Sony Announces First 3D Blu-ray Disc Players 145
angry tapir writes "Sony has announced a new 3D Blu-ray Disc player and upgrades to existing players so that they will be able to show high-definition 3D movies too. The company introduced the BDP-S470 Blu-ray Disc model and upgraded existing home theater systems, which will be able to play Blu-ray movies when related firmware for the devices is released later this year. Movies based on the Blu-ray 3D specification, which was finalized by the Blu-ray Association in December, can be shown on the players."
HDMI spec (Score:4, Interesting)
Can the TV industry all stand behind the new HDMI or Displayport spec?
Having the media standard and players are nice, but until I know I have a TV that will support a standard (that will be around for more than 2 seconds) is somewhat important as well.
It is HDMI, forget DisplayPort for TV (Score:5, Informative)
Sony and Blu-Ray are behind HDMI, as is every other media company around. Any TV that does not support HDMI will have no market share.
Right, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's yet another HDMI version. They were supposed to even have larger connectors that transferred more data, but I see those nowhere. I'm not seeing why a 24 Hz movie can't be doubled to 48 Hz for 3D when it transfers at 60 Hz anyway usually. I think the tremendous amount of bandwidth needed for those black bars around movies means we all have to upgrade.
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Most of the different HDMI versions are just implementations in software, not hardware. That is why all it takes to make the PS3 capable of 3D is a software upgrade.
When you see an "HDMI 1.3" cable, it is likely 100% identical to a 1.1 cable - the only difference is in the tolerance requirements of the conductors.
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Actually, the current PS3 will not be certified as Bluray 3D compatible. It can only support a subset of the new standards without hardware changes (it can't implement one of the required modes .. Frame alternative, I believe, but I could be wrong).
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Re:Right, but... (Score:5, Informative)
60Hz transfers only of half the screen, so they're 30 Hz effective.
Not at 60p, it doesn't. 60p, whether at 1080 or 720 resolution tranfers a full frame 60 times per second. It's only interlaced formats that are transfer half the image with each refresh.
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Holy shit have you been in a cave? We've had 60Hz progressive scan for ages in LCD and Plasma TVs!
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120? What rock are you under, those new 240's are where it's at these days.
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Actually, support for 1080/60p input is more common in TVs than support for 1080/24p input, believe it or not. There's not much advantage to accepting 1080/24p if your screen refresh is fixed, or variable up to only 60p... the TV or the video source can do the higher speed pulldown from 24p, but it still has to be done.
Once you have variable refresh to 120Hz, as many of the 2009-vintage HDTVs do, then you can get a better display accepting 24p and pulling it to 72p output. So it's much more common to find 1
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That's incorrect. The original XBox 360 lacked a digital video output, and would only produce a 1080/60i output over analog, since virtually no analog HDTVs supported 1080/60p on YCrCb inputs. But the new ones support HDMI, like the PS3, and do 1080/60p just dandy.
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Its HDMI 1.4
http://www.hdmi.org/press/press_release.aspx?prid=101
There are new specs for connectors, but its mostly a mini connector (camcorders ect.) and a connector for automotive use.
Most of the 3D and the higher resolution formats (4Kx4K , 4Kx2K ect) arn't spec'd for full 60Hz refresh rates (30Hz or slower), so they don't exceed the available bandwidth (around 20Gbs) on the existing cable.
"support" and "Support" (Score:2)
Our Verizon DVR doesn't like our Samsung flatscreen. Lots of loss-of-synch's over HDMI, and that's not very unusual. HDMI is sort of like TIFF that way: so many options that it's a wonder any sender and receiver can sync at all. So there's a difference between supporting plugs and basic protocols and actually working well together.
Fortunately, our PS3 plays Blu-rays flawlessly to the Samsung... so far.
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The Verizon DVR problem is really a failure of the manufacturer not a problem with the spec, and it is entirely software. The problem is pretty well documented on various forums, Motorola seems to have no interest in fixing it. See
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r21921761-HD-FIOSMotorola-Box-vs-Samsung-HDMI-not-Working [dslreports.com]
for a lot of links.
