by Brent Butterworth

December saw what may be the two most significant events in the history of 3-D video. On December 17, the Blu-ray Disc Association announced the finalization of the Blu-ray 3-D standard. The following day marked the release of Avatar, which will be as important to 3-D as the Magna Carta was to the rule of law and Gilligan’s Island was to the modern sitcom.

Based on what I’ve heard, read, and watched, the 3-D we see in the home might just beat out what we see in the theater.

The standard released by the Blu-ray Disc Association requires the use of a new 3-D Blu-ray player (or a Sony Playstation 3) and a 3-D TV. It will pass on the new HDMI version 1.4 interface, so no special cabling will be required. Standard 2-D Blu-rays and DVDs will play on a 3-D player, and 3-D Blu-rays can be backward-compatible with existing 2-D Blu-ray players. Discs can carry 3-D video in full 1080p resolution.

While few specifics of the new standard have been made available to the public, manufacturers tell me that the new 3-D TVs will require that viewers wear LCD “shutter glasses. When the TV is showing the left-eye image, the left LCD shutter becomes transparent and the right shutter becomes opaque. The opposite happens for the right-eye image.

These shutter glasses may be a little clunky, and they probably won’t look terribly cool, and they’ll probably cost $100 or so to replace if you accidentally sit on them. However, they may have an advantage over the polarized glasses you need to watch Avatar, Up, and other 3-D releases in the movie theater.

When watching Avatar, I noticed that if I turned my head slightly, the sides of the image went out of alignment, as if I were looking at it with my eyes out of focus. I had to be careful to stare almost straight at the screen if I wanted the whole image in focus. LCD shutter glasses shouldn’t suffer this problem. While LCDs don’t perform the same at all angles, they shouldn’t produce the blurred images that I saw during Avatar.

The CES show in January promises lots and lots of new 3-D TVs and Blu-ray players—and lots of really impressive demos—so we’ll soon have a better idea of what the new home 3-D video technology offers us. Actual products should be available sometime around summer of 2010 … just in time for the Blu-ray release of Avatar.

By John Sciacca

Television manufacturers are a busy bunch, continually pushing the envelope with nary a moment’s rest on their technological laurels. In the past two years, everything we thought we knew about a good TV has been completely turned inside out. What was once the state of contemporary cool at 4-inches thick is now morbidly obese as sets are being measured in millimeters. Just as we’ve adjusted to 720p and then 1080p resolutions, we must prepare our eyes for the hyper-realism of 4K resolution. While our ancestors lived for years in the Stone Ages of 60-Hertz refresh rates, we have been shown the benefits of 120, 240 and now 480-Hertz. And where contrast ratios used to be boast numbers like 10,000 to 1, they have now reached infinity, exceeding staring into a black hole and the sun with the Hubble telescope. And, remarkably, while all of these advancements have occurred, prices have steadily plummeted. It won’t be long before you’ll pull a 42-inch Plasma from a box of Cracker Jacks, only to trade it for the rubber bouncy ball that you really wanted.

This means that it’s time to talk about the next trend that will capture your video dollars: 3D. Several manufacturers are fervently pursuing the third dimension (depth, in case you were curious) in hopes of continuing to capture that almighty fourth D, Dollars. Both Samsung and LG see 3D as the major catalyst to jumpstarting TV and Blu-ray sales. Mitsubishi has been showing 3D demos w ith its DLP and Laser TV for some time. JVC and Digital Projection had 3D demos at this past CEDIA, and even Dolby Laboratories is getting involved.

But the most aggressive 3D-ers seem to be Panasonic and Sony. (For the record, having watched demos from all of the manufacturers, I find Panasonic’s version of 3D to be the best. To my eyes, it was the sharpest, with the best focus, detail and depth of image.) Both companies plan on launching 3D sets next year and are already laying on the trash-talk pretty thick. Additionally, Sony is releasing an update that will provide a 3D mode for all PS3 games. Sony says, “The 3D train is on the track, and we’re the ones to drive it home.”

Panasonic countered, “A lot of people think Blu-ray is Sony. We believe 3D is Panasonic.”

I believe the next quote will start out, “Yo’ mama so fat…” but I’ve been unable to confirm.

According to the research firm, GigaOM, sales of 3D sets will reach up to 46 million by 2013 and, as 3D becomes a standard feature, it will have just a slight price premium over non-3D models. With support coming from Hollywood in the form of major 3D releases (including James Cameron’s highly anticipated Avatar), it seems like the transition to the home market is inevitable.

by: John Sciacca

Surely everyone remembers the latest format war. I happened to be at the Toshiba press conference in January 2008; the day that Toshiba’s Jodi Sally tearfully/agonizingly acknowledged that Warner would be switching allegiance to Blu-ray, effectively throwing the final tractor trailer load of dirt onto HD-DVD’s coffin, cementing Blu-ray as the “winner.”

