Yesterday I spent the day at BT’s Adastral research centre talking about new and upcoming technology. BT do a lot beyond selling phones and broadband, and the day was focused on highlighting areas of technology that we could use in come form or another.
They’ve got a huge range of stuff there, we covered everything from their 21st Century Network project though to a fascinating bit of kit that can pick up sound from fibre optic cameras. One of the less business focus demos though was a couple of 3D televisions.
I’ve seen a couple of 3D movies recently and have been pretty impressed with the effect. Even so, I wasn’t so sure about the idea of 3D TV. Maybe it’s because most of the movies are animated, I wasn’t sure what live action would be like. Having seen it in the flesh though I’m really quite looking forward to the prospect. The 3D effect is just as real as at the cinema, but what surprised me was how well it seemed to work with normal real life scenes.
Te demo had a couple of different scenes, from the predictable action movie type stuff through to rugby games and and an F1 car driving round Mugello. It works very very well for the sports sections, it’s no wonder Sky are so keen on launching a 3D channel next year.
Ok, so you have to wear glasses, but they’re nowhere near as bad as the only red/green ones you used to get as a kid. You’d rather watch without I’m sure, but even though I only had a quick demo I reckon the glasses are worth the sacrifice. Oh, and for normal 2D programmes the TV works just like a normal HDTV.
How does it work… well from what I can gather, glasses are circularly polarised, clockwise for the right eye and anti- clockwise for the left. The screen then alternately projects the frames for the right and left eyes, switching a filter for each.
However it works I’m looking forward to seeing what the 3D Star Wars movies will be like, and what games developers do once they get their hands on it.