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actually this thread
http://www.highdefforum.com/verizon-fios/49608-motorola-hd-dvrs-hdmi-green-screen-problem.html [highdefforum.com]
is much better
Re:HDMI spec (Score:4, Insightful)
exactly , this is why I am still using my trusted analog rabbit ears ...
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To receive what? Analog TV is dead in the US. If you're still watching OTA broadcasts, spend an hour on a weekend to make one of these [blogspot.com]. It works much better for DTV than rabbit ears. I found the reflector to be unnecessary.
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Any old TV antenna should work just fine in the new era because the digital TV band is a subset of the TV bands used before. I'm pulling in digital HD signals from stations that I used to get a fuzzy picture from using the same rooftop antenna. HD Radio works too!
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FYI, most US DigitalTV stations are UHF [wikipedia.org]. since rabbit ears are very lousy UHF antennas... So while your old antenna may work fine; rabbit ears, without a UHF loop are not.
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9% of the total digital TV stations in the United States still utilize VHF. Las Vegas in an interesting market with 5 VHF stations,
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To receive what? Analog TV is dead in the US.
Maybe they are close to the boarder, Canada is still not all digital broadcast (until Aug 2011) not sure Mexico has announced any HD plans (I can still get several Mexican Analog stations but not likely from across the boarder, 50 miles away.)
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"They aren't exactly analog anymore if you live in the US."
Physics error! All transmissions, digital or otherwise, are still carried by means of an analog electromagnetic emission.
Re:HDMI spec (Score:5, Insightful)
Can the TV industry all stand behind the new HDMI or Displayport spec?
If they claimed to stand behind it, would you trust them?
I can imagine this being announced by most, implemented by some, and then abandoned by all due to industry spats and lack of consumer interest. Then a lucky few will own the TV equivalent of 1970s laserdisc players.
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There is a new proposed HDMI spec for the additional bandwidth needed, but it doesn't have widespread acceptance by the TV industry yet.
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HDMI is supported by just about everything save for Apple.
Trolling again, I see. Apple computers are perfectly capable of outputting over HDMI.
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save for Apple.
Is that will, reflex, or fortitude?
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So far, the TV manufacturers are standing behind HDMI... DisplayPort is being pushed as the official computer industry replacement for DVI. There's a virtual certainty that some TVs will eventually grow DisplayPorts, but hey, most modern TVs have VGA connectors too. It's not as if anyone making a television is all THAT worried about cutting down on the ports count.
What about the PS3? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What about the PS3? (Score:5, Informative)
Launch PS3? (Score:2, Insightful)
Including the launch PS3 (I think they were 20/60 GB)? Only so much you can do with a system update.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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You would be amazed what firmware can do. Sony recently announced a revision to the physical disc format that places the pits closer together to increase storage by a significant percentage... and all existing Blu-Ray drives will be made compatible via firmware.
There is a reason that these drives cost so much to manufacture. The physical hardware is incredibly generic, and nobody really knows the limits of its capabilities.
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If anything, the launch PS3s are more capable, having extra chips under the hood to also be able to play PS2 games.
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As far as I know there isn't a lot of content out there to take advantage of either. Avatar is a nice example, but I can't think of anything else off of the top o
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Actually, ALL PS2 emulation was removed. The launch units had a PS2 inside them, the later ones had just one of the parts, while the cheap one lacked it and couldn't do PS2 playback at all. The new slim ones also cannot play PS2 games, and cannot do "OtherOS" (aka Linux). And lack 2 USB ports.
What I want to know is if
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I'm pretty sure they're prototyping these Blu-Ray upgrades on the PS3.
But Sony's not just going to upgrade your PS3 for 3D Blu-Ray. They need to have support for 3D games, and of course, Sony's version of 3D shutter glasses so you can actually make use of the thing. My guess is they use Bluetooth for the sync... no need to add-on any hardware to the PS3, and receiving what's essentially 60 "flip a bit" signals per second can't be all that draining on the battery. It's a good move... I don't know if I'd worr
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The PS3 can only deliver a 60p video, so they're going to do field-multiplexed 30p stereoscopic
Keep in mind that most stereoscopic movies are still 24p. Thus frame-alternating left/right a 24 views/second for each eye means the equivalent bandwidth of 1080p48, less than the 1080p60 HDMI 1.3 is capable of.
