Monitors, Zalman Trimon and others that require a serious investment in hardware and not only for the 3D setup itself, but also for the PC that will be able to handle the 3D content good enough. So lets get to the point how you can test anaglyph stereo 3D gaming on your mobile computer in particular, but the same solutions will also work on a desktop PC…

If your laptop has an Nvidia-based GPU inside (GeForce 8xxx or later mobile graphics) you can go for the 3D Vision drivers and use their free anaglyph mode called 3D Vision Discover with any pair of plain red-cyan anaglyph glasses paper or plastic. Or it was working without problems for the 3D Vision Drivers up to version 190.38, as with the later 191.xx (if I remember correctly) up to the latest ones you will get the error above when trying to enable the Stereoscopic 3D mode from the control panel. It seems that when you run any newer 3D Vision drivers they try to find a compatible 120Hz LCD panel in your laptop and if they don’t you are out of luck and cannot even enable the 3D Vision Discover mode to try out the anaglyph mode. It is still weird why Nvidia did not do anything about his issue since it has been around for some time already, or maybe they are simply ignoring all the owners of gaming laptops since there is still no official 3D Vision support for mobile systems with external monitor (with shutter glasses and 120Hz LCD). If you are a lucky owner of Asus G51J 3D laptop – the only one so far with a 120Hz panel you are Ok and you probably should not have any problems running the 3D Vision Discover anaglyph mode too, but why would you do it on this laptop anyway? Still with a modified drivers and and external 120Hz LCD monitor you can run both anaglyph and shutter glasses mode with the 3D vision driver. At least running the anaglyph mode on your desktop PC does not bring any issues, but still if you don’t yet have the shutter glasses you cannot even try the anaglyph mode on your laptop, why?

Anyway, the good news is that there are alternatives for laptop owners that still want to try the free anaglyph mode and that is to use the iZ3D Driver that does support Anaglyph and a few other stereo 3d viewing methods apart for the specific mode used for their own stereoscopic 3D displays. Another good thing about the use of this driver is that it will work not only on Nvidia-based hardware (including pre-stream processors architecture GPUs), but also on ATI-based video cards. The only drawback here is that the iZ3D Driver still does not support DirectX 10 games, unlike the Nvidia solution, although the company seems to be working on adding it for some time now. So if you have a laptop and you want to try out stereoscopic 3D gaming on it with anaglyph mode you should definitely download and try the iZ3D Driver.

- To download the iZ3D Driver with free Stereoscopic 3D anaglyph mode…