Curtains

Hi there anyone who is still checking these pages,

Just wanted to let you know that given the fact that HDTV is now pretty much all around us (although SBS Belgium is still holding out, even five years after I talked to them for my Master's thesis) and the increasing difficulty to keep these pages up to date, I have decided to close down the blog.

It was great while it lasted, a fun project that provided great input for my thesis and even landed me two job interviews.

But all good things must come to an end. My interests have expanded beyond audiovisual media, so having such a theme-specific blog feels restrictive. I will probably create some other channel to funnel more random thoughts about the world into :-)

I will leave the page unlocked for a little while longer, but when my "lease" on the domain name expires, I will not be renewing.

See you soon!

Nils

From High Hopes to High Deficit: article online

The article I co-authored with Caroline Pauwels, set to appear in a special issue of Telematics and Informatics next year, is available online. It deals with the European history of HDTV and draws some conclusions for its successor. The abstract:

This paper describes the standardisation process and introduction timeline of high definition television. The development of the standard is a process that goes back over 40 years, but HDTV is only today slowly finding its place in the home entertainment market. This paper explores why the European standard for analogue HDTV was not widely adopted, what Europe’s relation to HDTV means today, and proposes some general lessons that can be learned for the benefit of the development of HDTV’s successor, Ultra HDTV aka Super Hi-Vision.

You can read the full article and download the PDF right here. Please note some minor details still have to be altered, as I await final approval of the proofs. Any and all feedback is most welcome!

Don't buy expensive HDMI cables

HD Guru has another informative piece up that brings up a classic issue in purchasing HD-related equipment: HDMI cables. Retailers and manufacturers will have you believe you need to spend at least €50 if you want all the unicorns and rainbows to pass through from your Blu Ray or whatever-have-you player unharmed. 

Not true. 

Ignore colourful labels mentioning speeds, refresh rates (ridiculous!), 3D-capable, 4K-capable (kidding, right?), colour gradations and so on and so forth. Literally all of it, all of it, is unrelated to the capabilities of an HDMI-cable. As the article mentions, there are two, and only two, official standards of HDMI-cables which are related to speed, and any "High Speed" cable will do just fine in displaying whatever HD unicorns you can throw at it, regardless of whether the ends are dipped in "gold", Swarovski diamonds or whale tears. Additionally, HDMI-cables are all digital, so it's either 1 or 0, picture or no picture, at the same quality. 

So ignore the labels and logo's, and buy the cheapest HDMI cable you can find. 

Good example. Bad example. Would you like a major internal organ to go with that?

Do want...

LG 31" OLEDs. Oh my.



Courtesy of Engadget

Samsung LED 3DTV in Fnac and my inbox

Last week I got a mailing from Fnac promoting Samsung's new line of LED-lit 3DTVs. Just sharing because we get to know some localized prices now.

Looks like a 40" version of the 8 Series line will set you back €2199, while the 7 Series 40" screen manages to just stay under the (not very) psychological border of €2000. In this case I don't immediately see the difference between the 7 and 8 Series, apart from the color of the bezel, but I'm guessing this has to do with number of HDMI-ports and such. After that, it's bigger screens, bigger prices.

This price point was to be expected, but what I was more curious about were the infamous glasses. Looks like Samsung will want €79 for glasses with batteries and €99 for a rechargeable set, so if you're going to make an economic decision, you're going to want those rechargeable ones.

Both the 7 and 8 Series sets can convert 2D content to 3D on the fly and I've read that this effect can be quite convincing depending on the source content. They also have integrated Skype support, so you have to wonder if you'll be able to make 3D calls. Of course the other party will see you sitting on your couch wearing those ridiculous glasses... ;-)

Fnac also adds Samsung's 3D-capable Blu Ray player, priced at €399. So if you're starting from scratch and want the 3D experience you're looking at:

€1999 for the cheapest and "smallest" screen

4x €99 if you're not watching Monsters vs Aliens alone

€399 for a 3D capable Blu Ray player

bringing us to €2794, only for hardware.

This may take a while.

By the way, it's no coincidence the sets are advertised with Sony's Monsters vs Aliens as it is currently the only real 3D Blu Ray you can actually buy. For an updated list, go here.

Who's 3D in the what now?

Might have to change the name of the blog, this 3D stuff is sticking...

Since 3D cinema and 3DTV are being called a revolution in the entertainment industry (history does repeat itself), some people are getting mildly anxious. We all might have reasons why we do or don't believe that 3D will or won't take off, but there is a group of people that simply don't want 3D to happen. And I cannot believe it's a small group.

I'm talking about people who don't see 3D.