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http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/10/ps3-getting-3d-firmware-update-this-summer/
Or, maybe this summer
I'll pass.... (Score:1, Funny)
Let me know when they release the first 4D Blu-ray disc players.
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it is 3d .... then you can move in time within the boundaries of the movie. that is an extra D there for you.
Why bother (Score:1)
The X-Prize brain-computer interface will make this obsolete in only 40 years.
Meh (Score:1, Troll)
Okay, seriously -- what do they think, that everyone will just keep several extra sets of funny glasses around so when company comes they can get a headac^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H watch bad fake "3D" too? They're dreaming.
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everyone will just keep several extra sets of funny glasses around so when company comes they can
Hard to say if their plan is to profit off the "everyone brings their own $200 sunglasses" model, or the "every house has a stack of paper plates" model.
I could see this as a path to get everyone to upgrade their glasses... baby boomers aren't getting any younger, they probably all wear glasses, and its time for the corps to shear the sheep again?
Finally (Score:5, Funny)
Finally, a 3D blue-ray player! I keep losing my 2-dimensional player when the wind blows it under the couch. It's impossible to see from the side, since it is infinately thin, so I have to move the couch to be able to see it from the top or bottom. They should have made them 3 dimensional in the first place!
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Finally, a 3D blue-ray player! I keep losing my 2-dimensional player when the wind blows it under the couch. It's impossible to see from the side, since it is infinately thin, so I have to move the couch to be able to see it from the top or bottom. They should have made them 3 dimensional in the first place!
I still have one of those old fashioned "entertainment centers" you know a 2001-movie style monolith of wood with cutouts for various machinery such as my CRT TV. In that scenario, 2D devices stack nicely in the limited space available as if a stack of paper.
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Yeah, but I find that the wooden frame can only support ten or fifteen thousand of the players, since even though the 2D players have no thickness they still have mass. And the cabling is a real mess once you get past fifteen or twenty.
It is nice that you can pick them up for nothing at the local store. Just keep the thin edge pointed towards the security camera and they never see you walking out with one. Or
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Heh heh.
No thank you (Score:2)
Only 3D? No thanks.
I had one of those back in the day. I saw it only for a split second and it was gone.
I'm currently holding out until they make a 4 dimensional one... which, quite frankly, they should have made in the first place!
Stereoscopic != 3D (Score:1, Flamebait)
Is anybody else bothered by the false advertising that well funded corporate marketing and headline-seeking news is shoving down the public's collective throat?
Claiming that a stereoscopic picture is the equivalent of a 3 dimensional projection is the equivalent of presenting a stereo entertainment center and claiming that it is surround sound.
Re:Stereoscopic != 3D (Score:5, Informative)
Claiming that a stereoscopic picture is the equivalent of a 3 dimensional projection is the equivalent of presenting a stereo entertainment center and claiming that it is surround sound.
Stereoscopic, def.: "The viewing of objects as three-dimensional."
Clue: you're being a douche when you rant on threads you have nothing to contribute, beside the obvious.
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You haven't seen Avatar, have you?
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It sounds more like you're sick of advertising. Period.
Nobody, except the most clueless of rock-dwelling hermits, will think that 3D television projects a 3-dimensional environment into their living room, and thus pinning a deceptive advertising charge would be difficult to impossible.
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I have issues with marketers selling crap using names that approximate something else in an effort to confuse the consumer into makin
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720p is closer to HD than 1080i. 720 lines is more than 540.
Interlacing should just go die.
About time! (Score:2, Funny)
I gotta say I can't wait for 3D BluRay discs to come out. I keep accidentally losing the 2D ones between the atoms of my couch!
Finally... (Score:1)
I'd been struggling along with a 2D one which was an absolute nightmare to find when viewed end on...
This extra dimension you refer to interests me, do you have more information in the form of a pop up book?
3D (Score:1, Offtopic)
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They mean "holy shit that's popping out of the screen" with glasses and specialty devices.
"Damn that's some nice graphics" has no impact on the source media or display device.
