Sony to ship passive 3D, OLED TVs in 2013
Giant's TV chief spills the beans
Sony is to release a passive 3D TV, and will follow it with OLED televisions next year, Reg Hardware has learned.
The Japanese giant, which currently sells passive 3D monitors to broadcasters, has already begun shipping consumer-friendly models into the Chinese market.
Sony’s passive Bravia screens are expected to make their European debut at this September's IFA technology show in Berlin.
While Sony has yet to formally announce plans for a global roll-out of passive panels, its Deputy President of home entertainment products, Noriaki Negishi, confirmed to Reg Hardware in Tokyo that Sony will be aggressively promoting the technology within a year.
“Our engineers don’t really like [passive],” Negishi said, “because it has half the resolution of active shutter 3D, but consumers appreciate the convenience of passive.”
Sony's stance reflects a growing pragmatism and the understanding that expensive active shutter 3D technology isn't driving TV sales. Last month, Panasonic announced passive 3D TV sets, so Sony's move leaves Samsung as the only major TV maker exclusively supporting active 3D.
The arrival of passive 3D TVs will be accompanied by the introduction of OLED televisions. Sony's first Organic LED TV was the 11in XEL-1, launched in 2007. But it soon backed away from the tech, which was too expensive for the mass market.
Officially, Sony said: "We have continued technical development of OLED to enlarge its display size and enable mass production as major candidate for the next generation TV, but refrain from commenting on the details of commercialisation." And: "We have no current plans to launch passive type 3D TVs outside China."
Negishi, however, said: “2013 will be the year when we will really fight back with new technologies." ®
COMMENTS
3D. Give up. Please.
A gimmick from the start and it's not going to get any better using the current technologies. 3D films have such an artificial 3D look with an exaggerated foreground against a background and not much in between. It detracts from the artistic direction and sometimes the narrative. Not to mention a slightly blurry image that I personally experience.
Passive is nicer.
Passive is much more pleasant to watch. Active glasses make the window flicker in the corner of your eye.
BTW. Do opticians offer prescription 3D glasses yet, like they do prescription sunglasses, or did I just invent them now?
Here's an idea
Sell TVs with 2HD resolution, so that in 3D mode you get full HD. Not that anyone at a sensible viewing distance could tell the difference, unless they are selling 200" screens.
Re: Lefty righty
Obviously the previous posters missed your point. Yes you are right, all this fuss about half resolution (and yes, it is 540 lines per eye) is complete drivel.
True, each eye only gets 540 lines but the key is that they are displayed at the same time, so at any one point in time you are still seeing 1080 lines (just like active shutter).
The real downfall with passive compared to active is that if you sit a bit too close you can see the affect of the film polariser on the screen and see the interlace structure - try closing one eye and you'll get what I mean. At reasonable viewing distances though (I'm talking over about 5 feet from a 50" screen) you can't see it at all.
Re: Lefty righty
They don't really need to go 4k by 2k with this. All they need is 1. a 1920x2160 polarized LCD panel (horizontal rectangle pixels similar to Apple Lisa pixels so the screen still turns out 16:9 widescreen), and 2. circuitry to convert 3D signal to interlacing 1920x2160 p60/p50/p24 interlaced. In 2D mode, two pixels are vertically combined to form a square pixel, while in 3D mode the two pixels are operated independently.
Maybe the problem in this is that it requires a custom LCD panel that no one has ever used before and thus will drive the price up significantly?
Bootnote: I'm aware that only frame-packed 3D signals are 1920x1080, which are apparently only found on blu-ray discs- most games will output in 1920x540 vertical (seen this on my PS3 when playing 3D games) even if the console supports bitpacked 1920x1080 3D, and most pay TV decoders actually output in 960x1080 horizontal (seen this on a few channels on two different pay TV providers).
