The Official 3D Thread - Page 3

Just found a link for the glasses which are compatible with the new Samsung and Mitsubishi 3d DLP televisions. Please note you still need a computer (media center) but the glasses themselves are only about $100.

http://edimensional.com/product_info...roducts_id=127

Two new 3D movies announced

Tim Butons to make Alice in Wonderland and a feature movie based on his own short film "Frankenweenie."
for Disney pictures.

link

http://www.reuters.com/article/filmN...34415820071116

If you think 3D is not real, think again new projects are getting announced left and right.

Indeed so. On top of the various 3-D films released in 2007, next year we can look forward to:

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
AUBREY BLAZE PIRANHAS
CORALINE
DARK COUNTRY
THE DIVE
ESCAPE FROM PLANET EARTH
FLY ME TO THE MOON (Imax feature)
GEORGE CLINTON'S FUNKADELIC MOTHERSHIP (provisional title)
HANNAH MONTANA/MILEY CYRUS: BEST OF BOTH WORLDS CONCERT TOUR
HORRORWEEN
IGOR
JOURNEY 3-D
LITTLE HERCULES
SANCTUM
SCAR
U2 3-D

Some of those may not be released until 2009, along with the following:

AVATAR
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
FRANKENWEENIE
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON
MONSTERS VS. ALIENS
THE STEWARDESSES (remake)
TINTIN

And that, ladies and gents, is just the beginning...

Hehehe . . .

An "X" rated movie.

Nah, the remake will probably be R-rated at most, and the MPAA is notoriously conservative on sexual issues, so I doubt we'll see anything too 'daring'. Unless the producers go the unrated route.

Gawd, can you imagine what might end up coming out of the screen?...

Well I have the Samsung HLT6187SAX and I just received my 3D glasses this weekend. I am blown away. The quality of 3D on a home television is simply stunning. I have built million dollar 3D systems for theme parks. To have this level of quality at home is just amazing. The real quality is what you put into it though. HQFS formated Dvd's and Sensio can only go so far. My initial experiments in generating 1080p mpg streams using Peter Wimmer's Stereoscopic Player have been the best results. I down converted some of the films I worked on from the 4K Imax masters into Over/Under 1920x2048 image mpg2 image streams.


Theres allot of content coming out in 3D, it still remains to be seen if this will hit the home theater. Out all the 3D films in the last 5 years, only Troublemaker's Spy Kids and Shark Boy have seen a full 3D release for home markets. Further slice the 3D niche market into HD formats, I just don't see the studios seeing this as being viable.


-D

I am excited to see that somebody got good 3D at home.
Your Imax 4k originals were 3D already and using 3D converters of 2D 1080p originals the results would not be as good, right?
Do you think 3D effects you experienced would look as good (size regardless) on high resolution computer screen (CRT or LCD)? Thanks

Quote:
Posted Jan 8th 2008 4:45PM by Richard Lawler
Filed under: CES, Displays, HDTV

Samsung's product lineup for 2008 includes 3D-capable plasmas, powered by DDD Group's TriDef 3D. It's about time, as we've been expecting the TriDef 3D box since 2005, and it only recently hit as a product for some of Samsung's DLPs. Hopefully we don't need to wait two more years to get this hooked to one of our flat panel sets, but it is here at CES, or available from DDD's website for $199.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/08/s...by-ddd-tridef/

DDD Tridef's website:

http://www.ddd.com/index.html


Quote:
Building upon Samsung's innovation in 3D-Ready HDTV technology, 3-D capability is built-in to select 2008 Plasma HDTVs. A 3-D Accessory Pack including DDD's TriDef 3D Experience and active 3-D glasses transforms Samsung's 42" and 50" Plasma HDTVs into interactive entertainment portals that bring games, movies, photos and web content leaping off the screen into the home.

