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Oh hi everybody. I had to get a new T.V. for the living room not a couple months ago and figured that so long as I'm getting a new one, I might as well go with the latest technology, so I got one of those newfangled 3D whatchamacallits. A Sony Bravia KDL-40HX800 to be exact. It seems to be the industry's next big push with Avatar's success in the theater, the Playstation 3's summer Firmware update to support it 'n all that jazz and potential buyers have been wondering if it'd been worth it.

I'd have talked about this functionality sooner but the particular model I bought didn't actually come with the glasses, which I think is kinda silly since it makes the T.V. pricier anyway. A purchase you're already committed to I do so suppose. However I suppose having the ability to upgrade is nice. Point is I got my starter kit, so I can now talk about the experience. First is the gear I'm using, which is something that could probably be skipped by most

The sync bar that plugs into the back of compatible televisions, the two pairs of Sony 3D glasses and an HDMI cable to go from my CECHA## Playstation 3 to my Television. The only piece of 3D gear I'm missing is an AV Receiver, however this suits me just fine as I can run a separate Digital Optical (TOSlink) cable from my Playstation 3 to my older Sony STR-697 for a 5.1 surround sound setup. This costs me lossless audio codecs but for now this suits me just fine for now. No, my speakers aren't Sony brand. They're Kef KIT 5001.2 SEs actually. Main reason most of this stuff is Sony is that currently, 3D technologies are brand specific and I've liked their TVs in the past: The receiver just so happened to be the very cheapest I could grab off of eBay with the at the time.

The movie that came with the starter set bundle was was Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. Something I'd watched before, rented to watch with my mother over PSN. A decent film I suppose, with plenty of interesting visual effects and strong characterizations, albeit not one of my favorites since no one story element really gets enough focus to really flesh out. Beggars can't be choosers though and content is kinda scarce: point here is to reflect on the tech and this movie should do nicely. On a side note, I sure do wish I hasn't misplaced that scratch off cupon for the 3D games now. Should've redeemed it right away I suppose. Oh well.

From this point onward I must warn about potential spoilers, albeit i don't want to use the tags and have a good portion of my post whited out and/or have random bits of odd formatting all along my text. I'll try to keep things to a very vague minimum though.

At first I was rather impressed with the way the menu sequence played out, with all sorts of storybook style paperbook cutouts flying at you. However when the movie actually began, I kinda had a hard time telling if the technology was even implemented properly since I really couldn't tell the difference. There was a subtle flickering at first, which I presume was caused by the way the glasses strategically block left and right images. However, it wasn't very long until my eyes adjusted and I stopped noticing.

I did some on/off comparisons to see what the movie actually looked like without the glasses and I saw some double when I took the glasses off as I would've expected but it didn't look very different to me otherwise. Perhaps a little extra detail here or there, most particularly at the wedding but I couldn't really tell if it was merely a placebo effect or not. This is especially so as I was watching the movie with my mother yet again, who also said had trouble telling. First actually, albeit I was silently wondering the same thing all the while.

By the time Alice broke off from the party to chase the White Rabbit it really hit us like a ton of bricks. The effects really started to stand out, indeed adding an entirely new extra dimension to what was going on. I'm unsure if it was intentional or not but it kinda reminded me of the effect they used in The Wizard of Oz, where they started out in Sepia Tone, then switched in over to color. The scenery's depth, rotations and especially the effect of things coming towards you were all greatly pronounced. The CGI seemed to get the most benefit from the treatment. I might also note that there were additional details I noticed this time around, like Alice's hair frizz when she's talking to the Hatter in the Queen's palace, albeit I must admit that might just be because this is my third viewing and I tried getting somewhat closer to the T.V. early on to see if that would help the effect any, since my viewing distance is a wee lil' bit far for the 40" screen. The most striking elements were some of the CGI smoke effects whirling around and coming at you and just how 'round'/floaty the Chesire cat was. "Antem" as a butterfly even seemed to flutter partially off the screen for a moment.

However there is a fair bit of tradeoff to be considered as well. Maybe it's just because I'm not used to it, perhaps it's because you can't change your perspective or maybe the scale of the effect is a little out of whack. Any which way, it would seem to me that the effect it had was a bit limited in places, making it certain things, most notably the live actors, looking somewhat like cardboard cutouts you might see whilst walking the theater. Aside from adding some insight as to their choice of a menu opening sequence, this combined with the lack of perspective it makes it so that the 3D effect doesn't look quite fully realized. The glasses appear tinted, which as my mother noted, alters the color tonality. This makes it seem as though you were watching the movie while wearing a pair of shades because well, that's exactly what you're doing. I'll try to tinker around with the settings some once I find my remote control but for now, all I can say is that I don't think whites could ever be quite be their whitest this way, which is a bit of a shame as it's one of the secondary selling points of this television.

