CES, Part 3/3: Sony, LG, NVIDIA

[Neil]

Was Sony just showing off, or do you think they have something big cooking?

What are your thoughts on LG? Have any of you sampled their 3D work?

NVIDIA! Nuff said.

Regards,
Neil

[Freke1]

Thanks, good job (fun I hope).

As a consumer (not part of any industry) many many miles away I know that those displays will not appear in any stores around here for years.
Also I can't believe they are not promoting shooting 3D home videos to sell those monitors.

[DmitryKo]

I'd take Sony intentions very seriously.

Says Akira Shimazu, senior general manager of Business Development Division at Audio-Video Headquarters:

• "We are declaring our full-scale entry into the business of home-use 3D image devices."
• "As data, our game content has already been available in 3D format, and, therefore, it is not difficult to make the shift to stereovision [on the Playstation 3]"
• "Currently, we are waiting the standard for three-dimensional Blu-ray Disc to be established. The standard will be finalized at the end of 2009 at the earliest, and products will be released in 2010"
• "We are currently developing several methods [of 3D stereo projection]. We used this method (line-interleaving) for the demonstration simply because we made another demonstration with Real D's projector for business use and decided to use the same [passive polarized] glasses for the home-use display. Also, this method displays right and left images simultaneously and was the most appropriate for the LCD panel with a frame frequency of 120Hz or less"

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NE ... 09/163839/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

They have some hard choices to make. If they go for active shutter-glasses, they have to support full-frame 120 Hz transmission which requires HDMI 1.4 and/or DisplayPort 1.2 connection (both standards will be approved this Summer), so they need to release an updated PlayStation 3 or even a next-gen console.
I wonder if they consider TI's checkerboard pattern (two frames in a standard 1080p60 frame) - considering that most current DLP TVs are 3D stereo capable, the market is too large to ignore.

Line-interleaving with passive polarized glassed works with current Playstation 3 hardware, but vertical resolution is lower and the display costs considerably more.

I doubt Sony will license double-panel techology from iZ3D.


They probably can't afford to release both 120 Hz and line-interleaved displays with the current economical situation. I'm leaning to the opinion they would choose 120 Hz and make their own USB shutter glasses, but they have to best Nvidia's 3D Vision's weight and operation times...

[ssiu]

If they go for active shutter-glasses, they have to support full-frame 120 Hz transmission which requires HDMI 1.4 and/or DisplayPort 1.2 connection (both standards will be approved this Summer), so they need to release an updated PlayStation 3 or even a next-gen console.

That seems like a common misconception ... HDMI 1.3 (which PS3 supports -- good foresight on Sony's part) already doubles older version's single-link bandwith to 10.2Gbps. (Ref: http://www.hdmi.org/learningcenter/faq.aspx -- HDMI 1.3 increases its single-link bandwidth to 340 MHz (10.2 Gbps) to support the demands of future HD display devices, such as higher resolutions, Deep Color and high frame rates.) 10.2Gbps is more than enough to support 1080p 120Hz signal (for 8-bit colour anyways).

[DmitryKo]

HDMI 1.3 (which PS3 supports -- good foresight on Sony's part) already doubles older version's single-link bandwith to 10.2Gbps

You're probably right, but unless there is a clear indication that the increased data rate is not an optional requirement and is properly implemented in the PS3 so there are no interoperability issues with 120 Hz displays, I wouldn't hold my breath. Been there, seen that... manufacturers tend to create hype for features that never work as intended.



BTW, I wonder if combining line/column interleaving with a 120 Hz refresh rate in a single display would be a viable cost-effective solution in the near future? You'd get the best of both worlds - if you prefer lightweight passive polarized glasses or need to serve multiple viewers, use the interleaved mode, and switch to page-flipping with shutter glasses when you need additional image clarity... This could be marketed as a truely dedicated stereoscopic display solution!

[DmitryKo]

PS. I've taken some time to do a research on the bandwidth requirements.

First, here are the maximum data rates availabe for HDMI, DVI and DisplayPort:

Code: Select all

DVI single/dual link	3.96, 7.92 GBit/s	 	  	(up to 165 MHz pixel rate)
HDMI 1.2/1.3	 	 	4.08, 8.16 Gbit/s	 	  	(up to 170 MHz pixel rate)
DisplayPort 1.1/1.2 	5.184, 8.64, 17.2 Gbit/s	  (1.62, 2.7 or 5.4 GHz symbol rate)

Note that 10.2 GBit/s for HDMI is the symbol rate - the effective data rate is 20% lower because of error-correction overhead (8B/10B encoding scheme is employed by all of the above standards).

