3D is ready for your home. Are you ready?

Last September, I attended the annual CEDIA (Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association www.cedia.net) conference and expo in Atlanta .

 

Almost all major TV manufacturers and couple of projector manufacturers were demonstrating their prototypes of 3D products. A huge 103 inch 3D plasma TV from Panasonic and $55,000 3D projector from Digital Projection ( www.digitalprojection.com ) were attracting large crowds.

 

The demos were very impressive. Images were lifelike. Finally, full color full HD 3D is going to be a reality for consumers. Products are expected this spring and at least 50 titles of blu-ray movies are to be released soon.

 

Standards for 3D TV and blu-ray are being finalized. This time it is going to be a major change for the way we watch video at home. It may be the greatest thing to happen for home video since we switched from black & white to color. Even the switch from standard resolution video to HD video did not create such an impact.

 

While the manufacturers are praising this new standard, we have to wait and see how the consumers are reacting to it. There are several roadblocks to overcome before 3D becomes mainstream.

 

1. Investment - You need new 3D capable equipments. New TVs, new blu-ray players etc. The initial models are not going to be cheap. Even if you can afford, are you willing to spend more money over what you have just spent for the latest flat screen TV?
2. Lack of programming material - Initially, the availability of 3D programming material will be an issue. majority of material you will be watching will be still on 2D. Will you spend large amount of money for 10% of the material you watch? This will of course change when sports broadcasts switch to 3D HD and hundreds of blu-ray movie titles are available.
3. New HDMI version - Full HD (1080P) 3D will need HDMI 1.4. This means all the receivers in the market today which supports HDMI 1.3 video switching and processing making them incompatible with the new 3D format. Do we have to get new receivers?
4. Inconvenience - Wearing  3D glasses for long durations is certainly not comfortable. If you are already having glasses, you have to wear 3D glasses over them.
5. Puppet show effect – The moment you wear the 3D glasses, our brain perceives the image as smaller in size. I could feel this even on the huge I-MAX screen while watching Avatar in 3D. Imagine watching 3D on a 46” TV. Except for real close up scenes, everything will appear like a puppet show. Over the years, our brains may get adjusted it to it. With early televisions, people might have experienced the same. Till then, they had seen video images only on a big screen in a dark theater. Now they are watching tiny images in a small box. Then we got used to it. Same thing may happen with 3D.
6. Impact - For telling a good story, do you really need 3D? If the movie is bad, can 3D technology make it any better?  Except for science-fiction and action movies, sports events and nature documentaries,  will 3D significantly enhance viewers experience?

 Anyway, 3D is ready to enter your  home in 2010. But the question is “are you ready?”.  It may take several years before the format becomes mainstream. Till then, it may be a luxury available to a minority – the early adopters, and the filthy rich!

End of blu-ray?

DVD was the most successful format ever created for storing and distributing video content. The number of discs sold, the number of players sold, and the number of titles available - all have broken previous records. DVD still continues to enjoy a large portion of market share.

The new format which emerged in 2006 to replaces DVDs - the blu-ray disc – had a rocky start. First, it had to fight with a competing format, HDDVD. Even though blu-ray won the battle, it still had a low acceptance rate among users. The players were expensive. (Can you believe that the first generation players were costing as much as $800 and was still primitive compared to today’s players). Discs were expensive and few titles were available. Many users were happy with DVD and did not feel the need to upgrade to the new format. Blu-ray discs are still expensive compared to DVDs. But the price for the players has come down. Today you can get a player for less than $100. Thousands of titles are available now. All new movie releases appear in both DVD and blu-ray formats. Sale of players and discs has increased significantly in the past year.

In spite of these successes, it is unlikely that blu-ray will achieve the same level of success DVD has enjoyed.

This is mainly due to the fact that the way video content is stored and consumed is changing fast. Online video services help you do away with storage medium. You can stream movies from Netflix today without ever having the physical disc. There are several other companies providing on-demand video through internet. Your satellite TV or cable TV provider lets you stream the movies from their servers through pay-per-view service.

Streaming video will be the direction in future for distribution of video. The content will be streamed to the customer’s display on demand. This completely eliminates the need for a physical medium on which the movie is recorded and distributed to the customer.

Digital media players I have discussed in an earlier blog will play an important role in this transformation. They provide the bridge between the content source and your high definition display. There are currently more than 65 models form different manufacturers available in this category. Quality and features of these products keep improving steadily. Surprisingly, they are very affordable today (most units between $100 and $300) and the prices will drop further when demand picks up. On the other hand, several manufacturers a are including basic capabilities for playing online digital content on their TVs and blu-ray players.

