Glasses free 3D TV

[TheForce]

For the second year streamtvnetworks and ultra-d.com companies are showing their latest upgrades to glasses free 3D TV. I'd say this looks good enough now to market. I could watch it from many angles and see good depth and "pop out" they showed to versions, what they called 2K which was supposed to be full HD and several 4K models. While, IMO, the 2K looked like a low res display, similar to the first plasma panels, the 4K looks as good as the passive 2k Vizio both in picture quality and 3D depth. It was very impressive to see how far this technology has come. It amuses me how so many claimed glasses free was 10 years away,, only two years ago and now, hee it is! The ultra-D does not use the same glasses free technology that generally only works for one viewer. It is completely different and they won't discuss how it works. To get an idea of how it looks, the best way I can describe it is the covers of 3D BluRay boxes but in video. This year I was able to get behind one of the sets and take some pictures of the complex hardware and wiring. Whatever these guys are doing it is not simple.

While I tried to shoot some 3D of these displays, it was not possible. The image was just flat world, but to my eyes, it looked fantastic 3D. So what this tells me is these sets are taking advantage of a known fact that the typical intra-axial distance between the human eyes is about 65 mm. Since my camera is about 30mm the error is too great to create its 3D effect. This is just a guess on my part but if I had the desire to test the theory, I would bring in a twin camera system set for 65mm interaxial and shoot some of the display. Considering the effort to do this, I'll. pass on it.

 

[TheKrell]

One wonders how this worked... Was there a camera tracking your head?

 

[TheForce]

No camera. Viewable bylarge crowd.

Toshiba was working on that approach

 

[TheKrell]

What happened if you move your head left or right by 30mm? It seems to me that this should reverse left and right images. I don't see any way around that conclusion unless you're looking at a real image, such as that which a hologram makes.

 

[Foxbat]

Also, what happens when you move towards and away from the screen? That would change the angle at which you're viewing the screen and that would present different pixels to your two eyes.

 

[TheForce]

No, that had no effect. I also tilted my head with left eye above the right and here the 3D disappeared. The side angle. Viewing was quite wide as well as vertical range(unlike passive which has limited vertical range)

It still tells me they are doing something very complex. and relying on a normal eye separation. Otherwise, why would I see the 3D and my camcorder with 33mm interocular not? Like I said, I could prove it with two cameras separated by 65 mm, same as my eyes. If 3D shows up then I would know. Still how and what they are doing using that for control is very unique and ingenious.

Up close the screen looks like a matrix of tiny beads of light too. That's why the 4K version looks so much better than last years 2K sets. The beads are smaller and packed in much closer.

Next week ill post some closeups of it and you can guess then.

 

[TheKrell]

It still tells me they are doing something very complex. and relying on a normal eye separation.

Yes, but as foxbat pointed out, "normal eye separation" subtends different angles depending upon your proximity to the screen. Had you taken your 3D camera twice as close, then that should mimic your eye separation at whatever your viewing distance was before.

This technology really has me interested. At first blush it appears to violate the laws of physics.

 

[bhelms]

So what media are used for 3D in this system? Can the current offering of 3D media "play" through it or is some different format required? Is a new format 3D player required or will the current ones work for this application?

I am waiting for a glasses-free solution. This might make me become serious...depending on the price and content availability of course...

 

[TheForce]

Also, what happens when you move towards and away from the screen? That would change the angle at which you're viewing the screen and that would present different pixels to your two eyes.

There seems to be a limit to the 3D depth such that if you are too far away, the range of depth diminishes. They want you to view these TVs about 10 ft away as optimum. Getting too close didn't affect the 3D that much until you were too close, that is they followed the guide line on 1.5 times screen height for viewing distance as a minimum.

Regular 3D content 3D BluRay movies but they do process the stream for their sets in realtime.


Also, moving side to side, the image on the 2k sets had a wavy ripple to it until you stopped your head movement then it went away. I didn't notice this artifact on the 4K monitor.

 

[TheForce]

Bhelms- this is a development company unaffiliated with any TV manufacturer. They are trying to get a company interested in manufacturing this technology for the royalty. That makes it more difficult to release to the public. You never know. One day a company like Apple may just decide to turn the 3D world upside down and buy them for their technology. However, the others are all doing either 3D active or passive and they aren't about to buy something that will compete with their own R&D investment.

I forgot to mention that last year I shot some video of this company's TVs and the video is on my YT channel. The quality is much improved over what they showed last year.