Then, here are data rates required for 120 Hz display using different blanking methods such as Generalized Timing Formula and Coordinated Video Timing with Reduced Blanking (calculatied with standard VESA spreadsheets from http://vesa.org/Standards/free.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ).

RGB or YCbCr 4:4:4 (24 bpp)

Code: Select all

  	 	 	 None	GTF	 CVT	 CVT-RB
1920	1080	5.97	8.29	8.87	6.85
1920	1200	6.64	9.27	9.86	7.61

YCbCr 4:2:2 (16 bpp)

Code: Select all

  	 	 	 None	GTF	 CVT	 CVT-RB
1920	1080	3.98	5.53	5.92	4.57
1920	1200	4.42	6.18	6.57	5.08

Looks like a 1080p120 TV display must either use compressed (YCbCr 4:2:2) encoding or CVT Reduced Blanking timings to fit into the available bandwidth of anything except DisplayPort 1.2 (and I'm not even sure CVT-RB is a part of the HDMI standard - even if it is, CVT-RB is only specified for 60 Hz vertical frequency by VESA).

So I'd still think a new revision of HDMI standard is needed for 120 Hz refresh rate - if not for different pixel formats or yet another increase in data rates, then to clarify the specifications and update the testing requirements.

[wnielsenbb]

Gaa Too much confusion. I have most all of a dual projection 3D system at home. Polarizers, Polarized 120" screen, glasses. All I need is the second projector. With all this talk of an interlaced solutions it may be best to wait for a 120 Hz projector and go shutter glasses, if that is all the PS3/Xbox 360 will support. It doesn't seem possible the PS3 would support Dual Projection does it?
Perhaps someone could make a conversion box.
Warren.

[Tril]

Gaa Too much confusion. I have most all of a dual projection 3D system at home. Polarizers, Polarized 120" screen, glasses. All I need is the second projector. With all this talk of an interlaced solutions it may be best to wait for a 120 Hz projector and go shutter glasses, if that is all the PS3/Xbox 360 will support. It doesn't seem possible the PS3 would support Dual Projection does it?
Perhaps someone could make a conversion box.
Warren.

Such a conversion box does exist but it most probably has commercial pricing (that means it's probably expensive). Here's one that works using a VGA cable for its input and outputs both on VGA and DVI-D (supports an input resolution of 640 x 480 (VGA) up to 1400 x 1050 (SXGA+)) : CHRISTIE ACTIVE TO PASSIVE SIGNAL CONVERTER (38-804652-01). It does not support the checkerboard mode however so it would not work with a console if the console only supported checkerboard mode.

[DmitryKo]

Too much confusion. I have most all of a dual projection 3D system at home. Polarizers, Polarized 120" screen, glasses. All I need is the second projector.

So, your proposed solution is cost and complexity?

The confusion only comes from the fact that we're discussing unreleased products and standards; once the fog clears, it should be as straightforward as setting up a DVD player.

[wnielsenbb]

I just don't want to wait for the fog to clear That could be a year off.
Didn't know about those boxes. That clears the way for dual projection. Now just gotta get the second projector.
Warren.

[Kimber]

Neil,

Do you know if LG changed their plans for releasing 3D ready TV's this year. Today in a press release about their lh90 (240hz) nothing was mentioned about 3D. Nor has anything been mentioned on their lh55 another 240hz TV. Perhaps your contact at LG knows something.

http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/04/22/lg ... tes-still/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_ur ... ode%3dNEWS" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[smoothy]

The good thing about this is if Sony do go down the shutter glasses route, then imagine how many they would sell, if 3d gaming on PS3 takes on and they sell millions, the shutter glasses would be become so cheap, in 5 years time they could be only a few dollars more expensive than polarized glasses. Then factor in sales of shutter glasses from the Panasonic Full HD 3D Plasma display and the Nvidia 3d vision and finally you see the tech gradually getting cheaper to manufacture. If everyone jumps on board with shutter glasses and all the TV manufacturers can make full 1010p at 60 fps per eye like Panasonic did then shutter glasses may just become as cheap as polarized glasses in quicker than 5 years.