Video and audio standard used by blu-ray discs may continue to live as standards for storing high definition material. But the physical disc may become obsolete when internet becomes the main source for what you watch on your TV.

Is "home theater" a difficult term?

Last month I gave a speech on "home theater". My audience had little knowledge on this subject. So I tried to make it very simple without using technical jargon. The title of the speech itself was "home theaters" and I used the term at least a dozen times during the speech.

After the speech, several people talked to me appreciating my speech. Here are few samples.

"You made the dry topic of home entertainment systems very interesting."

"I wish I had  a movie room like yours."

"Your speech on your stereo system was nice."

"I am glad that my husband did not hear your speech. Otherwise he will build a media room like yours this weekend"

I was stunned. Entertainment system? stereo system? movie room? media room?.  I never used these terms in my speech - not even once.

This was not my first experience. Whenever I talk to people about my hobby of home theaters, many of them later refer to it as "media room" or "entertainment system".

Is "home theater" such a difficult term to remember? 

I don't understand.

HD Media Players

WARNING: Technically explicit material. If you are technically challenged or if such material offends you, please do not continue reading this post.

I built my first Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC) in 2002. Those days most people did not know that you can connect a PC to your TV. Sleek flat panel TVs with PC input and HDMI input were not around. Finding a horizontal case for my PC to match with the audio /video components in the rack was tough. It was even tougher make the HTPC work with my 65 inch rear projection HDTV. The TV was so bulky that it took almost a quarter of my family room floor space. Controlling all the functions of the PC through a programmable remote control was another haunting task.

Seven years later, the old TV and the old HTPC are still going strong - recording and playing favorite TV shows (both HD and non-HD), playing music, playing movies and receiving HDTV broadcast with the help of a digital tuner card.

Then in 2005, I built the second HTPC for the dedicated home theater room. In both cases, I spent around $1,200 for building the HTPC.

Things have changed a lot in the last few years. Connecting your PC to the TV is a breeze now. Today, you can use your 50 inch plasma TV as a huge monitor for your PC. Also you can play on the big screen the video files stored on your PC or anywhere on your home network or from the web.

Yet, PC never became a mainstream source for video and audio in a home entertainment setup.

That is changing now with the new breed of media players. For as little as $100 you can get an HD media player and connect it to your TV. Then connect it to your home network and suddenly you have a wide variety of material to watch on your HDTV. These units support HDMI output, 1080P resolution and play almost all formats of video and audio files. These files can be on a USB drive connected to the unit, on any computer on your home network or from one of the supported video services on internet. The unit comes with a remote control and an easy to use user interface.

Having such a unit in your home theater setup is almost like having an HTPC at a fraction of the cost and complexity.

While there are several HD media players available today, two inexpensive (around $130 street price), but interesting units to consider are:

Seagate FreeAgent Theater + HD Media Player

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/freeagent/freeagent_theater_plus

and

Western Digital TV Live HD Media Player

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=735

In order to play digital media today, you don’t have to follow the difficult and expensive path I took back in 2002.

Movies - Four types

There are four types of movies we watch in our home theater. It is interesting to compare my response and my wife's response to these movies. 

Type 1: Good movie, good video and audio. 

Her response: When the movie starts she notices the video quality. Then she gets immersed in the movie. She feels the pleasure and pain of the characters. She forgets about the theater, forgets that I am sitting next to her. Does not hear the telephone ringing. She laughs, cries. She no longer cares whether it is blu-ray or a regular DVD. She returns to this world when the movie is over. 

My response: I am excited that the video and audio are great. I like the movie and enjoy it. But throughout the movie, I look for flashes of technical excellence in video and audio. I notice the shadow details, color accuracy, realistic surround effects. I never get fully immersed in the story. I feel jealous of  my wife. 

Type 2: Good movie, bad video and audio.  

Her response: When the movie starts she complains about the video quality. Then she gets immersed in the movie. She is no longer bothered by the poor video. She feels the pleasure and pain of the characters. She forgets about the theater, forgets that I am sitting next to her. Does not hear the telephone ringing. She laughs, cries.  She returns to this world when the movie is over. 

My response: I am disappointed about the video and audio. Even though the movie is good, I am unable to enjoy it.  Throughout the movie, I see edge enhancement, compression artifacts, moire and all sorts of video distortions. I am upset with the poor audio, incorrect surround effects and other shortcomings in audio.