The TriDef 3D Experience is the latest consumer 3-D content solution from DDD that enables a full range of popular entertainment from PC games to the latest high definition 3-D movies to be enjoyed on the new Samsung 3-D Ready Plasma and DLP® HDTVs. Features include:

Playing the latest PC games in 3-D
Watching the latest Hollywood movies in 3-D
Converting favorite 2D DVD movies into 3-D automatically
Enjoying family photographs in 3-D
Surfing the web in 3-D
The TriDef 3D Experience is compatible with Windows XP and Vista PCs and the latest graphics cards from nVIDIA and ATI capable of delivering the high-resolution images to the 3-D Ready HDTVs.
Visitors to Samsung's exhibit at CES will be able to view high definition clips from recent and soon-to-be-released Hollywood 3-D movies together with the latest in high definition PC 3-D gaming including Madden NFL '08 and Need For Speed: Carbon. Samsung's 3-D Ready HDTVs will be shown in Central Hall, booth 11033 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Jonas Tanenbaum, VP of Flat Panel TV marketing said: "We are pleased to announce the next generation of 3-D flat screen Plasma HDTVs at CES. DDD's TriDef 3-D Experience is a proven and affordable 3-D content solution that brings advanced HD gaming and HD video entertainment to consumers. The response from our retailers and distributors to the 3-D features has been very positive following the successful introduction of our 3-D Ready DLP® rear projection HDTVs in late 2007, and we're excited to expand our line up of high quality 3-D HDTVs through our new range of 3-D Ready Plasma HDTVs."

Chris Yewdall, Chief Executive of DDD said: "We are pleased that the TriDef 3-D Experience has been selected once more to enable Samsung's innovative new range of flat screen 3-D Ready Plasma HDTVs. Soon, customers worldwide will be able to experience and enjoy the very best in 3-D interactive and video entertainment on Samsung's 3-D Ready plasma HDTVs, powered by DDD's TriDef 3-D solutions."

just realized that the mitsubishi tv I recently bought is ready for 3-d. Has anyone had a chance to see how it looks and if its worth it?

tum

I have not seen any good 2D - 3D conversions that are done on the fly. DDD TriDefs software is almost unusable beyond a gimmick. 2D conversions never look better than a series of flat planes, unless you have 3D information being used in your conversion, like a Z-buffer or 3D geometry to pull the offset correctly. The best quality will always be true L-R stereo pairs or streams from true sources. Conversions can only take it so far.


You can pull off good 3D on any display. It all starts with 2 views, page flipping will work with most Nvida cards, with shutter glasses. You can do Anaglyphic on any system.

List of Upcoming 3D Movies !

http://marketsaw.blogspot.com/2007/0...3d-movies.html

All this was touted at CEDIA Denver this year (3d tv from mit and sams with DDD). Yet I never hear or see it in the market. Bummer. But I think its coming.

I want it now so looks like I will be placing my DDD order and see what its about.

I have the 3-d ready Samsung LED DLP. I looked up the equipment for the 3d and almost purchased it until I noticed it didn't say anything about macs; it was DDD I believe. Anyway, is there going to be a Mac compatible version that I can use with my tv?? Thanks!

When are the 3d high def optical disc players supposed to be on sale in the UK?

You mean players that will offer the fake 2D to 3D conversion, like DDD does? I don't think anyone announced dates or specific information.

I was thinking of players like the Mitsubishi one. I'm not sure if it only offers 2D->3D conversion or a more real kind

More than fifty years ago I saw Bwana Junction. Yesterday I saw Beowulf.

My Predictions

James Cameron is on record as being strongly in favor of photo realistic computer animation and 3D viewing. 3D he believes will help bring back movie theater patrons. He is wrong - very, very wrong. I will explain why later but first I want to point out why 3D and Photo Realistic Animation (PRA) are connected.

In the old film days you got stereo motion pictures the same way you got stereo photos in your ViewMaster. You took two pictures at the same time from two separate cameras which had there lens a few inches or feet apart. This yielded two images of the same object with binocular parallax.

You can see binocular parallax by closing first one eye and then the other. Another form of depth cueing is motion parallax. You see this everytime you look out the window of a car. The nearby objects stream by faster than the dsant objects. Your brain interprets this as 3D. Notice that motion parallax works just fine when you only use one eye.

Another depth cue we all have is retinal image size which relies partly on our knowledge of the external world. If we see two men standing in front us but one is much larger than the other we interpret the first man as being closer.

