3-D TV: Most of the major TV manufacturers, including LG Electronics, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony, will be selling 3-D-capable displays by the end of the year, and all will require 3-D glasses.
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Hold onto your remote control: 3-D television is on the way. By the end of the year, most of the major TV manufacturers, including LG Electronics, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony, will be selling displays capable of showing 3-D movies and other programming. Unfortunately, none of the models going on sale this year will eliminate the least pleasant aspect of the 3-D viewing experience—those often uncomfortable and frequently silly-looking spectacles. 3-D TV for the naked eye does not exist—at least not yet.
The coming first-generation 3-D-capable TVs for the most part rely on stereoscopic displays combined with battery-powered, active liquid-crystal shutter system glasses to achieve the effect. These glasses, which look something like the polarized shades handed out at movie theaters, alternately darken and lighten the glasses' left and right lenses, at a speed that is too fast for the eyes to perceive. Meanwhile the TV synchronously displays the corresponding right- and left-eye–specific images.
"Basically, you take a [high-definition] TV and add a liquid-crystal display and modulate the display for the left and right eye," says Pierre Blanche, an assistant research scientist at the University of Arizona's College of Optical Sciences (OSC) in Tucson. "The manufacturers know it's going to work, so there's no challenge."
To go further, Blanche is working with OSC chairman Nasser Peyghambarian and a number of other researchers to develop a 3-D technology that can be viewed sans the special glasses. "We are trying to see how much we can push the science," he adds.
Although glasses-free 3-D TV has been in the works for years, the OSC researchers think it is only a matter of time before it is ready for prime-time—or any other time slot for that matter. The researchers are experimenting with a photorefractive polymer film on which 3-D images can be recorded, erased and replaced with new ones. When carried out quickly enough this process leads to a series of images on the film that deliver three-dimensional action, which can be picked up without special eyewear.
The polymer is a complex composite of copolymers (which act as a photosensitizer and absorb light), a plasticizer (an additive used in plastics to provide strength and flexibility), and other materials formed into a film and melted between 100-millimeter indium tin oxide–coated glass electrodes. Images are recorded onto the polymer using a laser, whose light gets absorbed, creating a charge distribution across the material that modifies the film's refractive index, thereby creating a 3-D image that can be viewed when the film is illuminated.
Turning this polymer into something large enough and that refreshes fast enough to work as a TV is another matter. "Don't expect 3-D TVs without glasses anytime soon," Peyghambarian says. The technology he and his colleagues are developing is about five years away from use as a TV display and probably a decade away from a product that can be brought into the home.
Chinese researchers at Beijing University, Shenzhen-based AFC Technology and the country's National University of Defense Technology are experimenting with holographic 3-D displays, as well. They claimed in the December issue of Optics Letters to have developed a functional holographic screen that is 1.8 by 1.3 meters in size. The researchers place 64 digital cameras along a single axis to capture an object from different viewing angles, then displayed a 3-D image of it using the same number of projectors arranged in the same configuration as the camera array. Each camera was connected to a video server, which recorded the images at 64 different angles through the array, corrected image distortions, synchronized image frames, and controlled the projector array that cast the 3-D images onto the screen. Using this approach, it is possible to realize a fully continuous naked-eye 3-D display in the near future without theoretical and technological barriers, AFC Technology President Frank Fan wrote in an e-mail to Scientific American.
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14 Comments
Add CommentActually there are a bunch of companies that already offer these. Off the top of my head, Sunny Ocean Studios from Singapore has a 27 inch autostereoscopic display that enables glasses free 3d viewing from 64 different perspectives.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou're a great journalist.
I haven't read the article, but replacement of the normal lenses in you eyes with special 3d lenses is technically feasible, for those really serious viewers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@bortbort:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was thinking the same thing. Gotta love these 'journalists' and how much 'research' they actually do to provide us with the 'facts.'
