One of the more obvious trends at this year’s CES was 3d TV, all the display manufacturers had major installations showing off their 3d HDTV offerings. The CE industry seems to have collectively decided that 3d is the next big thing and that consumers will go for it in the home. The mood at CES from the attendees I encountered however seemed overwhelmingly skeptical about what seems to be a supply side (industry) push of a new technology that is just not ready for primetime. There is an obvious need for the CE industry to repeat the success its had in recent years getting consumers to buy into big flat screen HDTV’s and they are obviously trying to get us to all upgrade again in the next few.

The skeptical arguments I heard landed in four camps, the effectiveness of the technology, (is the effect cool enough?) the content pipeline (Is there enough 3d content? ) , the cost of new glasses and displays?, and finally the glasses make me look like a ‘dork’ factor. (I must look like a right plonker wearing the oversized polarizing glasses over top of my existing glasses).

Almost all the demo’s I saw currently utilize the approach that requires polarized glasses to see the intended 3d effect. Let me tell you if you’ve not seen it, the effect of the 3d on these big displays with glasses is pretty compelling – not as dramatic as the first time you saw full HD, or say the transition from Color to black and white. But with good authoring the effect can be pretty cool and it’s not hard to see its significantly better than HD as long as you are wearing the glasses.

The Demo’s I saw of non glasses 3d relies on lenticular lenses overlays and multiple image perspectives being rendered at the same time for you to see the desired effect. They have a ‘sweet spot’ of convergence where your eyes are far enough apart to see 2 slightly different perspective images and the effect is cool if you are in the ‘zone’. If you are not in the zone you need to move your head from side to side to see the different perspectives. One technical problem with this technique is the need to render several different perspectives of the same image. This is fine for CG 3d game content, but 3d cameras with more than 2 lenses don’t exist to my knowledge, not to mention there are no standards or formats to support transmission of multi-perspective video content.

The lack of 3d content problem is non-trivial issue but something the industry from broadcasters to camera makers and TV manufacturers are probably prepared to invest several years to fix, (the way HD content eventually became commonplace).

Toshiba’s alternative approach is to convert 2d content into 3d on the TV in real time utilizing its just announced ‘Cell TV’. The Cell TV has ten times the processing power of most personal computers. All the computing power is used to convert 2d HD video into 3d on the fly which is a pretty impressive feat but starts to raise the obvious question of cost. As an aside the Toshiba Cell demo had so much computing power that they also used a magic wand controller (like the wiimote) for selection and manipulation of their 3d UI. The UI (below) was a vision of 3d UI hell, a nested sphere of spheres with no order, rhyme or reason. (See my 3d UI blogs)

Sony was demoing some 3d Playstation games with a PS3 firmware update they said would be available soon, games are an obvious way in for the likes of Sony to create a compelling amount of content with relative ease. The driving game I played was pretty cool the 3d seemed to work really well with a 3rd person camera perspective as good 3d requires, decent foreground, mid and long distance content to ‘pop’.

As far as cost goes, on top of the $2-3000 or so you may spend on a 3-D set, you’ll have to pay extra to buy or rent 3-D movies. Apparently Sony plans to start selling sets labeled “3-D ready,” meaning they can be upgraded to 3-D later with some additional costs and accessories. I don’t know about you but I’m happy to have just fairly recently upgraded to a nice HDTV so I’m going to be in the market for a newer better one for five or so years. I also have not heard anyone rule out the possibility of having the 3d effect simply be a standard HD video signal from an external box which could obviously reduce the cost of the upgrade to 3d significantly.

According to the latest data, around 126 million citizens of the United States of America currently wear eyeglasses. Since there are around 300 million people living in the United States, that’s almost half of the population. Looking like a Dork with two pairs of glasses on aside, customers of 3d who currently wear glasses will need to make a big behavioral shift (swapping glasses or adding an extra set) which I believe they simply not do – the effect is neat but not that good. Maybe optically correct 3d polarized glasses will become the norm at the eye doctor?,( let me hear a collective sigh of skepticism. ). Also for some of my colleagues at the show, the glasses seemed like a source of much frustration claiming they were causing strain and would lead to exhaustion. I think an additional negative of the glasses is the scenario of gathering a group of folks around to watch the ball game, with everyone having to wear the glasses or else what they see is a blurry unwatchable nightmare. Talk about a nerd fest.

I for one don’t think glasses based 3d HD TV’s will become broadly adopted. These devices will become an option for the high end technophiles who have to have the latest thing and perhaps loner gaming enthusiasts but broad based adoption will take many years as current flat screens are too good to warrant the upgrade for most people.

I think there’s enough technical and infrastructure challenges that perhaps 3-5 years from now we may start to see some major commercial adoption of non glasses 3d HD. Eventually I expect that 3d cameras like Microsoft’s Natal will track our gaze with sufficient resolution that a more convincing 3d can be created ‘in software’ with no glasses or requirement for new display devices. Until then 3d displays are and glasses are not for me.