May 18, 2011. At CES in January, Samsung and company (including Sony, Panasonic and others) positioned active 3DTV Shutter Glasses as the “step-up technology” from lighter, lower-cost passive shutter glasses. Active technology keeps 3D display resolution high, but at the cost of a dimmer image, heavy glasses, and added expense to the consumer that (depending on the number of glasses needed) can approach 25% or more of the cost of the TV.
Other issues, including the impracticality of keeping enough pairs of 3D glasses on hand to serve the needs of guests, then keeping track of the expensive accessories, only added to the grief associated with moving to 3D at home adoption.
Too much! Cried LG at CES, as the company threw all its weight behind the passive approach, stating its research showed consumers could overlook the ½ resolution 3D image downgrade in favor of the benefits associated with using low-cost (sometimes no-cost) passive glasses that just happen to work with the RealD versions that many consumers kept from a recent trip to a 3D movie.
But here at the 2011 SID conference on the opening day of the show floor, Samsung and RealD (yep the same one with passive shutter glasses that work with LG) announced a joint licensing agreement in which Samsung will license and make RDZ version passive 3DTVs that support a full 1080p resolution to each eye—not the half resolution used in the LG approach.
Clearly Samsung has done a re-think on the “step-up” messaging it was giving with the active 3D shutter glasses approach. The company may have recognized the wisdom in the LG customer centric approach, and did their rival one better with its no-compromise passive shutter glass solution for its 3DTV at home.
Reports say Samsung will ship a pair of 3D monitors first (23- and 27-inch class) with a 55-inch class 3DLCD TV to follow. With passive glasses getting so much attention these days, perhaps the biggest winner is RealD. – Steve Sechrist
Showing posts with label 3D active passive retarder shutter glasses business conference SID. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 3D active passive retarder shutter glasses business conference SID. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Do LG’s Passive 3D Glasses Point the Way For 3D At Home?
Tuesday, May 17. With the feud still simmering between Samsung and LG over active vs. passive 3D glasses, Dr. Min-Sung Yoon, Chief Research Engineer, 3D Technology at, LG Display pulled no punches at his presentation yesterday at the SID Business Conference co-sponsored by Display Search.
The afternoon session by Dr. Yoon focused on his company’s insistence that its version of passive 3D using film patterned retarders (FPRs) truly does represent “A New Paradigm in 3D Display,” with technology advancements that virtually eliminate flicker and cross-talk, and include viewer-friendly features such as light, brightness, and very low-cost 3D glasses.
The technology even supports 3D viewing with your head tilted, or lying down—a claim that two months earlier, prompted a public war of words between rival TV maker Samsung (primarily in the active 3D glasses camp), which publicly announced, “There’s no 3D that works while you are lying down sideways!” A subsequent war of words played out in the Korean media this past March.
The issue gets down to LG’s circular polarization (in FPR approach) versus the linear polarization used in traditional liquid-crystal module (LCM) and shutter glasses. For LG, the string of benefits goes well beyond consumer preferences of low cost, comfort, and simplicity of specifications with the promise of no flicker, low cross talk, enhanced brightness, and frame rate and freedom of motion that includes head tilting while viewing.
We think LG is demonstrating thought leadership in this field, with its consumer preference approach—that may just lead to the next standard (passive shutter glasses) in the 3DTV at home space. Time will tell. -- Steve Sechrist
The afternoon session by Dr. Yoon focused on his company’s insistence that its version of passive 3D using film patterned retarders (FPRs) truly does represent “A New Paradigm in 3D Display,” with technology advancements that virtually eliminate flicker and cross-talk, and include viewer-friendly features such as light, brightness, and very low-cost 3D glasses.
The technology even supports 3D viewing with your head tilted, or lying down—a claim that two months earlier, prompted a public war of words between rival TV maker Samsung (primarily in the active 3D glasses camp), which publicly announced, “There’s no 3D that works while you are lying down sideways!” A subsequent war of words played out in the Korean media this past March.
The issue gets down to LG’s circular polarization (in FPR approach) versus the linear polarization used in traditional liquid-crystal module (LCM) and shutter glasses. For LG, the string of benefits goes well beyond consumer preferences of low cost, comfort, and simplicity of specifications with the promise of no flicker, low cross talk, enhanced brightness, and frame rate and freedom of motion that includes head tilting while viewing.
