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Might 2013 be the year of glassless 3D TVs? It's looking that way.Television makers and the entertainment industry as a whole has been trying to cram 3D viewing down our collective throats (or eye sockets, as it were -- apologies for the unpleasant visuals), but having to don a pair of sometimes goofy looking goggles hasn't proven popular. The other problem with 3D TVs is that they're often limited to strict viewing angles. Sit just a little bit off axis and the 3D effect goes out the window. It doesn't have to be that way, as Dolby demonstrated at its booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Yep, THAT Dolby, the one that's known for sound.
Reporter extraordinaire and Online Editor Jimmy Thang had a chance to demo Dolby's 4K glassless 3D TV, and sure enough, the 3D effect was preserved when viewing the screen from an angle.
For the technology to truly shine, Dolby said it was best if the content was 3D to begin with, rather than trying to upconvert 2D footage into 3D. The ability to upconvert is there, it just won't be as good as native 3D content.
If you're thinking this is the same technology used in Nintendo's 3DS handheld console and similar devices, think again. Those devices are single-viewer gadgets that, as mentioned above, requires a direct line of sight with the display. Dolby's technology is called Multi View Glasses Free 3D, which is exactly what it sounds like. An algorithm runs in real-time and converts the stereoscopic 3D input signal into a Multi View signal, Dolby explains.
What's equally interesting here is that Dolby is primarily known for audio, not video. Dolby feels it's mastered the audio space, and the next logical step was to dive into video. The company has already developed some professional products in the video space, such as digital video cinema servers, a professional reference video monitor, and more, and is now ready to focus on the consumer end.
Dolby says it plans to license its 4K glasses free 3D TV technology to third-parties rather than sell its own products.
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Comments are closed on this article
fung0
January 10, 2013 at 1:43am
I always get a laugh out of these "glasses-free 3D stories." There are absolutely fundamental geometric problems with delivering two different images to a pair of human eyes. This is not something you can just throw more technology at and expect to improve. We simply have no inkling at all of how proper autostereoscopic 3D might be possible.
Even with glasses, there are intractable issues (depth-of-field and convergence, for starters) that may never be resolved. Watching the video interview with Dolby, it's obvious that the BEST they hope to accomplish is to deliver that same problematic experience to multiple 'sweet spots' around the living room. If there is a true glasses-free 3D solution, it simply does not lie on this path of improving a fundamentally broken approach. If it exists at all, it's several quantum leaps away, probably in some currently inaccessible direction. (Holography, maybe.)
Bottom line, in answer to your question: is 2013 the year of glasses-free 3D? The answer is: don't make me laugh!
skirge01
January 09, 2013 at 7:18am
If this tech is being announced now, as are the TV manufacturer's 2013 TV lineups, I think it's more likely we'll see this technology in 2014, at the earliest.
I also wasn't sure if the "4k" reference was regarding resolution or starting price for the lowest-end models. ;-)
limitbreaker
January 08, 2013 at 4:25pm
3d is really only amazing in video games, makes it look much nicer and somehow removes the need for anti aliasing which i guess makes sense because the aliasing is different on each eye so they merge together and make 2x AA look like 16x AA. That part aside, having a greater sense of dept is great in some games including FPS where it can give you a slight edge when aiming.
firefox91
January 08, 2013 at 3:36pm
I just don't get the 3D craze. Personally, I don't like watching 3D movies. I find it takes away from the movie, not adds to it.