@Larry Greenemeier:
Intel has also been working on autostereoscopic displays with at least 8 viewing positions for a while now and they had this technology on display at CES 2010! All the news groups that cover 3D TV were all over it, how did you miss that?
Huh! the issue is that there has been a lot of proposals for 3D TV: just enter www.oepm.es , invenes, and look for patents E02016340, P200701360, W9900047ES, P200500568, W9300018HU, W9500727CA, W9802923GB, W0100037HU, P9502035, U9103006, W9402572GB. If you look elsewhere, for sure you'll find a lot more. Patent databases do give a lot of fun. Enjoy it! Salud +
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI appreciate the feedback (although not the negative tone). Both the Sunny Ocean Studios glasses-free 3-D display and the 3-D TVs that Intel displayed at CES exist only as prototypes at this time. These are not available to the general public and are still in development. These are a few examples of the many projects underway to develop glasses-free 3-D TV, some of which I mention in my article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWil it ever be a hit? Hasn't research shown that 1 in 5 people develop headaches with watching 3D. Might it just be something new that will die out?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd Philips isn't a Danish company but a Dutch company.
Why do writers always refer to 3-D glasses as looking silly. They don't look silly to me, they look like ordinary sunglasses. billions of people were them already. Do they feel silly? If you have to use a metaphor or anecdote in all your article titles, can't you do better than that?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy do tech writers always refer to 3-D glasses as looking silly. They don't look silly to me, they look like ordinary sunglasses. Billions of people were them already. Do they feel silly? If you have to use a metaphor or anecdote in all your article titles, can't you do better than that?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thislgreenemeier - I commend you for responding to commentators!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't understand why we will have to buy new TVs. The 3-D images will be delivered to viewers wearing the glasses from 2-D LCD screens. I have an LCD HD TV now, with a 2-D screen. Why can't it be used for 3-D programs?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the technology will work by rapid alternation of images, why couldn't existing LCD HD TVs be sufficient, since they refresh so fast?
We already have computers without keyboards. It is obvious that the next step will be computers without screens. Computers will be worn on the wrist and transmit audiovideo output to glasses, and mice will be finger rings containing accelerometers. Miniaturisation will soon make such technology lightweight and esthetic, cheap and universal. All this already exists in different laboratories!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are two errors in your article concerning the 3-D TV system in China:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. The system Dr. Frank Fan described is not just something his group is "experimenting" or that they "claim" the system to be working. The system WAS PUBLICALLY DEMONSTRATED from July 13 to 17, 2009 during the Eighth International Symposium on Display Holography in Shenzhen. See the report in the April, 2010 issue of Optics & Photonics News from the Optical Society of Ameria.
2. (a minor mistake) It is not Beijing University, it is the Beijing University of Post and Telecommunication.
Submitten by Prof. Tung H. Jeong, Chairman of the symposium in China. jeong@lakeforest.edu
I had signed in, registered, and submitted a comment earlier today; and you have notified me that it is now posted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut I do not find it.
Tung H. Jeong
jeong@lakeforest.edu
The Chinese HoloTV was physically demonstrated in front of over 150 professional and artistic holographers from over 15 countries during the Eighth International Symposium on Display Holography (ISDH) held in the Waterlands Resort in Shenzhen, China, from July 13 to July 17, 2009. Not only the paper by Dr. Fan et. al was published in a refereed paper in the December issue of Optics Letters, but was reported by the April (2010) issue of Optics & Photonics News published by the Optical Society of America.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTherefore this invention was not just "claimed", but demonstrated. The 1.8 x 1.3 gaint-screen system, which can be built in any shape (cylindrical, dome, etc.) and can be watched without any special glasses simultaneously by a large audience. They even turned this system on the audience, and we scrambled around the auditorium to watch ourselves!
By the way, Dr. Fan is with the Beijing University of Post and Telecommunication (not Beijing University as reported).
Tung H. Jeong
Chairman and Founder of ISDH
jeong@lakeforest.edu