These are three of the depth cues we use to interpret the 2D image on our retina as a 3D space. There are about a half dozen other cues.

Regular movies have all these depth cues except binocular parallax. All movies are 3D and always have been.

In fact if you want to see a non-3D picture in the West you have to view paintings before Brunelleschi. Before him paintings lacked linear perspective and appear quite unnatural to us today. All photographs capture perspective by default. This of course includes all photographic movies. Linear or vanishing point pespective is yet another of those depth cues we use to construct a 3D world in our brains.

Another depth cue is accomodation. Our eyes refocus when we look at objects further away. In a movie you can see this when the cameraman refocuses on a slightly more distant character in a dialog scene. The foreground character goes out of focus and the background character come into focus. We the audience expect this because when we look at someone further away we experience our own eyes adjusting.

In the "filming" process you can also add binocular parallax by just adding a duplicate camera displaced somewhat to the side of the first camera. Then you just have to keep the two film streams separate in projection so that the left stream is only seen by the left eye and the right by the right. Ignoring the projection issue again let's consider just the two streams of conventional film.

When they made Bwana Junction Robert Stack was filmed twice simultaneously. When Anthony Hopkins was filmed (or rather motion captured) in Beowulf his movements were digitized into a single data stream. That data stream of wire frame coordinates was allied with a 3D model that was later painted with a surface map. The assembled model of Hopkins follows the coordinates of Hopkins captured on the set. This is needed because realistic human movements are very hard to create from scratch.

After you have a wire frame. a surface map and a set of movement coordinates you still need to film the scene - or rather you need to render the scene from an arbitrary camera point somewhere in the virtual space of the scene. But all you need to add binocular parallax is to render the scene twice from two slightly offset points.

That's why 3D and PRA are natural partners.

But why won't 3D save movie theaters the way Cameron hopes?

That's simple - because Home Theater 3D will be better than movie auditorium 3D. It's all a matter of hygene.

There are basically two ways to keep the left eye/right eye images separate - passive or active. The there are two or three passive techniques which allow cheap disposable eye glasses. Polarization techniques seem to be most popular currently.

The other main choice is for active eye glasses. These glasses receive an external signal and open or shut in sync with the movie.

An active or shutter pair of glasses contains a power source and some electronics. Currently such devices cost about $100. Beowulf cost me $10. Parking cost $15. I wouldn't have paid another hundred bucks for glasses.

There are companies that offer eye glass washers for theaters but these don't seem to have caught on. The Beowulf screening I attended used passive disposable glasses.

However at home I could justify buying a pair of active shutter glasses. I wouldn't worry so much about hygene because they would be mine alone. This probably means that group theaters will have passive (polarized) 3D and Home Theaters will have active (shutter based) 3D.

Maybe I'm wrong about this. Maybe theaters will install automatic washing machines. Maybe customers will return their expensive shutter glasses after each showing. Maybe those glasses won't be damaged by the washing machines. Maybe the customers won't worry about getting "cooties" from the previous wearer. You think?

Currently there are only a handful of theaters in each US metropolitan area that show 3D. In SF the downtown Metreon is plagued with gang violence and stinky homeless men. It was the wave of the future ten years ago when Sony opened it. Today it is failing. But again maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there will be plenty of others who will be willing to pay the big bucks for a 3D experience in the central city.

No, I think James Cameron is exactly wrong. PRA movies are inherently easy to convert to 3D. This means that there will be as many 3D movies as the public demands as soon as motion capture animation begins to replace live actors. However few people will choose to watch them on a passive/polarized screen that is inherently dark but will rather choose to watch them at home with an inexpensive and technically superior active shutter based system.

3D will tend to drive the public out of the conventional theaters and into their own Home Theaters.

Back in the late 60's our company had a small contract with a firm in Queens NY that made polarizing everything. The owner had a running gun battle with Polaroid over the original patents. He was an extremely inventive fellow and made a small fortune with cheap polarized glasses. Just like the red green in paper frames, but with up down and cross polarizing. He made a special two frame lens for 35mm projectors. Turns out that anything moving through a frame would appear in 3d as the frames switched polarization.

Is this the same sort of thing? Is there added information in inanimate parts of the frame to achieve this illusion of depth?