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Holy shit, that's popping out of the screen.
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on a side note, hooray for being labeled off topic for trying to clarify what the new technology is
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I love stereo-3D myself, and have a collection of it in various forms including an antique Stereo-Realist camera that can take action stills in stereo. It's also quite easy to take stereo stills with any digital camera, providing there's no movement involved in the subject-- just by taking the picture, moving over about a foot, and taking another framed the same (and hopefully, with the same ex
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Speaking of expensive parlor tricks...
About half of the stereo features hitting theaters this year will be last minute planar projection fake conversions in effort to jack up the ticket price. Offshore stereo conversion companies are sprouting up like weeks in the VFX industry currently.
So, you've got stuff like Up and Avatar that actually start driving demand for theatrical stereo, soon to be followed by an avalanche of headache inducing cashgrab.
The industry seems intent on sabotaging itself.
Aside: I'm a
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I don't really see it that way.
Rather, this is the typical theater vs. home wars, bumping up to the next level. It's clear that Hollywood, Inc. has discovered that "3D" in films, when used to actually enhance the film (rather as the gimmick it's been in the past) is fairly compelling. More people saw "Avatar" in 3D than normal, and this film is now the highest grossing in history, and the first to pass the $2 billion mark. And that's just box office.
The 3D thing is really overblown, anyway. It's largely a c
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Which is of course one reason the PS3 update is expected this summer, rather than now, even if they do have the 3D Blu-Ray stuff working there already. 3D gaming makes perfect sense, anyway... video games are already largely 3D internal, just projected as 2D when rendered. So why not do a stereoscopic projection?
Of course, Sony will also want to have their 3D shutter glasses for the PS3 available at the same time the software's out. I hate to admit it, but I'll probably be in line for them the day they're o
3D!!! (Score:3, Funny)
A 3-dimensional player would have been nice. All I have is a 2-dimensional Blu-ray player.
Figuring out the physics behind how to convert a 3-dimensional Blu-ray disc into 2-dimensional space and back so it could work with my 2-dimensional player was a bit tough, but once you get the hang of it it's not so bad.
Oh wait.... you're talking about stereoscopic video, not the actual spacial dimensionality of the physical player.
Sorry.
This is ridiculous. (Score:3, Interesting)
Which 3D spec is it?
The tech is incredibly immature right now, there's about 3 different methods of doing 3D - some require glasses, some apparently don't. How is it encoded on the disc, can the disc still contain the regular 2D blu ray movie. Is it the same spec as the other companies? What about the TV guys, is it the same spec there?
They (not just Sony) are really praying for this 3D thing to take off and cause a whole new run of consumer idiot sales, we aren't falling for it this time, the 1080p fiasco was bad enough (it was never an official HD spec, it was added later) you expect us to sell out 1->30 month old HD TV's for a 3D one when the spec is a complete shambles?
I think a 'lol, no!' should suffice here. I'm definitely waiting this one well, well out.
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Re:This is ridiculous. (Score:4, Informative)
The thing with the 3D spec's is that it's all in the TV. BluRay's just provide the 3d imaging (left and right frames) it's the TV then projects it, however the hell it wants to... active/passive glasses, polarized fields, stereoscopy, Dolby3D, Real3D, hell, even red-blue or magic eye if that's how the set works.
Personally, I think the 3D thing is cool, it's finally bringing this stuff into the main stream that's going to make industry focus on ways to make it not suck. And I figure by the time they work that part out, it'll be about time to upgrade my currently 7 year old 1080i CRT to something a bit flatter and bigger without feeling like I didn't get my money's worth out of the current set (and relegating it to another room).
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The amount of HD TV's which were sold as "HD" but only 720p or only 1080i or only 720p/1080i is ridiculous.
The standard should've been 1080p full at the beginning.
What about the media? (Score:3, Funny)
If 2D BluRay comes on a flat disc, does 3D BluRay come on a sphere?
Maybe virtual reality glasses? (Score:2)
I had my nvidia shutters a long time ago (10 years or so), and while it was really fun I do not see myself getting into this new tv new glasses thing.