But have they really won? Are people buying Blu-rays?

If you read the circulated numbers, you’ll see things like sales of Blu-ray titles being up 91% for the first six months of the year. “Wow! 91%! That’s huge!” Or is it?

Percentages don’t tell the whole story. I could tell you that I had a 2500% increase in funds. I could also tell you that I found a quarter. For Blu-ray, that 91% equals $407 million dollars. Compare that to the $14.5 billion that DVD pulled in last year.

From what I see, no one is buying Blu-rays. I recently vacationed in Destin, Florida and visited the Barnes & Nobles there. The girl running the video section said she’d never sold a Blu-ray disc. I go to my Super Wal-Mart about three times a week (the reality is every bit as depressing as it sounds) and I have never seen anyone even looking at the Blu-ray section, let alone buying any.

So, what’s the problem? It’s not the quality; Blu-ray looks and sounds amazing. (Please – PLEASE! – don’t try and tell me about your upconverting DVD player. It doesn’t look as good. It…doesn’t…look…as…good.) I have been a Netflix subscriber since they started, and now I shudder when I get a disc that isn’t Blu-ray. (Even though Netflix now charges a premium for the privilege. Why I oughta….) The audio/video performance is definitely not the problem.

While it took Blu-ray a while to get their players all sorted out (profile 1.0, 1.1, 2.0… WTF!?), the players are now (mostly) up to finalized spec. And the pricing is down where it needs to be with players at the sub $200 level. So it isn’t the players.

The problem is the software. The price for movies is just WAY too high. Most Blu-ray titles are marked at $34.99 and higher. And when the Blu-ray is sitting next to the double-disc-ultimate-extended-director’s cut DVD selling for $14.99, it makes it hard to get excited about plopping down the extra $20.

So, here’s a crazy idea… This is a new format. Why not, I dunno, incentivize me to support it? Instead of $20 more, why not $1 less. By God, I might actually buy two! Especially for films that are being re-released that I probably already bought. Yeah, I’m looking at you Terminator 2 and the four versions (VHS, Laser Disc and two DVDs) I already have. (And don’t get me started on George Lucas and all my versions of Star Wars…)

What do you think? Have you gone Blu? And if so, what is the magic price point that has you opening up your wallet to add discs to your collection?

by: John Sciacca

Backing up your data is something that everyone plans on doing, but tends to get backburnered for one reason or other. Truthfully, I was no different. Even with minor scares like my power supply crapping out and the hard drive making random clicking sounds — you know, the computer basically shooting up red flares telling me that trouble was a brewin’ – I still managed to put it off.

My procrastinating came to a head one day when my computer totally locked-up. After installing some updates and running a virus scan, not even the failsafe control-alt-delete worked. After a hard power down, the computer booted up into DOS and the monitor immediately began filling with screen after screen of code. This went on for several minutes until finally the desktop came on…totally blank!

I was instantly overcome with that watery, narrowly-avoided-a-horrible-car-wreck feeling. Had I stumbled across a virus that wiped my drive clean just for giggles? Was this the Conflicker worm rearing its ugly head? But most importantly, had I just lost my precious, irretrievable data? Every digital photo and video we’ve taken of our 2 ½ year old. My 8,000 song music collection. Eight years of Sound & Vision articles. Fifteen years of financial records. And every other scrap of data that makes up the unique 0s and 1s of what I hold dear.

Fortunately, the desktop returned to normal and my data was intact, but in those few moments, I became a true believer and I immediately ordered a hard drive, the Western Digital My Book Mirror. Out of the box, this wonder is pre-configured for RAID 1, meaning that it uses the 2 Terabytes as two mirrored 1 Terabyte drives. With some free software found on the Net, the computer now automatically performs back-ups weekly. Beyond the fear of losing data from a drive crash, I now have a small data “vault” that is easily evacuated in the case of emergency. (I live in hurricane prone Myrtle Beach.)

Spend a few seconds and consider what you’d lose if your computer suddenly had a grand mal. Sobering, no? Whether you buy a large external drive, use Network Attached Storage (NAS) or a bunch of USB drives, pay for remote storage or just routinely burn everything onto a DVD (or Blu-ray), make sure you’ve got a back-up plan in place and stick to it!

Best Buy — about as mass market a retailer as you can find — has taken to selling vinyl records. Just goes to show you that the amazing sound quality I raved about in my blog back in February is contagious. Vinyl is still a tiny part of the overall music business, but growing. Check out this post at hometheaterreview.com to get the lowdown, and that website’s take on using Blu-ray as the next big music format. Whatever format comes out on top, I still love my old (and new!) albums! — Bob