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A 3D Home Theater?

Dec 31, 2009 12:00 PM, By Jason Bovberg

But with 3D exploding in cinemas more than it ever has and producing—in the case of the visually ambitious Avatar—a 3D effect that is completely involving and far more than the gimmick it once was, the natural question is: How and when are we going to achieve 3D in the home theater? How are we going to get that fabulous Avatar effect at home? We have high-def, image-stable digital movies right here on disc, ready to spin at a moment's notice, so why is 3D so difficult to achieve on our screens?

There have been movies released on DVD and Blu-ray that have come with 3D glasses (the older anaglyph type), including Coraline, The Polar Express, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Robert Rodriguez's The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl and Spy Kids. Recently, even the Three Stooges saw a 3D release. Each one of these has been a terrible disappointment. They provide a rough approximation of 3D more likely to induce a migraine than to transport you into a multidimensional filmscape.

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Leitner's Cinematography Corner, No. 5 Stereoscopy, or 3D imaging, has been around as long as photography, at least since1840, when the English inventor Sir Charles Wheatstone, who first explained binocular vision in 1838, fashioned his first stereoscope for displaying photos in stereo pairs... Coloring a New Dimension About a year before Colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld here at Company 3 performed the color-grading work on Disney's 3D feature G-Force, a group of us under him started preparing for the industry's movement toward 3D production... Digital 3D Pioneer Vince Pace on Final Destination 4 in 3D Millimeter senior editor Michael Goldman recently chatted with Vince Pace about how the technology was applied to this project, and where 3D digital filmmaking is going next across the industry. Here is the first part of their conversation. ...

Unfortunately, current DVD and Blu-ray players are simply ill-equipped to deliver strong 3D to the home. To do that, to get beyond the limitations of the anaglyph format, the Blu-ray Disc Association is already looking into the prospect of integrating polarized 3D technology with the Blu-ray standard. Over the past few years, consumers haven't exactly embraced Blu-ray because they generally don't get enough of an improvement in image quality to justify the expense of an upgrade. (That being said, I have seen wider migration to the format recently, as prices of players and discs have fallen dramatically.) The integration of 3D capability into Blu-ray players would almost certainly boost consumer interest in high-def home video, particularly in the age of Avatar.

Now for the bad news: To achieve 3D at home, you're going to need a new Blu-ray player. The players that the Blu-ray Association are considering would actually deliver two images, each in full resolution, to create the 3D effect. Polarized glasses would trick your mind into marrying the images, just like at the movie theater. There's a suggestion that adapters might be used to upgrade current players to 3D capability, but there's nothing in stone about that yet.

One thing's for sure: James Cameron had a big hand in starting today's 3D revolution, and with the inevitable home-video release of Avatar on our horizon, he's going to have a big hand in the next phase of its evolution. His movie could single-handedly pave the way toward a rich, immersive 3D experience in the home theater.

And then we just need to find a way to get rid of the glasses.

Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
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