With a record-setting $2-billion in global box office receipts and counting, it’s safe to say that James Cameron’s 3-D film Avatar has exposed a pretty big chunk of the world to the pleasures of perceiving a believable third dimension in movies. Television manufacturers like Sony are hoping that will help create a market for 3-D enabled home theatre hardware.
Last week, Sony unveiled its upcoming 3-D television technology at three of its Canadian Sony Stores in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal (with more demo stations planned for stores in Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, and Richmond Hill). Visitors can don a pair of 3-D glasses and check out clips of sports television, documentaries, and PlayStation 3 games running on the soon-to-be-released panels.
I made a trip to the Sony Style store at the Eaton Centre in Toronto last week to check out the demonstration for myself.
Sony BRAVIA LX900— Sony
The first thing I noticed was that the picture was brighter, crisper, and more natural than what I’ve seen watching 3-D films in theatres, which always appear just a bit dark and blurry to me. Plus, the images didn’t seem to pop off the screen toward me, but rather had a sense of intense and believable depth.
I mentioned as much to Karol Warminiec, the Sony executive on hand to answer my questions, and he explained that the technologies used by theatre projectors and Sony’s 3-D televisions have surprisingly little in common.
The 3-D images we see in theatres are created by a pair of projectors generating two images; one for each eye. Bulb intensity gets cranked up to compensate for the tinted lenses in the glasses patrons must wear. The resulting 3-D effect will vary based on a viewer’s position and the quality of the projected image.
Sony’s televisions, on the other hand, use active shutter glasses; eye gear with high-tech lenses that are lightly tinted and take turns becoming opaque once every sixtieth of a second, in sync with the alternating images displayed on screen. The resulting effect is that each eye sees a different stream of frames, thus creating the illusion of depth.
I was also told that the technology will be more effective than theatrical 3-D for those who have a limited sense of depth due to vision disabilities. “It might not be the same as what someone with perfect vision will see,” said Mr. Warminiec, “but more extreme effects will be apparent.”
Specifications, details, and pricing aren’t yet available—Mr. Warminiec would only say that his company’s 3-D sets would fall into their line of premium displays—but I was provided a few basic bits of information.
The company will initially roll out a pair of 3-D enabled sets; one that comes with a two sets of glasses and a built-in transmitter (necessary to sync the glasses with images on screen), and a second that will be 3-D ready, which means it won’t come with the transmitter or the glasses but that they can be purchased separately.
The transmitter will facilitate up to eight sets of glasses at a range of 170-degrees and just over three metres, though it’s worth adding that the 3-D effect still seemed to work when I took a couple of steps further back.
The glasses are rugged, featuring wide, rubber-coated arms and frames. They ought to stand up fairly well to a bit of wear and tear—which is good, since consumers won’t want to be forced to replace specs damaged by kids as they toss them around and accidentally stomp on them.
They’re also designed to fit comfortably over prescription eyewear. Put to the test, they fit quite well over my wide-framed black plastic spectacles.
Mr. Warminiec didn’t provide a battery life estimate, but he did say that his people hadn’t needed to recharge any of the glasses since installing the 3-D demo station in the store.