We think LG is demonstrating thought leadership in this field, with its consumer preference approach—that may just lead to the next standard (passive shutter glasses) in the 3DTV at home space. Time will tell. -- Steve Sechrist
Religious Wars: Shutter vs. Passive Glasses
At the Business Display Conference yesterday, we got to witness the growing competition between two technologies. It’s a familiar story: VHS vs. Betamax, Mac vs. PC, Blu-ray vs. HD DVD. But this time, there’s an interesting twist; some companies are backing both horses in this race.
The competition is between stereoscopic television technologies (3DTV). The early leader is the shutter glass (SG) solution. Left and right images are presented in rapid succession on the screen, and the lenses in the glasses block or transmit the light to the corresponding eyes of the viewer. The other approach uses a patterned retarder (PR) on the display itself so that half the image is polarized one way, while the other half is polarized the other. The result is that passive polarized glasses can separate the images for the viewer.
What we saw yesterday was how the two camps have managed to spin the “advantages” of their approach compared with the “disadvantages” of the competition. Unfortunately, some of this is getting a bit silly. For example, the SG camp likes to bang on the claim that their solution provides a full resolution image to each eye, while the PR approach only delivers half the pixels to each eye. This would be more impressive if it weren’t for the fact that many of the 3DTV encoding systems present both the left and right image in a single full resolution frame, which means that most of the content shown on SG displays will be at half resolution anyway.
The PR folks are not above using a bit of hyperbole themselves. They take every opportunity to rail about the heavy and expensive shutter glasses, and how they are a big barrier to consumer acceptance of 3DTV. This would be more effective if it weren’t for the fact that some of the newest shutter glasses are very sleek and lightweight. And Samsung is leading the way in lowering the price from as much as $200 to just $50 a pair. I know people who aren’t happy with their sunglasses if they don’t spend more than $50 on them, so this price probably is not a huge problem.
The danger in setting up false comparisons between different technologies is that you risk confusing and even annoying consumers. In the end, they will make their decision based on performance and price. Convoluted arguments about finer points that deliver some slight advantage will be a waste of resources. Keep in mind that a majority of U.S. consumers are very happy watching standard definition DVDs on their HDTVs, so don’t expect them to respond just because a given technology is “better."
--Alfred Poor, HDTV Almanac
The competition is between stereoscopic television technologies (3DTV). The early leader is the shutter glass (SG) solution. Left and right images are presented in rapid succession on the screen, and the lenses in the glasses block or transmit the light to the corresponding eyes of the viewer. The other approach uses a patterned retarder (PR) on the display itself so that half the image is polarized one way, while the other half is polarized the other. The result is that passive polarized glasses can separate the images for the viewer.
What we saw yesterday was how the two camps have managed to spin the “advantages” of their approach compared with the “disadvantages” of the competition. Unfortunately, some of this is getting a bit silly. For example, the SG camp likes to bang on the claim that their solution provides a full resolution image to each eye, while the PR approach only delivers half the pixels to each eye. This would be more impressive if it weren’t for the fact that many of the 3DTV encoding systems present both the left and right image in a single full resolution frame, which means that most of the content shown on SG displays will be at half resolution anyway.
The PR folks are not above using a bit of hyperbole themselves. They take every opportunity to rail about the heavy and expensive shutter glasses, and how they are a big barrier to consumer acceptance of 3DTV. This would be more effective if it weren’t for the fact that some of the newest shutter glasses are very sleek and lightweight. And Samsung is leading the way in lowering the price from as much as $200 to just $50 a pair. I know people who aren’t happy with their sunglasses if they don’t spend more than $50 on them, so this price probably is not a huge problem.
The danger in setting up false comparisons between different technologies is that you risk confusing and even annoying consumers. In the end, they will make their decision based on performance and price. Convoluted arguments about finer points that deliver some slight advantage will be a waste of resources. Keep in mind that a majority of U.S. consumers are very happy watching standard definition DVDs on their HDTVs, so don’t expect them to respond just because a given technology is “better."
--Alfred Poor, HDTV Almanac
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)