Additionally I had issues with comfort. The first thing that comes to mind is that thanks to the way the glasses work to alternate images, you can't tilt your head very far to lie down. You need to have line of sight with the sensor bar, otherwise the signal will cut out and the glasses will gain a brighter yellowy tint. A very, very mild on/off diziness I hear is common with some people and perhaps more importantly, an equally mild eye strain. The latter of these ailments is noteworthy because by choice, I spend most of my free time in front of video interfaces of some sort or another, be it to watch television, play games, surf the web or whatever. Day in day out, I never really noticed any sort of problem, except for the rare occurrence of dry eyes in the morning. I'd actually fallen asleep at the keyboard here, meaning it's actually hours past my watching of the film and I'm still suffering from some of the ill effects. It is my hope that as I grow accustomed to the experience, that this'll fade away like the flickering did. Additionally on the note of comfort, the 3D glasses have ear pieces which can be adjusted, albeit I found the alternative setting is a wee little bit too tight. Might be good for somebody with a smaller head though, albeit I'm not quite sure how small since Sony makes separate child sized glasses.

So to sum my overall thoughts up, it was a very interesting novel effect which added a very distinctly dynamic impression to the movie as one might expect. However the effect itself doesn't seem to be anything so impressive that I'd particularly find anything lacking wasn't there at all and it doesn't look all too entirely realistic. What frame of reference do I have? That's it precisely actually, a frame. An window frame to be exact, that looks almost as if it was a 108 inch a TV built into the wall with a very enviable view. Here's a [high res.] picture of it from the outside for reference.

I'd recommend waiting for refinement, further price drops and a wider selection of nonexclusive content. Hopefully the necessity for these shutter glasses will phase out, which to me, seems as if it could be the cause of most of my problems and places budget based limits on the number of viewers possible. Albeit to my knowledge, pop off the screen effects aren't possible without them (not that I saw very many. The butterfly thing seemed to be the sole instance.)

As for how the the glasses look, they're almost cool looking but faaar too angular in design. Oh well, they're not wearing out glasses anyway. I've got a far cheaper and cooler looking pair of shades for that.

I'd say more but aside from this already being far more than most people might want to read, the time sure has flew. I've got to go. See ya later guys.

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Role reversal at its finest.

Yeah, I will have to admit, it's cool that you went into so much detail here, hopefully that will help someone in the market.

For me, though, there's just zero desire to own one of these. The technology is interesting from a purely technological standpoint, but the actual impact is not something I really need to enjoy what I watch. Granted, my experience with 3D is limited to a couple movies I saw in 3D IMAX and a tech demo at a local store, but I do know that it's nothing I'm aching to add to my life - I'd prefer to watch 2D HD without glasses than 3D HD with them.

Beyond not really caring one way or another about the effect, the cost for being an early adopter on these things is just far too high for me to want to do it even if I liked 3D. I'm sure you got a better deal buying through eBay (though a purchase like that on eBay would scare me, too!), but on AmaCoN right now you're looking at about, what, $1800 for that set? IMO, you need to either really love 3D or really love being the first on the block to have the new toys to justify that.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it seems like you're pleased with it overall and I'm sure lots of people would be. But the downsides you mention yourself are more than enough to make it pretty much worth nothing to me, and I hope that's not just the complaint of an old curmudgeon-in-training.


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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Yeah, I was about to ask how this whole 3D effect works, until you went into major detail.

Props on including so much detail.

This confirms what I suspected--that 3D viewing is a cool idea, but not necessarily the greatest thing since sliced bread.

How do these 3D glasses work? My first thought was, if not red/blue, some sort of polarization scheme, but I have little knowledge at all about 3D visual tech.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 28th October 2010 13:17)

How do these 3D glasses work? My first thought was, if not red/blue, some sort of polarization scheme, but I have little knowledge at all about 3D visual tech.