I would expect to have an affordable at least 720p (1280x720?) glasses (per eye) tiny displays with a light helmet/head mount by now, but no... most headsets are still 640x480 or 800x600 .... 1024 costs a lot more..... Just do not get it......
Technology is there and I think they would sell too......maybe I am just part of a crazy crowd who thinks that others
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Take a sheet of paper with printing on it and place it in front of one of your eyes at normal glasses-distance.
If you are 30+ years old the odds are very good that you cant focus on the print at all, even if you do not need to wear glasses.
So the solution is some sort of individually-tailored-to-the-person glasses to aid in viewing the hypothetical goggles of yours. Compared with the mass production of one-size-fits-all shutter glasses or polarized lenses, its no contest.
I predict that most
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Everyone's doing LCD shutter glasses right now, simply because the TV doesn't really need to know anything about 3D.. it's a private agreement between your media player and your eyes, just as 16:9 vs. 4:3 was with DVD (eg, the analog TV doesn't have a clue about the format... well, maybe some PAL TVs get the 16:9/4:3 flag sent via SCART, but usually, the TV didn't know).
Polarization is one great way to get away from active glasses. This is a piece of cake to do very nicely with a DLP projection TV, exactly
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Linear polarization is a fail in the theater
You'll have to explain that to the people who saw Avatar in IMAX 3D (including myself). Worked fine, but yeah I had to watch my head tilt...
DLP rear-projections were actually the first non-CRT stereoscopic TVs with active LCD shutter glasses, because they actually paint every frame with two sequential fields (think black and white squares on the checkerboard) to reduce the resolution needed of the DLP chip. The two fields were utilized for left and right eye vie
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You'll have to explain that to the people who saw Avatar in IMAX 3D (including myself). Worked fine, but yeah I had to watch my head tilt...
I found being required to sit up straight for nearly three hours a major downside of the experience. And the frame problems of IMAX just seemed to be exacerbated in 3D, I'm not sure why that it, but the flicker was pretty terrible at times.
The bigger problem though was the fixed inter-ocular distance. My eyes strained in a bit, my daughter's (she's 6) had to accommoda
PS3... (Score:1)
Next Big Thing (Score:1)
Remember when 3D used to mean... (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember when 3D used to mean they had two dimensions and a story!
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A story with double-D, I could digg it :)
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Remember when 3D used to mean they had two dimensions and a story!
You're quite right. Photographs are 2D. TV and Movies are 3D. Avatar was 4D.
I'm simply astonished the marketdroids haven't picked up on this yet.
Unfortunately (Score:2)
Unfortunately, the Wonka bar is still very, very small. Ah well.
--
Toro
So, tell me, Sony (Score:2)
You going to give us glasses for this? I doubt I can use the RealD polarized glasses with my LCD TV.
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Or it creates a market for intermediate converters which take the 3D output of the player and convert it to any of:
Split-screen (left picture on the left, right on right)
Split-screen cross-eyed (for apparatus-free viewing)
Anaglyph (to match whatever color glasses you have around)
Interlaced to match shutter-glasses (which will have to be timed to the converter)
Split into two streams for dual-projection (polarized) or LCD glasses
The options are endless. If they can just do auto-anaglyph, with the option to s
3D is it like Talkies? (Score:2)
Then I think to myself, gee am I some old curmudgeon that would have been against talkies one the big screen clinging to my black and white TV when color TV's came out?
I hate the idea of having to wear special glasses to watch my TV. I think this new move to 3D TV is a novelty that will wear off, but it won't because it is easier for companies to lock down 3D because of the larger size and proprietary equipment.
Am I just not keeping up
What about component video? (Score:2)
I went and looked at BluRay players the other day, and of the 5 sold at the store I was at, none could up-scale DVD's via component video (all demanded HDMI). I got the impression from that, that none of them could do High Def *at all* via component video, let alone 3D video, and I refuse to support the HDMI "standard".
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>> 4) Keep changing formats so people have to buy new players *and DVDs of the same movies*
Fixed that for you.
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Future generations will have genetically engineered polarized corneas for the purpose.
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There doesn't seem much point for TV. It would be nice for computer desktops though where I actually could find uses for a 3D desktop model.