Ebook: 3DTV and 3D Movie Technology: Articles 1996–2017

When I was a young boy in 1952 my parents took me to see a 3D movie named Bwana Devil that started a brief 3D film craze. I had never even seen a Viewmaster, so I was startled to see lions come charging out of the screen. I never forgot it and 21 years later (1973) I began researching everything I could find on 3D imaging. I did a complete patent search from the early 19th century on, which meant hand searching hundreds of bound volumes and many reels of microfilm. I spent up to 12 hours a day in the stacks of the Berkeley library for about 6 months. I photocopied dozens of rare books and hundreds of articles and patents on 3D. I saw that the most feasible method was the field sequential one using a wearable shutter device which had first been done for 3D films some 50 years earlier. LCD technology was not quite ready at the moment so I settled on optically transparent high voltage ceramics to begin. Soon fast LCD’s became available and I sourced them from several companies, but they were too expensive for a consumer system until 10 years later.

Companies I started included StereoGraphics Corp (now realD, the major supplier of 3D viewing technology for theatrical cinemas) and 3DTV Corp, which introduced the world’s first electronic home 3DTV system using LCD shutter glasses at the CES in Las Vegas in January 1990. At that time, the only commercially available glasses suitable were those created in Japan for the Nintendo Famicom 8bit videogame system. Since these had been sold out and discontinued in Japan, I flew to Hong Kong and spent several days buying up all the remaining glasses in the toy stores. Subsequently, I had many models made in the USA and Asia, which I continue to sell as a hobby to this day.

I have been involved in creating and marketing numerous devices for 3D capture and display and provided 3D technology to countless companies and universities and a 3D camera system to NASA used for research for the Mars mission. I provided hardware, consulting and 2D to 3D conversion technology for the world’s first serious 3D efforts in the late 90’s and early 2000’s to broadcast 3D on a regular basis (Steven’s College in New York with a low power antenna direct to consumers, a California Company using larger home satellite dishes then in use, and as technical director of 3DTV Japan broadcasting 3D in Tokyo over smaller dishes during low viewing times on their Home Shopping Network). My 2D to 3D conversion patent from 1996, though low tech by current standards, seems to me to be a blocking patent that all subsequent conversion must use, and if I still owned it I might be getting royalties from all the 3D films and much of the home 3D conversion hardware. See https://www.google.com/patents/USRE39342.


The 3D image quality of recent films (videos now) is spectacularly better than it was, as can be noted from the discussions of 3D films. Films in the early 50’s craze were made with huge mechanically synced 35mm film camera pairs, or in the case of technicolor, with 6 strips of film. Then each strip had to be optically printed, edited and projected with dual mechanically connected projector pairs that were often out of sync and with jitter and weave from the cameras, printers and projectors. Binocular asymmetries and eyestrain were guaranteed!

These articles on 3DTV and 3D movies were written over the last two decades of the 44year period since I began. The only ones not here are those that have been formally published-- on 3D movies in American Cinematographer and half a dozen in the Proceedings of the SPIE in the 1990’s. They are illustrated with original photos and historical materials resulting from thousands of hours researching the technical and patent literature and attending and exhibiting at trade shows. I decided to publish them in a book as they have only existed in scattered locations and they have proven quite popular when I recently posted some of them on the net. They present information and viewpoints difficult or impossible to find that nicely supplement what is available elsewhere.

The comprehensive coverage of various trade shows held at the peak of the 3D frenzy (ca 2009-11) are a unique record of what was actually available in the market place at major international shows. To attend one of them would cost the average participant about $2000 and a week’s time, with many hours a day walking the floor, fighting the crowds and exhaustion, and very few would see or understand most of what was on display. This was easier for me as I had already spent 36 years studying 3D full time. I exerted the most effort at NAB (the National Association of Broadcasters) where I trudged the aisles about 8 hours a day for 5 days visiting most of the 3D relevant booths twice, and then spent several weeks reading and researching to put them into context. The patent and technical literature searches however occupied four decades. I also include several practical articles on making and viewing 3D video that include numerous tips not present in the many books and articles I have seen. I make no attempt to repeat the material in the many excellent books and countless articles that have appeared recently. Those who want a fairly comprehensive coverage of 3D technology should get the SPIE CDs with many hundreds of articles from 1977 to 2009 ISBN-10: 0819476595 and subsequent proceedings, and of course for the diligent there is no substitute for the patent literature.

As I comment in several places, though thousands (or millions) have contributed to the technology that gave rise to the rebirth of 3D films and television, if I had to pick out just two then I think Larry Hornbeck of Texas Instruments, who invented the DLP micromirror technology used for projection, and Brian Critchley of projector maker Digital Projection, who took the lead in researching

and developing it into a workable cinema projector, deserve top honors. Of course, laser projectors are starting to replace all other kinds for commercial cinema, and perhaps for home systems if safety issues can be addressed.

Since the 3DTV craze lasted ca. 2009 to 2013 and there are now (2018) few if any 3DTV sets in local stores, some say that it was a failure. However about 40 million 3D sets and maybe 2 million 3D projectors were sold and about a dozen major 3D films are made each year that are then sold on 3D blu-ray, and maybe 100,000 cinemas are 3D ready, so I think it is a huge success. New 3DTV models are mostly being made only in the very large sizes such as 98 inches and up which sell for $50,000 and more. Also, the makers failed to implement a 4K 3D standard and true 4K 3D blurays are not available so the newer 4K 3D tv’s and projectors only display 2K/eye, just like the 2K sets. However, the 4K 3D tv’s line double the 2K 3D input so it still looks noticeably better. At present, only some of the very expensive cinema projectors display 3D with true 4K/eye. If dual 4K video is available it can be played back on a pc with dual 4K outputs (dual head cards or dual cards) on a dual 4K projector setup with polarized glasses or the Infitec system. 4K 3D dlp home projectors have yet to appear. The image quality of the existing active glasses 3DTV’s seems poor due to bad ghosting (crosstalk) with the active glasses models. I recently tested both 32 inch and 75 inch Samsung 4K 3DTV’s and found noticeable ghosting over the whole screen and very bad ghosting in the top 1/5th of the screen, due to the failure of the Bluetooth glasses and/or the LCD to switch fast enough. Three different models of glasses all had the same issue and there are reports on the net from others, so it is clearly bad engineering and/or the limits of the LCD technology. I assume the same is true of all the 3DTV’s from other companies. The passive glasses models from various makers (notably LG who has many models) will not have this issue, but since they divide the screen horizontally into alternate lines, the vertical resolution is halved, which is quite noticeable if you are sitting close. The new OLED tv’s may avoid most ghosting due to their switching speed being much faster than that of LCD’s but I have not yet seen a 4K 3D OLED tv. Of course a 4K passive 3DTV might be the best choice when they become available.

As for all companies, the history of 3DTV Corp can be found in the vast archives of the wayback machine https://web.archive.org/web/*/3dmagic.com and https://web.archive.org/web/*/3dtv.jp.

I continue to sell 3D hardware as a hobby and greatly enjoy hunting down obscure 3D films on the net (many of them never released theatrically in 3D and only distributed on 3D blu-ray in one part of the world, and so only seen in 3D by a tiny minority of the viewing public). I am delighted that in a small way my obsession has helped to bring joy to billions.