I hate quotes. Tell me what you know - Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Maybe there won't be a 3D format war
FORMAT WARS have been a staple part of audiovisual progress since the second film was made, but this time round it looks like the whole mess might be avoided.
While we all remember Blu-ray versus HD-DVD and most of can recall VHS versus Betamax and a handful might have been around when Cinemaxcope was battling against a wide variety of competitors, it seems that the current move towards 3D isn't going to fall into the same trap, despite the various emerging standards.
According to Bill Foster, an analyst at Future Source, although 3D cinematography has been around for over 100 years already, this time it's set to take off, predominately thanks to the present level of available technology.
While Foster predicts that there will be something of a content gap over the next year or so, his company predicts that 3D is set to take off and penetration of 3D capable TVs will grow to as much as two thirds of the market in the US and nearly a third across Europe by 2015.
While many might still contend whether this latest trend toward 3D will amount to anything significant, especially beyond the theatre, initial findings show that in the cinema takings are 70 per cent higher for a 3D version of a movie where it is playing side by side with a 2D rendition of the same title, which suggests that the appetite is there, or at least that the novelty attraction exists.
As to why 3D could well avoid a format war, Foster explained that there are two principle formats being adopted today, the first is frame sequential and the second is side-by-side. There are other formats floating around, but these are the two that seem to be picking up the most steam and both have various pros and cons.
In a nutshell, sequential sends out two full resolution images at 24 frames per second each, for a total of 48 frames per second and the glasses are used to ensure that each eye sees the left or right frame accordingly. This allows for a full resolution 3D image, but requires the hardware to do it and double the bandwidth. This is format included in the 3D Blu-ray specification.
On the other hand side-by-side puts both left and right images into each single 1080p frame, sent at 24 frames per second, which is split into two and stretched out by the display, effectively halving the resolution, but keeping the bandwidth requirements the same as a normal HD stream. This is the format favoured by broadcasters looking into transmitting 3D and has the added advantage that a lot of existing set-top-boxes can handle it with nothing more than a firmware update.
The advantage here, Foster explained, is that displays capable of displaying a frame sequential 3D input can also display a side-by-side feed, meaning that you won't need separate TV's or special set-top box converters to watch a 3D Blu-ray or a 3D transmission over the likes of DirecTV - basically if your TV is 3D capable, it can handle both formats.
There are some other issues around the devices, including the use of circular polarized and active shutter glass systems, as well as the type of display used, with some manufacturers opting for a reltively small increase in the production cost of the TV, but which need expensive active shutter glasses, and others going the route of applying an expensive 3D optical filter to the TV, which need glasses that cost just pennies to produce.
But while the devices sold by different manufacturers might be incompatible - that is, you may not be able to use glasses from vendor A with a TV from vendor B - the content should be able to work no matter what display mechanism you're using.
Regardless of whether 3D is indeed here to stay or just a flash in the pan, if Foster is right, and even he admits that nothing is set in stone yet and it could all change, it seems that the media industry has learnt at least one lesson in the many decades it's been around. µ
Share this:
Share
@mike: indeed, there is definitely a war going on in the display-technologies. But content is generally delivered in a compatible format for all hardware to deal with (native or with a firmware upgrade). This is different from before where the content itself was delivered in various utterly incompatible formats - all content-creators had to either spend twice the effort to deliver in both or choose to leave out half their audience.
When you go out an buy your hardware for displaying 3D content, this time around you won't have to think hard on whose content you are going to watch. You just buy a complete hardware solutino of your choice (display+glasses) and are likely to be able to view all 3D content.
3D is a fad... Its a reason to inflate the prices of new TVs now that China is mass producing them cheap enough. It won't work. Watching something in 3D isn't worth the headache, wearing of silly glasses, expensive gear, or loss of experience involved.
The 'format war' will be hardware compatability. This article is a bit like saying Blue Ray and HD DVD are the same because they work with the same TVs.
Ok, one set may be able to deliver both 3D formats - the thing is, it's not the 'set' that delivers 3D in both scenarios. It's the glasses and the box sending the signal to the TV while sending a signal to the glasses shutters. THAT bit of kit may work with (for example) a Nvidia card but not a DirectTV box, while a Panasonic Blue Ray 3D box may not work the same as a Sony 3D Blue Ray box.
So my TVs may be able to show 3D, but the two glasses for my livingroom TV won't work with my bedroom TV, so if we want to have family movie night we still have to buy more glasses to go around, while the other glasses gather dust. Oh wait, sounds like another format war.
Hopefully the hardware manufacturers realize the minimal interest in this and, as Alistair alluded to, actually adopt standards.
There are even monitors that were demo'd recently that use a camera to track your eyes and adjust the image to compensate for your location.
However all of these technologies will only work in 1 person scenarios. So they may take off for computer monitors (in fact I bet they will) but for group viewing, it wont happen until TVs have multiple viewing layers for each angle, which is difficult to produce and costly, so not for 8-10 years yet I would suggest.
Yes I don't know too much about all these standards and specifications but I know there is a way to do 3D without glasses. Why can't that be the way things will be done??
(Currently 3D systems that don't require glasses have be watched from a fairly specific angle and distance to display - Ed)
My understanding is that the primary format was a main stream and then a secondary, much smaller, difference stream - encoding the different positions of the main blocks and any differences at the edges of those blocks.
That way you only need tweak the bit rate slightly to end up with two full rate, full size frames at full rate - all within the same bandwidth as before. Most HD encoding format has the leeway to do that with minimal visible effect - and its trivially backwards compatible to 2D.
Why would anyone play with such backward ideas as the ones suggested in the article? Isn't that rather missing the point of compressed, encoded datastreams that are very similar?
First thing I wanted to mention is that whilst Panasonic's glasses may very well not work with other TVs, Samsung's for example are actually based on a standard and so will work with a few other devices.
Ignoring the fact that frame sequential, active shutter can deliver Full HD, even though glasses cost a bomb, they're the only possible solution to 3D TVs in the living room. It's well known that polarised glasses eventually cause headaches after several hours of viewing so imagine what it must be like when watching all your TV programs with them! Active shutter glasses give each eye a short rest and do not strain their focus by having both active at the same time, this is why nVidia chose to use them for their 3D gaming system, otherwise I'm sure they'd be flooded with complaints of migraines etc