3D TV partnership from Sony

In Asia 3D tv is seen as the next big thing in seling you a new TV. At the Vegas expo this will certainly take up much space and Sony already created some nice partnership according to the wall street journal

By GABRIEL KAHN

Sony Corp. announced a partnership with RealD, as the Japanese electronics giant continues its push into the growing market for 3-D home entertainment.

Under the terms of the agreement, Sony will license some of RealD's technology and equipment, such as 3-D eyewear, which can be used with Sony TV screens and other equipment intended to create a three-dimensional viewing experience similar to what is now offered in movie theaters. The equipment is expected to hit stores in 2010.

No other terms of the deal, announced Thursday, were disclosed. RealD's agreement with Sony isn't exclusive, which means the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based company can also partner with other equipment makers for the same technology.

This year marked a massive roll-out of 3-D technology in movie theaters, as Hollywood released a string of films, such as DreamWorks Animation SKG's "Monsters vs. Aliens," and Twentieth Century Fox's "Avatar," which hits screens this weekend. News Corp. owns Twentieth Century Fox as well as the The Wall Street Journal.

Sony, along with other electronics manufacturers, is racing to roll out equipment that aims to provide a comparable 3-D viewing experience at home. RealD already provides an array of 3-D technology used in making three-dimensional images for movies, as well as other applications. Partnering with a large electronics manufacturer could open up a new market for its technology.

Sony's LCD panel technology "will work in sync with new 3D eyewear based on RealD's technology," Hiroshi Yoshioka, the Sony executive in charge of Consumer Products and Devices Group, said in a statement.

and another one in the 3D format war

After Sony Philips is now jumping into this. They already had some great 3D displays but I was under the impression they sold this business to LG. However they are back in the race according to this engadget story (click the link for the engadget gallery)

Philips 56-inch 21:9 3D TV's future is so bright we had to wear shades

by Thomas Ricker posted Sep 3rd 2009 at 7:30AM

If you haven't noticed, 3D is going to be big in 2010. Not at Philips though, at least not yet. Instead of charging in to the market like Sony, Philips is willing to hedge its bets and wait on consumer demand. Consumers, of course, are waiting for content. And hey, maybe everybody's wrong and quad-HD will be the next big thing to drive TV sales. Regardless, Philips wants everyone to know that its technology is ready when you are so its got a 3D prototype Blu-ray player and stunning 3D version of its 56-inch Cinema 21:9 TV here at IFA in Berlin. While the idea of watching movies in 3D sounds like a novelty, the idea of gaming in 3D is downright compelling -- awkward passive polarized glasses be damned!

Ready for the next format war ... 3d format. Sony be first to deliver but can they set the standard

According to the Financiel Times 3D TV is now coming close.

Sony to throw its weight behind 3D TV

By Maija Palmer in London

Published: September 1 2009 22:01 | Last updated: September 1 2009 22:01

3D technology looks set to hit the home consumer market next year, with Sony on Wednesday announcing plans to sell 3D televisions globally by the end of 2010.

Sony’s decision to throw its weight behind the technology will be an important boost for the 3D industry, which has so far focused mainly on cinemas. British Sky Broadcasting has said it would introduce a 3D satellite channel in the UK next year, but it had been unclear whether there would be equipment available to view it on.

Speaking at the IFA technology trade show in Berlin, Sir Howard Stringer, Sony chief executive, will announce plans not only to sell 3D Bravia television sets, but to make Sony’s Vaio laptop computers, PlayStation3 games consoles and Blu-ray disc players compatible with the technology.

Mr Stringer is expected to tell the audience: “Today, 3D is clearly on its way to the mass market through technology, distribution and content.

“As with high definition a few years back, there are a variety of issues yet to be addressed. But the 3D train is on the track, and we at Sony are ready to drive it home.”

The consumer electronics industry has yet to agree on a single 3D standard, posing the risk of a format war akin to that between VHS and Betamax or Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

There are several types of 3D technology. Sony has opted for “active shutter” technology, using electronic glasses containing tiny shutters that open and close rapidly in synch with the television image to create a 3D impression. Cinema 3D uses “polarisation” technology with simpler glasses. However, this only works when viewers are at a certain angle to the screen, making it less suited to home viewing.

The electronics industry is looking for the next technology to boost sales, as high-definition television sales move past their peak. Hyundai is producing early 3D sets for the Japanese market and Panasonic has flagged up plans for products.

Sony’s commitment, however, improves 3D’s chances of becoming mainstream. It has given no indication of prices, but analysts expect early 3D TVs to cost several thousand dollars. Hyundai’s 3D TVs cost more than €3,400.

In cinemas, uptake of 3D has grown ninefold over three years, with 7,000 digital 3D screens expected to be in use worldwide by the end of 2009.

The future of TV. Interactive and 3D without glasses

Interactive 3DTV - taking viewing to the next level?

10 June, 2009 - 06:55

A revolutionary interactive 3DTV system is being created by De Montfort University Leicester (DMU), England, researchers. The €4.2 million (approx £3.7 million) project aims to develop a television that can recognise where somebody is sitting in a room and what they wish to view and interact with on their television.

Researchers believe it is a step towards truly interactive 3D video games where gamers use their bodies to control the action without the need for a controller.

The project, called HELIUM3D (high efficiency, laser-based, multi-user, multi-modal 3D display) is also exploring ways of allowing viewers who are watching the same television to each view a different channel at the same time and could even let them choose different viewing positions within the image.

For example, groups of people watching a football match in the same room could each pick the part of the stadium from which they would like to experience the action.

The 3D effect will be seen without special glasses and will use head-tracking technology developed during previous 3DTV research projects led by DMU to deliver the perfect image to every viewer.

The system will not only display standard 3DTV, it will also allow viewers to experience an effect known as motion parallax or the ‘look-around effect'. This is where the image has a ‘holographic' quality, giving it a greater sense of depth and movement than standard 3D.

Researchers at DMU's Imaging and Displays Research Group (IDRG) are leading the work, with partners from: Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institut; Philips Consumer Lifestyle; Eindhoven University of Technology; Nanjing University in China; Barco, a display hardware manufacturer in Belgium; University College London; and Koç University in Turkey.

The project is supported by £2.8 million funding from the European Commission's Framework 7 programme.

Researchers working on HELIUM3D will also be exploring the display's potential in professional applications, including medical imaging, video conferencing, engineering design and oil and gas exploration.

DMU's Dr Ian Sexton, head of the imaging and displays research group, said: "The inherent flexibility of the HELIUM display takes it beyond mere 3D and will open up a whole new world of exciting interactive possibilities. The display will give gamers a new freedom to enjoy interactive 3D television and games - for example viewers or gamers will be able to see 3D on the HELIUM TV and also interact with the game through the viewer sensing built into the system wherever they are in the room and without 3D glasses. This will make 3D games more natural, exciting and ‘real'. The system will also be used for more serious uses such as medical imaging; doctors and surgeons will be able to intuitively ‘fly' through a 3D scan of a person to make a diagnosis or to prepare for an operation, making a 3D display that will be useful to a wide audience."

Previous 3D systems have used flat panel displays in their design but HELIUM3D will use a new type of front screen.

The Gabor superlens screen used by DMU researchers replaces the usual LCD screen found on commercial television sets and is much more efficient than other technologies.

This will allow brighter whites and darker blacks, meaning the resulting image will be much more vivid than in previous 3D projects due to the use of a novel red, green and blue laser illumination source.

The HELIUM3D funding from the European Commission is the latest in a string of projects which the IDRG has worked on over the past seven years, worth nearly £14 million in total.

HELIUM3D runs until 2010 and researchers hope the system will lead to commercial production of interactive 3DTV sets within the next decade.

and some more 3D

When reading through the Inavate on the net I came accross a nice article with some predictions on the 5 to 10 year timeframe and obviously there is one on 3D. For those to lazy to click here this is a copy/paste of specific part of the article

For decades, 3D has languished as a niche play. But it could finally move into the mainstream pro AV market – thanks at least partly to consumers.This year, DreamWorks will release all of its films in 3D. Meanwhile, Imax is paying the U.S. theatre chain to upgrade 100 of its screens to 3D. There are plenty of other examples, but the bottom line is that consumers are encountering 3D in more and more places.

“3D is a certainty to go mainstream in the consumer area in the next five to 10 years because of the availability of content and a strong need for differentiation in order to secure consumers' entertainment dollars,” says Peter Bocko, chief technology officer for East Asia at Corning, which makes glass-based products for applications such as fibre optic cables and LCD displays.If consumer response to 3D is solid – and that’s still a big if – then it would increase revenue for makers of 3D displays and other products, a snowball effect that would benefit the pro AV market, too.

“That will help fund the R&D to bring 3D to a much broader scale, for use particularly by enterprises,” says Phil McKinney, Chief Technology Officer for Hewlett-Packard’s Personal Systems Group (PSG).

Businesspeople also are consumers for part of the day, so their 3D experiences outside of work are another factor: The more 3D they see in their homes and in theatres, the more likely they are to expect it or specify it for work.“It will be five to 10 years for 3D to be ubiquitous just in the home,” McKinney says.

The catch: Their experiences over the next few years are critical because if they’re disappointing or downright bad, 3D could remain the province of lucrative yet niche applications such as medical imaging and automotive design. But if they’re good, 3D could start to show up in applications such as telepresence within five to 10 years.

“You can have a stronger sense of presence in telepresence so you can have tighter collaboration,” says McKinney, who envisions 3D images not only of meeting participants, but also of products they’re discussing.“When you’re building 3D products that have to sit on a shelf and appeal to consumers, the look, size, scale and colour are critically important,” McKinney says. “Today’s collaboration technologies really don’t effectively allow you to share that experience or do collaboration around materials or colour or design, just given the flatness of the telepresence experience.