I feel jealous of  my wife. I wonder how she can enjoy this movie. 

Type 3 - Bad movie, good video and audio 

Her response: She sits through the movie for 10 or 15 minutes. Then she escapes from the theater to watch TV show in her bedroom TV.. 

My response: I am glad that the video and audio are good. I am not happy about the movie, but because of the technical excellence,   I  sit through the entire movie. 

Type 4 - Bad movie, bad video and audio. 

In this case, we both have the same response. We escape from the theater as fast as we can.

Is blue worth the green? (നീലയ്ക്കു വേണ്ടി പച്ച മുടക്കണോ, മാഷേ?)

WARNING: Technically explicit material. If you are technically challenged or if such material offends you, please do not continue reading this post.

Let me talk about blue. 

I have heard comments from several people that blu-ray discs are not such a great improvement over DVD. They have tried both and thought DVD is pretty good and blu-ray is slightly better. If this is the case, is it worth buying discs which are two or three times in price; and an expensive player to play these discs?

True. The jump in quality may not be as much as we experienced when we switched from VHS to DVD.

Still blu-ray is technically a much superior format with more than two million pixels for each picture frame. This is roughly six times that of DVD. This results in higher resolution allowing to display finer details in the picture. The audio track alone on a blu-ray disc may take as much space as an entire DVD. (Audio on blu-ray will be the subject of another future post)

In order to enjoy this superior picture quality, you should make sure of the following.

1. Your eyesight is perfect or you are wearing glasses or contact lenses to give you perfect vision from your seat. (read the previous post)

2. You are sitting close enough to the screen. Ideally, you should not sit more than one and a half times the screen width. This approximately equals to 1.3 times the screen size. For example if your TV is only 32” size, you should not be more than 42” (three and a half feet) away from it. That is too close compared to what we are used to with our older TVs. Also it is uncomfortably close in a typical family room layout. Normally we sit 8 to 12 feet away from TV irrespective of the screen size. At that distance, your eyes cannot resolve finer details on a 32” TV displaying high definition video. If you are watching low quality standard definition video, sitting that far away is perfectly OK. But for blu-ray, pull your seat closer to the TV. Or get a bigger TV. Even better will be a projector and a screen. If you have a 73” TV, sitting at a distance of 8 feet is OK for watching blu-ray. In my theater the screen size is 11.5 feet and the front row is around 13 feet from the screen. This is perfect for HD. But for watching regular DVDs, I move the rear row which is 19 feet away from the screen. If you are watching blu-ray disc on a small TV (less than 40”) and if you are sitting far away (more than five feet) you may not be able to appreciate the difference between blu-ray and a good DVD.

3. Your player, receiver and TV (projector) should not degrade the video quality during de-interlacing, up-converting and video processing. If you have a 1080P TV try disabling all the video processing in the player, the receiver and the TV. Since most of the blu-ray discs are authored at 1080P resolution this will give you the cleanest picture. If up-conversion or de-interlacing is needed, find out which component in your video chain does the job the best and use it. Most of the mid/high-end units have excellent video processing circuits.

4. All blu-ray discs are not created equal. For some discs, video transfer was done so badly that the quality is similar to or inferior to DVD. Fortunately, most of the new releases have excellent video quality. Do not judge the format by watching a bad disc.

Blu-ray is the highest quality video source available to consumers today. It can beat HDTV broadcast, cable HD and satellite HD. If you take care of the above you can enjoy the glory of this format and appreciate the improvement over regular DVDs.

First thing to do (കണ്ണുണ്ടായാല്‍ പോരാ, കാണണം)

OK, now you have the latest high definition TV (or projector). 

What should be your first step in order to enjoy the best possible picture on it?

Believe it or not, it has nothing to do with your TV. You should get your eyes checked first. If correction is needed, you should get the right glasses or contact lenses. Tell your optometrist  the distance form your TV (screen) to your seat.

Any adjustment to your TV should be done only after completing this important step.

This simple step will not only improve the clarity of your TV’s images, but also of everything else you see. You will realize how beautiful the world is!
Millions of viewers are not able to fully enjoy the clarity of the latest high definition video due to problems with their vision. In most cases, they are not even aware of what they are missing.

It is quite possible that you are one among them. So pick up the phone, call your optometrist and get the earliest available appointment. Make sure that before the appointment you measure the distance from the screen to your seat. Don’t try to guess.