 

[TheForce]

TheKrell-

No, I don't believe they invoked the almighty and break laws of physics. Thinking outside the box on all the possible ways to create 3D and draw on what I see up very close to the screen, it is not a surface like the covers of the 3D disks that appear in 3D but looks very close. What I see are tiny micro lenses that have the images or a part of it being projected. Now if we consider that the regular 3D frame packed signal is processed so that they interpret more than just a left and right but create a number of views, lets call betweens, that are projected to the audience, then we can see a 3D image from a range of viewing angles at the same time. The processing is insane but not impossible. Kind of like we create slomo by duplicating the number of existing frames per second, now process those frames to create Tweens of motion and we smooth out the motion in the slomo. Sony Vegas does this. Instead of thinking of the Tweens of frames, take that to a pixel level and generate not just left and right but multiple angles of the scene between the original left and right.

So, instead of a passive parallax barrier as single viewer auto stereo screens use, these monitors could be using an active controlled set of micro lenses that give out a multiple number of image angles that preserve the stereoscopic view.

 

[Foxbat]

Don,

Thanks for reporting back on this. This is one of those things that makes me want to brave the crowds and TSA to attend CES. This technology sounds extremely practical and could bring 3D into everybody's home, as long as the price isn't too outrageous.

 

[TheForce]

Roland, you know I have been rather negative on the idea of glasses free 3D but this company, last year made me change my mind on the possibility. Unfortunately, the acceptance by the majors has not been very encouraging. One more day and I will try to speak to them about how it is going getting someone to buy into this revolutionary approach. As it is, the 2K seems to be now reduced to a marketable panel as all the hardware is now enclosed and only adds about 2" thickness behind the panel. The 4K system is like 2K last year and looks like a rats nest of wires and circuits. Most of their 4K displays were backed by a small room, hidden but one of them was out in the open for me to get some video.

I really don't think the image quality of the 2K system will sell. But the 4K panel with this technology looks like 2k quality. As such the cost of these now as an early adopter production system could be quite prohibitive.

 

[TheKrell]

So, instead of a passive parallax barrier as single viewer auto stereo screens use, these monitors could be using an active controlled set of micro lenses that give out a multiple number of image angles that preserve the stereoscopic view.

That seems within the laws of Physics though difficult to do for multiple viewers. That is also why I first asked if there was anything tracking your position. You said, "No", so I am still scratching my head.

 

[TheForce]

Today I got the opportunity to talk to their Public Relations Director who then introduced me to the COO of the company. We chatted for quite awhile about many things 3D and I did learn how they do this and I was not far off with my guess. But, i was wrong on the 65mm IA part. They do build a revolutionary screen surface, like fpr or multiple parallax (Toshiba) screen but while those technologies are passive, the ultra-D technology is active switching pixels in an array on a horizontal axis that are focused through millions of micro lenses. In the case of multiple parallax, the technology locks you into 3 fixed positions. If you move slightly, the 3D diverges and you see double. But the ultra-D system presents an array of left eye, right eye across the horizontal so that instead of just 3 positions, tracked by a camera and face detection, it permits a near continuous arc of 3D in a large kind of kidney shaped sweet spot in front of the monitor permitting an audience of people watching. The left right eye images on a pixel level are actively switched at a high rate of speed.

So, there is no way to shoot video of the presentation, however, the rep showed me that if they pause the video and then shoot video of that on a dolly move from right to left just small movement, it will show up as 3D on a stereo monitor. I tried it with my TD 10 but the result wasn't very consistent. He was really impressed with what I had shot of passive monitors using my special filter. He admitted my filter looked better. But seeing in person his glasses free technology is still much better than anything else to date. Toshiba had a small demo of their multi parallax with tracking camera and I would say there hasn't been much improvement in the past year. They didn't even show their line of 3D laptops.

 

[TheKrell]

Clear as mud.

 

[Foxbat]

Well, the should be a Patent application coming which should have drawings to reveal the optics... Or, maybe it's based on Clarke science (indistinguishable from magic) and we'll be left guessing!

 

[mike123abc]

This does sound nice, but the tilting of the head could be an issue. I like movie theaters using circular polarization better than HV because it hold up the 3D if I tilt my head.

 

[TheForce]

I have some 3D video of the show floor to start this to be sure your 3D viewing is working. I cant detect any 3D in the monitors in my recording until the final scene where they paused the playback for me. The logo pops out in front of the panel. I use a 3D Vizio connected to my computer's secondary monitor output and a 3D capable graphics card but I can also see it using red / cyan glasses in anaglyph.

 

[dfergie]

I'll download it and check out this evening Don ...