At a round table meeting at CES 2011 in Las Vegas, Samsung executives addressed questions from the press regarding current and future plans for consumer electronics products. The hot topic was 3D TV. On the show floor, some of Samsung's competitors, including LG and VIZIO, are showing off new passive 3D TV models to be introduced at retail later this year, and Toshiba is showing a 56-inch glasses-free 3D TV which they claim will also come to market later in 2011. But Samsung continues to push forward with active shutter 3D technology. At the round table they explained why.
Kevin Lee, VP Smart TV Partnerships explained the drawbacks inherent in current passive glasses 3D TV implementations. "For us, for our customers, quality is most important," said Mr. Lee. He further explained that the passive 3D TV systems offered by their competitors relies on a polarization filter placed in front of the imaging panel which compromises picture quality by providing half the resolution of full HD 3D and half the brightness in 2D mode. "Viewing angle is also much narrower for the customer," Mr. Lee explained, due to the filter's design. So although the appeal of light, passive glasses is strong, Samsung believes that the trade-off in overall quality will not be acceptable to consumers. They've chosen to make the active glasses lighter and more comfortable this year, to address complaints from first generation 3D TV adopters.
And as for glasses-free (autostereoscopic) 3D TVs, Mr. Lee explained that the technology still faces many technological hurdles, some similar to passive 3D systems: reduced picture resolution (detail), very narrow viewing range and high expense. While small glasses-free 3D screens are practical -- and Samsung manufacturers many of these for devices such as cell phones -- Mr. Lee believes that high quality large-screen glasses-free 3D TVs are at least five years away. Having seen the glasses-free 3D demos on the show floor, I can concur that the technical hurdles do seem significant as the models on display from both Sony and Toshiba suffered from some blurring of detail and extremely limited viewing angles with the 3D effect collapsing if you moved out of a very narrow sweet spot. An impressive first step, to be sure, but definitely not ready for prime time.
When our friend Gary Merson, the HD GURU, asked about Samsung's own newly announced "Z panel" technology (or RDZ panel, developed in partnership with RealD), Samsung explained that this is not currently being developed for the consumer market, but for medical imaging displays. The Z Panel effectively sandwiches two 1080p panels together with an active polarizing filter on the TV itself polarizing the light output from the left eye differently from that of the right eye. Passive 3D glasses can then be used to view a 3D image with no loss in the original high definition 1080p resolution. This contrasts with LG's and VIZIO's approach which uses a retarder filter to polarize each alternate row of pixels for left and right eye (thereby losing half the resolution).
Samsung executives said that the RDZ technology was being pursued primarily for the medical display market, not for consumer TV displays. One could imagine that it would be easier to outfit a room full of medical students with passive 3D glasses (instead of expensive active glasses) while they observe micro-surgery in high resolution 3D. But apparently the price of such technology is still too high for the consumer market and not all of the technical hurdles have been overcome.
Also, responding to questions about potential new light sources for LCD flat panels, Samsung re-emphasized that what they are offering to consumers represents the highest performance available at realistic price points. Of course, they are always busy in the R&D labs working on next generation displays (including OLED TVs and alternate backlighting technologies), but it is Samsung's firm belief that active shutter glasses and active full HD 3D TV designs will continue to dominate the consumer 3D TV market for the foreseeable future and they (Samsung) intend to continue to improve these designs with each new model year.
When asked about Samsung's continued involvement in the plasma HDTV market, Samsung said that they expect to remain in the plasma business for at least 10 years. Apparently, even though LED and LCD TV manufacturing costs continue to decline, plasma is still more affordable for Samsung to build in the larger screen sizes. (And there was much rejoicing).