In terms of active shutter glasses, GMH (which are the kind used by Sony and several other 3DTV manufacturers, IIRC), Wiki can tell you more than I ever could.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCD_shutter_glasses

Short version, though, is that the TV syncs the glasses to the action on-screen by way of the sync bar that Tonepoet mentions, darkening alternate lenses on the glasses in a way that makes the 3D effect visible as 3D and not a blurry image.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

I would think that your ill effects would be triggered not by the stereoscopy itself but by the flickering you mentioned. Old CRT monitors with low refresh rates produce similar unhealthy effects. That's a real turnoff for me.

For that reason I would prefer the polarization method or (even the red/blue) to the shutter method.

I also must say that for me, 3D video is a lot more attractive a gimmick to me than HD video was. At least it adds to the art of display rather than just add to the clarity of something that's going to be displayed the same way whether the clarity's there or not. That being said, I would say that there are many other elements in film that are much more important than either of these.

I agree almost exactly with R51's first post. I'm more than content with my good old 2D screen (and it's not even HD!), and 3D doesn't particularly interest me either. Aside from that, I'm a pretty big cheapskate, so the expense is definitely not legitimized in my books. It was interesting to read your experience with it though, Tonepoet!

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While I'm glad to hear it was interesting, please don't read too much into the level of detail I put into it R51, I'm really not all too particularly enthusiastic about it either. Part of it is that detail I shoot for whenever I make a post and another part of it is that while there are some formal articles, there doesn't seem to be very much consumer buzz put some perspective on them. Not very many places talk about the variety of the downsides I mentioned, aside from saying that its an inconvenience to wear the glasses.

As for the money, it's a long story. To keep it relatively simple, I figured as long as I'm getting new toys to replace the set we'd used for the past ten viewing years and ditched in a move, I might as well go for the latest, have something to enjoy now and not have to upgrade again later. It's going to be a bit of a long term investment anyway. Since I was looking for TVs just the weeks coming up before this thing's release, I actually spent more on it not anticipating such a sharp price drop so quickly before content diversified and Sony's own attempts to sweeten the pot with bundles on their site. More interesting tech like Quad HD and maybe W[ireless]HDMI appears to be on the way. I'd have waited longer to see how things played out if I already had a set in the living room but I didn't. It's somewhat regretful

Oh well, you can wait forever for the best things the future has to offer and hindsight is 20/20. What's more concerning to me is that I think the industry's agreed upon implementation strategies is highly flawed. What's more concerning to me is the development that 3D movies are going to have brand exclusive releases for a while, almost like video game consoles (except possibly cross compatible). I think this is a suicidally discouraging move for the already skeptical fledgling market. However there are a lot of major backers to this too so perhaps persistence will pull through. I think it'd take a marketing miracle for all the stuff planed around the holiday season to boom off without it though. I think the scene is currently in a very fragile position.

Death Penalty: I learned the hard way that you should keep your old set if you ever do decide to upgrade. Big companies like Sony phasing out S-video due to a lack of popularity, older light gun games anticipate a curved glass screen for accuracy purposes and video games have less latency at their native resolution. All of these factors are important for classic video game appreciators such as those I'd imagine being drawn to this site. Maybe l'll go into more detail on this later, in another topic dedicated to best console A/V connection practices. It's something I've been reading up on for a while now.

finalalias: I think my problem is that 3D technology has a tendency to induce motion sickness in some individuals because the image is moving in ways your body isn't. On particularly windy roads I've gotten very rather dizzy where others haven't. Your version of events is also something I've been considering though since the way the glasses work would seem quite unnatural and jarring.

Glenn Magus Harvey: It looks like you have some level of interest in how this stuff works so perhaps you might also be interested to know that it's not entirely new as you may think. The Sega Master System had a Segascope add-on that utilized active shutter glasses, which helps to put Sega strangely in line with a reputation for futuristic failures in my mind. I hear the reason they're not going with add-ons now is because it reduces the effective resolution by half. It makes me wonder if there'll be an Alex Kid's Ultimate Master System Collection since master system games are kinda hard to come by. Probably not: The system wasn't too popular, the industry probably wouldn't want to draw attention to the fact that the tech isn't so new as everybody thought and it raises questions about upgrade kits.


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Role reversal at its finest.

Well, I guess that means it's been tried before in gaming, but I think that, with the industry just now warming up to 3DTV as a mainstream idea, it might take a while before they try to put games up to it. Especially since the most successful console currenty, the Wii, is actually the least technically-advanced (technically) console of the big three.

Though I'd love to see the Alex Kidd franchise revived.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )