One of the most striking things about pounding the show floor at CES this year was that the future of 3DTV in the home is inevitably going to be without glasses. Prototypes from LG, Toshiba and Sony all showed that glasses-less 3D is a possibility, and in some cases, it can even look pretty good. But you’re going to need to boost the resolution.
Of the three companies showcasing glasses-less 3D TV screens that I managed to find throughout the monstrosity that is CES, the Sony panels were easily the best. The reason for this is actually quite obvious when you understand how the lenticular displays work – It’s all about resolution, you see. While most demo screens were just 1080p – the 46-inch and 56-inch screens from Sony were displaying 2K and 4K resolutions respectively.
Andrew Hughes, Product Specialist for Audio Visual at Sony Australia, explains why this matters:
‘Glasses-less’ or ‘lenticular’ 3D displays use lenses placed in vertical columns placed in front of the image. Half of the lens columns are aligned to be viewed by the left eye and the other half by the right eye.
The TV’s picture engine then assigns the left and right video frames from the 3D source to the left and right columns of lenses. When the viewer is directly in front of the display, only the left elements of the picture are visible to the left eye and only the right elements are visible to the right eye, which creates a 3D effect. However, if the viewer moves off-centre, the 3D effect can be lost.
Because the vertical resolution is effectively split into two separate elements, overall picture quality is compromised by almost half compared to an active shutter 3D system.”
In other words, when viewing 1080p content on a lenticular 3D display, you’re essentially only seeing 960 vertical lines, which looks crap. 2K resolution is marginally better offering the equivalent of 1024 vertical lines, but 4K content (and the most impressive of Sony’s prototype units) effectively offers 2048 vertical lines of resolution.
Which means that by the time glasses-less 3D televisions start to hit the market, we’ll need to be seeing 4K quality Blu-rays hitting shelves. Of course, we’re still a few years away before big screen lenticular displays are refined enough to become commercially viable, but here’s hoping that content creators are planning ahead for this technology anyway…
greenmatt
Friday, January 21, 2011 at 5:39 PMThe resolution of the source doesnt need to rise, just the display. Of course 4K will look better but its going to be a number of years.
Labrat
Friday, January 21, 2011 at 5:54 PMso we go from having to wear glasses to having to be front’n'centre. Its a small improvement, but still a loooong way to go.
Taymin Dutoit
Friday, January 21, 2011 at 6:25 PMdidnt once explain the 2k and 4k meaning??? what does it mean? is it 2160p or sumthin
poedgirl
Friday, January 21, 2011 at 6:46 PMOf course, in order to do it, you need to sit directly in front of the screen. Pretty pointless to me.
As greenmatt said, the source won’t need to change. Hell, 3D is already sent over HDMI at 1920×2205 (frames on top of each other with a 45 line gap). This means that they will just place the left frame on the left lens and the right frame on the right one.
It’s just like how there are high refresh rate TVs when the source is normally only around 24Hz.
Namarrgon
Friday, January 21, 2011 at 7:15 PMNot convinced yet. Resolution is only one of the issues with parallax-based 3D stereo.
The bigger issue is viewing position. With 4K, you can show full 1080p to just one viewer. The finer the resolution, the more viewing positions you can have, but the “sweet spot” of each one is narrower – move your head just slightly to one side and the picture gets blurry, or reversed.
These tradeoffs are inherent to the approach, so there’s no easy fix.
dwgoldie
Friday, January 21, 2011 at 8:12 PM2k and 4k usually dont refer to vertical resolution but horizontal (both are used for digital cinema which due to aspect ratio has widely varying heights). Also, as it halves horizontal resolution, the vertical is not halved. No biggy, just edit the article to say horizontal where you have written vertical please Nick :). I think just a typo as you got the correct number for horizontal in each case.
Troy MacDonald
Friday, January 21, 2011 at 11:06 PMDoes Blu-ray even support 4k? They seem to still have trouble fitting content on 1 disc as it is.
Though saying that, I still think 3D is a gimmick, even without glasses
Nathan
Saturday, January 22, 2011 at 10:53 PMHave to agree with you Troy.
3D is just a gimmick to get suckers to pay big bucks for a TV, but it is not worth an extra cent.
I’d much rather see more 55 inch and larger LED backlit LCD TVs with better motion blur reduction.
100Hz doesn’t cut it on screens over 50″.
200Hz sets are still too expensive.
400Hz blur reduction should be readily available by now but is missing because of this idiotic obsession with the 3D fad which will be forgotten in a few year’s time.
matt
Saturday, January 22, 2011 at 1:52 AMoh boo.. so you’re saying if I want awesome glassesles 3DTV, I also need to put up with a much better resolution image? DAMN! but I suppose thats a sacrifice I’m willing to make. :D
j man
Monday, January 24, 2011 at 2:08 PMall existing 3d consumer encodings halve horizontal resolution anyway – 3d bluerays and TV are effectively two pictures (squished) side by side at a somewhat higher bitrate.
The player/tuner then upconverts this to HDMI double rate/high, which is effectively two full frames stacked on top of each other (that is 2160h, normal width).
messy …
cinema digital encodes are somewhat different, usually two completely separate full rate 2k or 4k video tracks (50mbps+) carefully synced for reproduction on two overlaid polarized optical paths.
Tom
Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 11:12 AMProblem is by the time the glassless tech becomes available everyone will be wearing prescription glasses because their eyes are so ****** up from watching the current 3D tv options…hmm note to self, must invest in a prescrition glasses company.
Tim
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 3:16 AMIm a big fan of 3D and I hope the market stays. I definitely hate the shutter glasses though! Fricken make me sick sitting in a room while the walls are flickering. The best bet for anyone that wants a 3d tv is go for a LG cinema 3d tv. Those glasses dont flicker, they weigh a lot less, and they are a fraction of the price a MUST HAVE!!!!