Had A Full 3-D Demo Today

care to elaborate?

i'll be waiting for the non-glasses versions, if the first demo units look promising.

plus of course for the first tv stations to actually broadcast 3d content, because bluray alone does not justify a new tv for me. not with all the loss of contrast and vividness and color.

quote:

Originally posted by GreenAlex:
care to elaborate?

i'll be waiting for the non-glasses versions, if the first demo units look promising.

The TVs I saw, Sony and Panny were fine with 1080p HD in their own right. They are expensive (£2k for 50" or £1k for 40"). That will change but I was underwhelmed by 3D, it's OK but not the leap that SD to HD is. That surprised me, as I remember some cinema experiments that were much better.

So like you, I'll wait for a) glasses free viewing (they are a pain to wear and tend to dim things), and b) the TVs to become cheaper.

Joe

I agree with you, Joe. I saw a demo in a Sony shop and was completely underwhelmed. The best they could show me was rubbish and the image in the periphery was poor.

Jon

I agree. 3D TVs are currently pants. I can't see the non-glasses technology being here any time soon, either.

Seen a demo of both Sony and Samsung and both weren't my thing. I hated the glasses felt they were heavy and uncomfortable. Films just haven't been made with this in mind and the clips I seen looked forced and over processed to me. The clip of football was terrible and looked awful.

Its one thing I will sit back with and wait for developments.

so where do you stand if you wear glasses all the time, prescription ones that is. You have to look a twat with two pairs on ?

I guess you do. But you can take solace in the fact that everyone else will be looking like a twat, too!

I tried out the 3D Panasonic tv a while back and was really impressed with the effect. So much so, decided to purchase a pair of 3D specs so i can see in 3D even when i'm not watching a 3D tv!

Give it try if you haven't already done so...

This is taken from Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle.

What’s wrong with 3D television?
Posted on October 4th, 2010 by Jake under Tech

When HDTV screens emerged on the scene, there was one major flaw with the format – there simply wasn’t enough high definition content to truly justify buying an HDTV. This was a problem easily remedied and we’re now in a situation where you can watch almost anything in high definition, even though that means different things depending on the format. Sports was the killer app that ultimately pushed HDTV into millions of homes. 3D television also suffers from a similar lack of programming, but the problems associated with 3DTV are quite a bit bigger than just waiting for the content providers to catch up.

Setting aside the fact that most of the 3D content available for home viewing isn’t optimized for the available 3D televisions and the fact that 3D glasses currently cost more than a Blu-ray player, there are two fundamentally broken aspects to 3D. First, the 3D experience needs to be immersive to work. On a 50-inch screen in a normal living room setting, 3D fails miserably. Anytime you look away from the screen at the room around you, the 3D magic fades and your brain is forced to reset when you look back to start feeling like you are getting a 3D experience. In an ideal scenario, watching 3D should happen in a dark room with no distractions to feel believable. That’s not a practical reality for most people.

The second thing fundamentally broken about 3D is the glasses. The previously mentioned price (about $700 for a family of four) is outrageous, but you can’t interact with the normal world in the way we’ve all become accustomed to with two-dimensional television. My own habit of watching baseball with a computer in my lap doesn’t work in a 3D world because I either need to remove the glasses every time I look at the computer screen or the glasses create an annoying experience while looking at the computer. Toshiba has just announced two 3D screens with no glasses required. I haven’t seen them, so I have no idea how they compare to other options, but at 20-inch and 12-inch sizes and less than 3-foot viewing distances, I don’t imagine they will be finding a place in the family viewing area anytime soon.

There’s also a third problem with 3D, which is that directors and cameramen haven’t been shooting for 3D. Cinematography tricks that worked for the past 100 years don’t work in a 3D world. That means most old content won’t look good when converted to 3D. HDTV didn’t have this kind of adoption problem, because movies shot for film could easily be re-released in high definition and look great. I think sports will be the killer app that drives 3D adoption, just like it was for HD. If you can make every living room feel like a front row seat, it changes the home entertainment experience. On the other hand, nobody’s close to working that kind of magic.

But that’s just one guy’s opinion of 3D. Do you have a 3D television and love it? What would make you switch to 3D?

...not to mention the full page of health warnings on the Samsung website.

And 3D makes people some people feel ill.
My m8 could not take more than 30 mins, and that was with IMAX Avatar, which is the best 3D I've seen and did not give me a headache that others 3D films have.

For me, I believe the problem if focus, with 3D you try to focus on things as though they were real 3D however the 3D focus is set when filmed, this dissonance between reality and film 3D is what causes the problem. Some have no problem, but 3D mostly gives me a headache after an hour if badly done (Avatar didn't) and makes others feel sick or dizzy.

Not planning to buy into this one

Best 3D I've seen was "How to Train Your Dragon", a delightful animated film.

But that was at the cinema......

Apart from poor execution (converted 2D stuff will ALWAYS be lame) the TV screen just isn't big enough for the immersive experience. The edges of the screen allow the "real world" to distract from the experience.