”A richer experience requires more bandwidth, with the amount varying by the type of 3D. So if the 3D content has to traverse a network, then the cost and availability of that bandwidth affects whether the end user – such as an enterprise – can make a business case for 3D.“To get autostereoscopic (no glasses required) 3D at 1080p resolution, the 3D panel needs to be built on the back of a Quad HD panel to get enough pixels to generate all the views,” says Robert Boudreau, technology development manager at Corning Display Technologies. “This requires four times the bandwidth for the Quad, plus 1.2 times the bandwidth for the 3D, for a total of about five times the bandwidth [of 1080p]. With glasses-based 3D, it’s possible to get away with 1.2 times the bandwidth.”

3D is coming closer

I just read an announcement of Keane that they will broadcast their new concert in 3D. The band will record the live session at London’s legendary Abbey Road Studios, the home of The Beatles' historic first ever satellite broadcast, and will feature live mixed graphics from world-renowned digital artists D-Fuse.

3D glasses are available from the brand new keanemusic.com shop with the 7-inch of the new single Better Than This on 16th March. (they are also hoping to show you how to make your own 3D glasses...............this looks like they go for the red/blue glasses) The audio from the gig will also be simultaneously broadcast live on-air on newly launched national station Absolute Radio. The gig will also be available to watch on-demand via km.com afterwards.

This same week I have read that the Sky is preparing for 3D big time. All new programs are recorded in 3D. Sky subscribers could be treated to 3D TV this coming Christmas, the broadcaster has said.

The firm’s Chief Engineer, Chris Johns, said that there’s the possibility that homes could “see 3D” by the end of the year and it’s aiming to “build a content library over the coming year”.
Sky’s already claimed to have successfully demonstrated 3D TV at its London HQ. And it said back in January that a commercial 3D TV service “could be launched any time in the next two years”.

3D broadcasts will most likely be available through Sky's existing Sky+ HD platform, the company has since said. Early adopters will have to fork out extra for a new telly capable of displaying the stereoscopic images and special specs to separate out the left- and right-eye views. ®

So this year can be the 3D breakthrough but not sure about the system they will use (Well Keane seams to go for the red/blue glasses when looking at their website)

3D tv coming to you (but you still have to wait till 2012)

I was just updating myself by browsing the web to some stuff that is interesting and I came accross this article from Pocket-lint about 3D coming to us (well for the lucky ones having Sky) with the 2012 Olympic games.

It looks like a victory for the systems with passive stereo (where you have special polaroid glasses) but luckily this is not 100% set yet. As stated they like to see glass free technology and they are not wedded to this technology.

The best thing however is to see how much effort is put already in recording movies and TV shows in 3D. This means that whenever the technology to broadcast this ready (and the TV's are as well) we do not need to wait 5 years before the content is there.

The article:

Viewers of the London 2012 Olympics will be able to watch all the action in 3D from the comfort of their home, if Sky has anything to do with it.

"There is a very good chance you'll see the London Olympics in 3D", said Brian Lenz, head of product design and innovation at Sky, before confirming the satellite broadcaster will "be filming events in 3D".

Sky has outlined its vision for the future of television at its head office in West London with the demo of 3DTV for the first time, spelling the need for yet another upgrade to your TV in the near future.

Although the company admits the technology is unlikely to hit the living room any time soon, it is already getting ready for the move to 3D over 2D TV shows and events.

"We are already filming events in 3D", Lenz told Pocket-lint. The company's demo for the new technology currently shows a number of clips with a strong focus on sports such as boxing, football and rugby although films, documentaries and stage performances aren't out of the running.

"We still have to understand what consumers want", Chris Johns, chief engineer at Sky said before adding; "This isn't just a Sky endeavour".

In fact Sky is keen to point out that other companies around the world are getting involved too.

"Dreamworks has said every movie going forward will be available in 3D, while we know of around 63 movies that are planned over the next 2 - 3 years that will be 3D enabled".

Unlike current 3D systems from companies like Samsung that require you to wear special glasses that flicker to deceive you into believing you are watching a 3D image, the Sky system works on a passive stereoscopic 3D approach.

To experience 3DTV you will need a new TV set that is "3D ready" and you'll still have to wear special glasses, however they will resemble something more akin to a pair of sunglasses rather than a gadget contraption with moving parts.

"A major manufacturer will be launching a stereoscopic 3D set in the next 12 months", said Lenz, before hinting that it might be "Sony at CES" later in our meeting.

The system, which requires new camera equipment to film on, works by setting the television as the "plain of field" like a window and then positioning certain elements in front of and behind that window. The result, with the glasses, is that you get a 3D effect no matter where you sit in the room. Take the glasses off and all the viewer will see is a blurry image.

"What we really want is a glasses free technology", says Lenz before reiterating that it's still very early days for the technology. "We aren't wedded to this technology, however what it does allow us to do is use our existing network to deliver the signal without expensive upgrades".

You get the feeling that Sky could go live today if there was a physical need for the technology, but without any TVs or content in the market it's not really commercially sensible and that's before you add the additional cost to the production of the film, event, or show. Sky estimate it will add a further 10-15% on the bottom line, a high price to pay in a credit crunch climate.

So should you hold off buying a new TV? Probably not, but it is worth bearing in mind that when you come to buy the next one in the next four to five year's time, 3DTV is likely to have hit the living room.