Can anyone guess who paid all the money to him for those cheap glasses?

I have the 3-d ready Samsung LED DLP. I looked up the equipment for the 3d and almost purchased it until I noticed it didn't say anything about macs; it was DDD I believe. Anyway, is there going to be a Mac compatible version that I can use with my tv?? Thanks!

shutters glasses are just a temp solution, they will all be replaced by polarization. the Samsung set my dad just got is 120Hz and will need shutter glasses to see in Stereo. but LCDs and plasmas that are coming on the market will all be polarized and use the cheap glasses.

there are a ton of true stereo displays that are in the labs and a few even out for NASA and some medical research labs that do stereo without any glass.

there is also a LCD display that does stereo without any glasses but it requires you to be in a "sweet spot" as it shows left right view to each eye. this is only good for a single person sitting close to a display.

The name of the film was BWANA DEVIL, by the way.

Most theaters have chosen to install the Real D system which uses polarized glasses, which are provided to the patrons in sealed plastic bags, so no hygene problem exists. We've gone from about 50 capable theaters to nearly 1000 in just a couple of years, with deals for hundreds more already signed, so someone sees this as a good investment.

Also, each movie released so far in both flat and 3-D forms in the same market has seen the 3-D version sell three times the number of tickets, despite higher admission prices. That's the trend, and both Hollywood and the theater owners are listening. That's why nearly three dozen 3-D projects are in various stages of production and development right now.

In fact, this 3rd 3-D boom (after the one from 1953-54 and another mini boom in the early 1980's) has already outlasted the earlier ones, and shows no signs of peaking yet.

No one expects all movies or "Days of Our Lives" to go 3-D anytime soon, but the format seems to have moved into the mainstream enough now that a stereoscopic movie will no longer be considered just an occasional novelty.

Those who settle for 2-D can simply watch the flat version of the movie playing in the auditorium down the hall.

The 3D revolution has just begun. Just look at video games console that were considered dead after the crash of 85. Everyone laughed at Nintendo releasing a console in the early 90's. Seeing the world of film as if you were there, as it was intended, is never going away. Stereoscopic images have been around for over one hundred seventy years. To call this a fad is nonsense. Its the way we naturally see.

I just wonder if Disney will use 3-D to keep Theaters alive or if they will release it on 3-D Blu-Ray?

American Dog the new Disney animated feature for this summer is coming in a 3-D version as did meet the Robinsons. Toy Story 1,2 & 3 are all getting 3-D renderings.

My home town theater was the first in the state with a Christie DLP and is now the only all digital and 3-D in Washington. I did not care for Nightmare before Christmas as a movie but the 3-D was very impressive.

You're right it was Bwana Devil not Bwana Junction. My mistake. My only defense is that I was pretty young when I saw it. At the time I saw every 3D movie I could. I only went to the movie theater to see Beowulf because it was being shown in 3D. So there can be no doubt that the binocular parallax technology is effective in getting people into a movie theater seat - at least once.

I was also interested in Beowulf because of its use of Photo Realistic Animation (PRA). But I could have waited until it was either broadcast or released on DVD or Blu-Ray and have watched it at home. At present however the only way I can see a feature film in 3D is in a theater.

I saw almost all of the movies in the first wave of 3D and a few of those in the second wave. But Beowulf will probably be the only time 3D will get me into a movie theater again.

I expect to see all subsequent 3D movies in my Home Theater. This was my main point. In the fifties 3D got some people back to buying movie tickets. The current resurection of 3D is motivated by distributors and producers for exactly the same reason - theater attendance is down. The phenomenon of 3D features is a sign of desparation not a sign of progress.

Peking Duck is traditionally a restaurant dish, at least in China. That's because Chinese houses seldom had ovens. Similarly movies have had to be seen in public group facilities because in our poverty and primitiveness we could not afford a movie screen in our homes - the natural place to see a movie. Romans likewise had public baths. I have my own bathtub.

You seem to have missed my point about hygene. Let me try to be more clear.

