There have been many news stories lately about Sony expecting that 30 to 50 percent of the TVs it sells in the fiscal year starting April 2012 will be 3-D capable. Some people seem amazed that the proportion is so high; they could as easily be amazed it’s so low.
It’s common to see supermarket labels proclaiming that products are caffeine-, fat-, sodium-, or sugar-free, and many of them make sense. One expects candy to be made with sugar, so sugar-free candy is notable; sugar-free celery, on the other hand, is laughable.
What do those labels have to do with Sony’s 3-D TVs? The company has not yet revealed what makes them 3-D. To a certain extent, all TVs are ready for 3-D.
The DOTS and ColorCode 3-D systems are already so TV compatible that even viewers without glasses can view near-normal pictures. The Pulltime 3-D system used for a Tournament of Roses Parade and The Rolling Stones’ Steel Wheels Tour doesn’t even introduce the slight color fringing on out-of-focus material of DOTS and ColorCode. The ChomaDepth 3-D system requires no TV modification. Vision III’s lens adapter and several other temporal-parallax systems are not only compatible with all TV sets but also don’t require any glasses for the 3-D effect.
The most common 3-D TV broadcasts, using colored glasses, were intended to be viewed on ordinary TVs. Broadcasts of 3-D TV in Mexico in the 1950s used much more complicated polarized and prismatic glasses, but the only “modification” required for TVs was placing a polarizing filter in front of the screen. Active-shutter glasses require something to synchronize them, but that something can be a separate box fed the same video signal as the TV screen.
So, what 3-D technology will Sony’s TVs use? As of this writing, all the company has announced is that it would add only a little to manufacturing costs. That could describe anything from a pixel-column cross-polarized faceplate to an active-glasses sync emitter to a mere label saying “3-D compatible.”
For me, it’s too soon to be amazed.
