Salesperson claims that current 3DTV's aren't really "Full HD"

I'm about 90 percent sure that this guy is misinformed, but I'd still thought that I would run it by the folks here. Ok, so today, I have a mission to find the Samsung PN50C7000 plasma, and to see it in action. I go to this home theater specialist place near my work. Now, here is the thing... Normally the guys at this place are pretty up to date with anything home theater related. They do high-end installs with front projector setups, acoustics, etc, etc. You would expect them to know what they are talking about.

So, I'm looking at the various 3D TV's they had on hand, (only the 58 inch Panasonic was setup for 3D viewing) and I'm talking to the salesperson about them. He says to me that none of the currently available 3DTV's are actually showing 3D in full HD. I said, what do you mean? He claimed that the Panasonic I was watching, while a 1080p 2D tv, is only displaying the Astro Boy demo that I was watching in 720p. I told him that the TV is advertised as being a Full HD 3D plasma. How could they get away with advertising it like that? He said he didn't know how they were able to get around it, but that he's certain that I'm not seeing full 1080p 3D. He said something about the only thing being able to do that is a 90,000 digital cinema projector or something like that.

Also, he said that the Panasonics were better than the Samsungs, because the Samsungs display 3D in a resolution even less than 720p, despite their claims otherwise. Is this dude off his rocker?

It wasn't just the Astro Boy demo, this guy was basically saying that "everything" in 3D is only 720p, even though the TV itself is 1080p.

I thought it was pretty ridiculous for him to say that, but all the guys there seemed to totally agree with him, and again, normally these guys are pretty knowledgeable. Still, I think that they are totally mistaken with this, but I'm not an expert or anything, so who knows?

Yeah, I mean, you expect that type of thing with college kids working at Best Buy or Circuit City (back when they existed), but this is a specialty, high-end home theater enthusiast place. These guys "normally" know what they are talking about. I was talking to one main guy, but there were 3 other guys right by him, and they all agreed with what he was saying. They were unanimously misinformed I guess.

The original salesguy that I talked to sent me this email:


Thank you for coming in last week and I do apologize for any miscommunication or incorrect information that I might have given you regarding the 3D technology.

As we mentioned it is a new technology and we are trying to grasp it and get up to speed on it as quickly as possible.

After we spoke I contacted some of the manufactures in question as well as a person who is considered and expert regarding the technology in our industry and so I wanted to share that with you.

Here is what I found:

The primary issue is that 1080p panels, according to Panasonic and many of the other panel manufacturers (Samsung), employ a side by side format or top and bottom format for displaying the information. This splits the image in two and stretches it across the screen effectively halving the
resolution. This format is used primarily, so all the set-top boxes and players that are out there can stay out there.

If a broadcast originates as a 1080i output, it will be sent to the television as two consecutive fields consisting of 540 horizontal lines of resolution. When they are reassembled they will become 1080.

If the TV is then converting the information for display in 3D, it must use the side by side format and split each field into two parts; one for the left eye and one for the right eye. This will effectively knock the resolution of each eye down to 270 horizontal lines of resolution.

If the TV displays in 1080p, it still would delay one field before writing it with the incoming field. The original output was interlace and 3D (like that) must be frame displayed sequentially, so the maximum resolution of each frame for each eye is 540.

There is no resolution difference between the Panasonic & Samsung (LED or Plasma) but the Panasonic has faster response time to black for motion.

The issue is how to display a true HD 3D, 1920 x 1080 image for each eye.

Panel manufacturers can't do this yet, but will be able to accomplish it when their displays go to 4k x 2k chips. Digital Projection can do this now by interweaving these images at the digital level. By doing this it significantly increases bandwidth requirements, ie. two pipes carrying some video information. Digital Projection currently makes the only television that can do this. It is believed that at some point Panasonic will offer a firmware upgrade on their 3D Blu-Ray player that will allow the second output to carry additional video information necessary for this higher resolution display.

Again I apologize for any confusion that I may have caused and hopefully this helps clear up some of that information.

Thank you,

This will effectively knock the resolution of each eye down to 270 horizontal lines of resolution.





This couldn't be possible..... could it? Nothing I've seen in various demos on the Panasonic could possibly be 270 lines of horizontal resolution. No way. It looked WAY better than that. I can't imagine that my brain could be tricked into thinking it looked that much better if it was really only 270 lines per eye.