The problem can occur when one of your eyes is even slightly weaker then the other. As all 3D tech, old or new, is based on the fact that your two eyes each see different things, problems occur when one eye doesn't work as good as the other, with the consequence that the viewer doesn't see the effect. 

As 3D becomes increasingly popular and present in movie theaters and soon - probably - homes, people who can't enjoy the effect are becoming more vocal. Like with any grassroots movement these days, you can join a Facebook group to voice your support. What surprised me there was that the biggest group I could find only has about 100 members; I'm guessing many people out there must suffer from this in some form. Numbers aren't very clear, but apparently studies have estimated that between 5 and 12% of US citizens suffer from some form of stereoblindness, or problems with depth perception.

This article and the video below give some more insight (AHAHAHAhaaaaaaaaa...).

Some momentum is building up in Belgium as well, with at least one newspaper picking up on the story. I will update when more becomes available.

Want to test if you can see 3D? This website of the "Optometrists Network" has some explanation on seeing 3D (Holy guacamole, you'd think that people who work in the field of eye sight would spend a little more time making their websites visually tolerable...). This page (that has Comic Sans in caps!) has a little test you can do, involving your thumb and an on screen eye. However weird, it works, and according to it, I can see 3D, which, you know... I can, so... good. 

Lastly, don't feel bad about yourself if you can't see 3D. Apparently, even the rich and famous suffer from it: Johnny Depp doesn't see 3D. (I don't have to explain the irony of him starring in a major 3D-push movie, right? Good.)

Question does remain how the industry will deal with this. If 3D is going to become more pervasive in home entertainment, will 2D alternatives keep sticking around? Or are we going towards a dystopian future where we enslave people who can't enjoy entertainment anyway to do more useful tasks, while us Threedeities enjoy Final Fantasy XX on our PS5s? No wait, I said don't feel bad about yourself. :-)

Enslaving Johnny Depp... now I forgot what I was talking about.

Oh my!

Speaks for itself...

Pana sells out 3DTVs in US

Panasonic announced their new 50" 3D-capable TV has sold out in the first week of availability at Best Buy.

Read up on the details right here.

Some interesting points from the article; the first one being that Pana's big wigs didn't want to give any numbers, which leads me to assume that if you make 36 sets available, they will probably sell out in a week. Another thing that makes me believe this is the size of the screen itself: 50" is far from a popular choice, with 32" and 42" being consumers' favorite options. Add to that a price point of $2899.99 and you've got a niche product right there.

But my favorite paragraph from the article has to be this one:

“It will probably take a long time for 3-D TVs to expand broadly, maybe about three years” said Ichiro Michikoshi, an analyst at electronics research firm BCN Inc. in Tokyo. “There isn’t enough content and consumers dislike wearing the glasses. Those issues will take time to be solved.”

Considering it took around 50 years to get HDTV to the living room in a decent way, saying that three years is a long time shows that everything is relative.

The article also mention Avatar four times, which is becoming more than annoying.

You might know I'm a Panasonic and plasma fan and apparently they did get it right with this model, as HD Guru gives this set a very good review choosing it over models by other manufacturers. Depending on how easily the HDTVs people just bought will break down and prices going down, looks like this 3D thing is really happening.

Breaking: Nintendo announces Nintendo 3DS

After the post I just did on mobile 3D, Nintendo has very quietly announced the Nintendo 3DS.

The portable will be backwards compatible with previous DS games and you will not need glasses for the 3D effect, like I described earlier.

More details will follow at E3 in June.

Cool news!

But! Mobile 3DTV?

One aspect of 3DTV I didn't go into in my previous posts is mobile.

Yep, that's mobile 3DTV, no glasses required.

Better yet, I think this might actually have a fighting chance, and, if quickly adopted by mobile device manufacturers, might even be more successful than 3D in the living room. The idea in itself might not sound very convincing, I wouldn't have believed it until I saw it at last year's NEM Summit in St. Malo. This is a media conference where mainly European R&D projects are presented. One of them was, aptly named, Mobile 3DTV. I had a lot of fun with some of the people who did the user research, but the project also had a prototype of a mobile-size 3D screen on display, which attracted a lot of attention in the demo room.

It worked very well. The demo content wasn't particularly spectacular, think horse in a meadow, a soccer sequence and an animated polar bear, but the 3D-effect really popped. The image was very bright and sharp, contrast was okay, and the 3D was very convincing. Which kind of makes sense: in a mobile context, you are the only one watching the screen and you automatically adjust yourself and your line of sight to get the best possible experience. Otherwise the technology is basically the same than the "glassesless" screens you see appearing today.

