RealD shares slump as Samsung exits 3D TV deal

(Reuters) - RealD Inc's shares fell as much as 14 percent in extended trade after the licensor of 3D technologies said Samsung Electronics pulled out of an agreement to make television panels featuring the company's technology.


Samsung's new management was not pursuing the agreement, announced in May this year, as the global economic climate dragged down consumer demand, RealD said.

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Hmm.. Not sure I understand what exactly took place, but I doubt it will make much of a difference.

I hope this doesn't concern their RDZ (ZScreen-like) technology, would be a shame to not be able to see these polarized full HD 3D TVs...

I initially thought it was regarding RDZ, but it seems it was only for XPAND glasses (maybe packed-in instead of Samsung glasses)?

I fail to see how a deal between RealD and Samsung would have anything to do with Xpand, the former produces passive glasses while the latter produces active glasses, clearly distinct markets with no overlap.

Confirmed by this : http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/ ... shrs-fall/

The technology in question is the 3D display technology from RealD that should have been used in Samsung 3D TVs. So I guess it's really about RDZ, since I don't know about any other 3D display technology from RealD or any other deal about 3D TVs between these two companies. Pretty sad...

I just wonder what's the reason, maybe the technology was just not effective after all.

They said something about a change of management at Samsung, and looks like they were just cutting funds. No doubt, there are many other companies that would pay top dollar to license this (maybe exclusively). Assuming it works as good as I imagine. I guess its possible they quality is not up to par with current active technology, or maybe the cost is prohibitive.

@Fredz: Yeah, this has nothing to do with XPand. Read an article that had bogus info (or maybe I read something wrong).

Yep, unfortunately we'll have to wait to see if it was any good. Maybe we won't ever see it either, pity...

I hope LG or others who have started to invest in polarization for LCD monitors or TVs will start to approach RealD though, that would be the only way to have cheap glasses with full HD per eye.

The thing is, I'm sure those FPR filters are way cheaper than whatever this RDZ stuff is going to cost. If LG has a strong investment in FPR, it may not make sense to jump over to RDZ with either slimmer margins, or a high ticket price that will scare consumers. And other players like Sony, already have pretty nice looking active sets. Ultimately someone will want this, if it does have the best of both worlds. But if the cost is too high maybe it will end up a niche product for the high-end.

As I see it, consumers will soon realize that FPR filters basically make their 1080p displays look like 540p. That may not be that much of a problem for now since TVs are limited to 720p for 3D gaming anyway, but when new TVs (thanks to updated HDMI chips) and consoles (PS4, Xbox 720) will be able to support 1080p for 3D games, the difference will be more noticeable and passive TVs will look really bad in comparison.

Passive TVs manufacturers have the opportunity just now to start working with RDZ-like technology, in order to be ready in 2012 or 2013 when 1080p 3D gaming is the norm. Else they'll go the way of the dodo with their visibly inferior technology.

And 2K displays won't really solve the problem with FPR, there still will be inferior viewing angles, visible black lines and jaggies. And with recent announces of standardization for active glasses protocols, I guess the prices will drop and the advantages of cheap passive glasses won't make up for the shortcomings of these displays.

After reading up on passive RDZ technology, seems technically they are simply flipping the circular polarization of each row from clockwise to counter-clockwise and back. While this is an amazing feat in-and-of itself (allowing full 1080p passive 3D), I fail to see how this will overcome the limited view angles that currently plague FPR.

Perhaps if the RealD/Samsung deal really did fall through over shortcomings in the RDZ tech, then maybe limited view angles were indeed the culprit?

I don't think RDZ suffers from the same limited viewing angles than the FPR technology. The Z-Screen was used for displays as small as 17" and was advertized as being usable for small group visualization, so if there was an issue with viewing angles I think we would already have heard about it by now.

It has also been confirmed by a private screening of the RDZ technology that it doesn't suffer from the same loss of 3D effect than with FPR when changing the viewing position :