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Dec 16, 2011 · Well, obviously the answer in terms of "more important to the current marketplace" is 3D. There is 3D content, however bad it is, and there is a steadily growing install base of two types of 3D display (which, thankfully, play the same media). 4K has no media, no distribution channels, and one home electronics product that retails for $25k.
- Overview
- The rise of 3D
- What happened to 3D TVs?
- Where do 4K TVs come into this?
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By Iain Baker
published 18 July 2021
Opinion: 4K and 3D would have made a great pair
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
Whatever happened to 3D TVs? One moment they were being touted as the future of television, and for a few years, every major TV manufacturer was offering 3D as standard on their high-end panels. Then they disappeared completely – just as 4K TVs were being rolled out worldwide
So, how does 3D work anyway? Essentially, 3D is an optical illusion that aims to trick the brain into perceiving a flat two-dimensional (2D) image as a three-dimensional (3D) image with depth. It achieves this via stereoscopy – feeding the left and right eyes slightly offset versions of the same image. Our brains then process these two video feeds and calculates the differences between them, which we perceive as stereoscopic vision with depth perception.
The 2009 3D boom was enabled by the convergence of several technologies. In the cinemas this technology was digital cinemaphotography. This made capturing, reproducing, and displaying 3D content far easier than with film. The 3D debut of this technology was James Cameron’s movie Avatar. The film’s financial success and superb use of 3D paved the way for the 3D films that would follow, and it no doubt convinced the major TV manufactures, content creators and broadcasters that 3D TV would be equally popular in the home.
Another enabling technology was the sunglasses-style polarised 3D glasses. Unlike the older anaglyph (red and green) glasses, polarised glasses did not distort the film’s color space. Audiences could now enjoy 3D movies without compromising image quality.
Avatar worked well because it was shot natively in 3D from the start. Unfortunately, most 3D movies that came after were shot in 2D then converted to 3D in post-production, which bore inconsistent results. Perhaps this, and the increased cost of 3D tickets, accounted for falling returns from 3D movies, which resulted in studios making fewer 3D films over time. But if 3D cinema was being phased out gradually, why was support for 3D TV ended so abruptly, and seemingly all at once?
At their core, 3D TVs are the same as 2D TVs, they simply have the extra CPU power to display two full HD 1080p images at once when in 3D mode. When in 2D mode they operate the same as any other comparable panel. The best TVs from 2010 onwards had the processor power to do this anyway, since they needed it to run their smart TV features and image-altering effects such as motion smoothing.
Soon 3D was everywhere. Almost all major blockbuster movies had a 3D variant in the cinemas, and almost all high-end TVs came with 3D as standard. There were two main competing technologies in the 3D TV market: active and passive, each with their own pros and cons.
Active 3D was favoured by Samsung and Sony. Here, the TV pulsed between the left and right images about 120 times per second. Battery-powered ‘Active Shutter’ glasses were used to ensure each eye received only one set of images. The ‘lenses’ were miniature LCD screens that would alternately turn opaque 120 times per second in sync with the TV via Bluetooth. Because the active lenses flickered so rapidly, the illusory depth perception was maintained.
The major advantage Active Shutter 3D TVs had over passive ‘cinema’ 3D TVs was that each eye received a Full HD 1080p image, so the resolutions of their 3D and 2D modes were the same.
They had several drawbacks, however. For a start, they were often locked to specific manufactures – for example, a pair of Samsung Active Shutter glasses wouldn’t work with a Sony Active 3D TV, and vice versa. Secondly, Active Shutter glasses were expensive at around $100 / £100 / AU$200 per pair and were battery-powered, which made them somewhat heavy and uncomfortable to wear. Worse yet, the battery life on early models was limited to a few hours, barely long enough to watch a 3D movie in one sitting. (Later models were somewhat improved, though, sporting a longer battery life and reduced weight and cost.)
Sadly, all active shutter glasses suffered from both a flicker effect and ‘crosstalk’ – - both of which were distracting. Crosstalk became more pronounced the stronger the 3D effect grew. The only remedy was to reduce the strength of the 3D effect or turn it off completely.
A 4K TV is simply a TV with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels (also known as Ultra HD). It packs in twice as many horizontal and vertical lines as 1080p ‘Full-HD’ 1920 x 1080 screens, resulting in four times the pixel density for the same screen size and a clearer, sharper, brighter image.
4K was enabled by several technologies, including high-speed HDMI 2.0, 4K Blu-ray discs, and rising internet speeds allowing for higher-resolution streaming . These were essential due to the file sizes of native 4K content being so much greater than those of Full HD.
The advantages 4K has over regular HD is that the images can be brighter and sharper, especially if combined with other technologies such as OLED and HDR. This is most noticeable on larger screens. A 40-inch 1080p screen may look razer sharp at normal viewing distances, but a 65-inch screen may look slightly fuzzy due to the pixels becoming spaced further apart, whereas a 65 inch 4K TV will retain its razor-like clarity.
There have been some downsides to 4K, however. Initially, there was a dearth of native 4K content, which meant viewers had to rely on upscaled 1080p content. Some TVs handled this upscaling well, while on others it was shoddy and arguably looked worse than 1080p. Another teething issue was the lack of sufficiently high-speed internet, which meant streamed 4K content was unreliable and prone to buffering – while offline 4K Blu-ray players could be costly solutions Indeed, when 4K was first unveiled some pundits predicted these problems would hinder 4K, and that the only use for so many pixels would be to perfect 3D TV.
But passive 3D at 4K resolution could have been the ideal home 3D TV solution. With 2160 vertical lines to work with, even when halved to 1080 lines the 3D image would still look fantastically sharp, whilst retaining the advantages of passive 3D TV. LG created a few such sets, such as the LG OLED65E6V.
Unfortunately, few people got to experience this, as most manufacturers ended support for 3D TV when phasing in support for 4K. So why was 3D suddenly dropped like a hot potato?
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- Iain Baker
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