And of course, apart from watching content, 3D can really enhance GUI-elements on a mobile device.

I look forward to seeing more experiments with mobile 3D, both relating to content and UI. Only imagine what kind of GUI-magic Apple could build for the iPhone3D ;-)

Update on "those glasses"

Sony has announced prices for their first wave of 3D glasses. $133 (converted from yen) to make you look like a scuba diver in the comfort of your own living room :-)

3DTV, where have I heard this before?

You need new camera's. Educate directors, production crews. You need new editing environments, new hardware, new software. You need bigger pipes, more bandwidth. A new 'premium' subscription. You need a new screen, a new optical disc player, new discs. Subtitles look weird.

Sounds exactly like what we needed to get high def content into our living rooms, and it will be what we need to get 3D into our living rooms. Plus glasses. Maybe.

It is clear that 3D is picking up in cinemas, with the offer becoming more diverse and appealing every week. And there was that whole Avatar thing. In most cases, when it actually adds depth to the experience (see what I did there), I am a fan of 3D movies. They can be more engaging (Avatar), add value to the storyline (not Avatar), be more fun (Up) and leave a bigger impression (My Bloody Valentine) than their flat counterparts. The technology has evolved to the point where watching a big screen movie in 3D does not actually reduce the quality of the experience. For cinema owners, going 3D is of course an investment, but can be appealing for audiences and offers something new, something extra compared to the home theatre experience. At least for now.

3D is making the move to the living room. And from where I'm standing, it is not going to be pretty.

If we go by what manufacturers showed the world at the last CES conference in Vegas (overview of CNet's CES coverage here), 2010 is going to be the year of 3D in the living room. But the little list of new things production and distribution companies, and consumers will need, is no exaggeration. It is a refresh of the whole value network, comparable to that required to get HDTV of the ground. True, many standardisation issues have been solved by HDTV, like connectors (HDMI), optical discs (Blu Ray), and compression techniques (MPEG-4 and H.264). But many remain.

The bigger investment will be required from end users, with new screens, new Blu Ray players, and, depending on who you're buying from, new set top boxes. This will be a process that will take time, just like in the case of HDTV. It will probably happen in the long run, but I'm not sure it will be 2010. Which brings me to the last thing we will need.

Those glasses.

There are different technologies out there, from the classic (and horrible) red-and-blue glasses to active shutter glasses that are heavy, expensive (around $100 a pop), require batteries and communicate with your screen (also horrible). Gizmodo has a good overview of the different types of 3D technology out there.

Another option are the new screen technologies that do not require glasses and give a 3D effect. My personal experience with these TV sets is... not good. I have seen them in action on several occasions now, and the way the tech works today is simply not good enough. You need to be in the correct angle in front of the screen, or the whole image messes up. Do you really want to reposition yourself the whole time you're watching something? Or when there's five of you watching something? Plus the image really is not sharp enough and feels like a leap back from HDTV.

So do you see yourself sitting on the couch wearing these things? I'm not feeling it (yet), but stranger things have happened. Anyone aware of some user research on the topic? I would be interested to see how people feel about this.

In the mean time, curious about 3D, but too hip to wear the stupid cinema-owned glasses? Try these on for size.

If you're interested in 3DTV, HD Guru has a new section dedicated to the topic.

Lastly, let's not forget about the 98 people on Facebook who can't see the 3D effect. :-)

What are your thoughts on 3D in the living room?

How does 3D work?

According to - well, a lot of people - 2010 is going to be the year of 3DTV. I will get to that topic soon in an upcoming post.

In the mean time, in case you're wondering how 3D actually works, Gizmodo has the handy infographic below.

Head over to Gizmodo for the big version.

Confused about HDTV?

Understandably, there is still a lot of (although probably less) consumer confusion about what HDTV is, and the technical specifications you have to look at when buying a new TV.

Gizmodo has a very accessible piece up on the ins and outs of current HD technology and what it means for you.

Read it here!

Plasma TV burn-in a lie?

HD Guru has another interesting read up about "burn-in" effects on plasma TVs, often cited as one of the drawbacks of plasma as a technology. The idea refers to an outline of an image that remains visible after leaving a screen to display the same static image for a long time. The guys at HD Guru decided to test if it was possible create burn-in on 2008 and 2009 plasma TV sets.

While they were able to see some "image retention" that would disappear after less than 5 minutes, they could not create a "burn-in" effect by leaving the sets on, displaying the same image, for more than 10 hours.

They conclude that plasma burn-in is probably possible, but would require a screen to be turned on the same static image for weeks and is thus highly unlikely with normal use.

Yay! :-)