I have here on my desk my souvenir REALD glasses. They came in a hermetically sealed plastic bag. As I walked into the theater my shoes stuck to the floor where candy goo and spilt drinks had left their residue. I was reassured to realize that the glasses at least were clean.

A theater has to provide a guaranteed hygenic pair of glasses if it expects anyone to wear them. Given that the active electronic glasses need to be washed its not surprising that theaters choose to issue disposable passive glasses. This means that Home Theaters can have active glasses but public theaters can only have passive (polarized) glasses. Of course Home Theaters could also have passive glasses. The point is that public theaters really can't use active glasses.

If as some have suggested passive (polarized) glasses are inherently superior it won't matter. But I strongly suspect that active (shutter) glasses are the superior technology. If I'm right 3D will come to be seen as a home oriented technology rather than a public theater oriented technology.

Finally let me elaborate a few of the inherent disadvantages of public theaters as a venue for watching a 3D feature film.

• Parking - it cost me $15
• Anxiety - When the family with all the little kids came in just as the lights dimmed, my stomach clenched in anticipation of them sitting right behind me
• Urination - If I had to go pee I couldn't pause the picture
• Libation - The theater didn't have cappucinos, my brand of mineral water, or vodka.
• Schedule - I had to wait nearly two hours for the start of the movie
• Sound Quality - It was good in the theater considering that it had not been equalized specifically for my ears the way my home system is.
• Picture Size - It was a big screen such that I could get the same subtended angle as what I was used to from my little nine foot home screen by sitting about ten rows back. Picture size was therefore a wash.
• Picture Quality - The 3D theater picture was far dimmer than what I experience on my non-3D home theater screen. It was dimmer than my old home system was when I didn't yet have a screen and I had 4000+ hours on the bulb.
• Seats - Even the best public theater seating is inferior to what's available from any home furniture recliner.

shutter glasses are a bad idea, not everyone can deal with them. some people can still see the flashing, plus our vision is not setup to see left eye then right eye. it takes much more concentration to "SEE" in 3D when there is a temporal shift in the images. it is best if each eye sees L/R at the very same instance.

polarized projection can be done through one lens, so if set up as a 3D system only one projector is needed. a shutter projection will need two projector that are perfectly timed to each other OR a very fast projector. then you need to send the timing to the shutter glasses, this is another added problem.

last shutter glasses need power and they do break, this is NOT going to work for 3D long term.

besides Phillips is working on a 3D display that needs no glasses.

The Hannah Montana 3-D concert movie did $29 Million in less than 700 theaters over Super Bowl weekend. It could be argued the draw here is skewed towards Hannah's appeal and not simply the 3-D aspect, but the huge success of this is only going to make even more theater chains jump on board the Digital 3-D bandwagon. It isn't unrealistic to expect that Real D will make their target of 4000 installed screens by 2009.

Right now, Samsung DLP with shutter glasses is the best home viewing solution for 3D. Ive set up allot of high end systems and Im blown away how good it looks. Ive said this again, but the real problem with 3D at home isn't the technology or the use of shutter Vs passive or no glasses.... its the lack of content.

Hollywood has released over 20 mainstream films in 3D the last 5 years or so. Only TWO of these are available for home markets. SpyKids3d and Shark Boy. Thats it! You can't get Bouwulf in 3D. Not The Polar Express or Open Season or Monster House, or Superman or Harry Potter 5.... Nothing.

Content is king. Content will drive the technology and drive up demand.

Well reasoned. I think you may be right.

Haven't seen any discussion about Journey to the Center of the Earth which is the first live action movie to be released utilizing the new 3D technologies. Starring Brendan Frazier and Josh Hutcherson (the kid from Terebithia). Comes out July 11th.

Saw the trailer on HDNet (albeit 2D). Looks pretty cool.

Hollywood seems intent on putting these out there and I applaud them for giving a little extra value to the moviegoing experience.

Point me to a 1080p front projector that supports 3D with shutter glasses. I was under the impression they needed a 120Hz vertical refresh rate and I have not found such a beast. Nvida cards are one thing, I prefer a disc player with this capability, not a SA PC. Can you see that over the horizon? I know Mits made some noise to this effect but that was it. Q2 is fast approaching and I have not heard of their blu-ray deck yet.