People who suffer from a “weak convergence” of their eyes may have problems viewing full-length 3D movies, said a second ophthalmologist at the University of Rochester’s Flaum Eye Institute. Dr. Matt Gearinger, a pediatric ophthalmologist and eye-alignment specialist, said people with the condition, known as convergence insufficiency, may become fatigued watching a 2-1/2-hour 3D movie. The eye fatigue they experience typically is temporary, and no permanent vision problems result, he said. Like a colleague, Dr. Scott MacRae (CED March 16 p3), Gearinger said he doesn’t think patients who have had monovision Lasik surgery would experience “significant effect problems” viewing 3D.
Paul Gluckman
Paul Gluckman, Executive Senior Editor, is a 30-year Warren Communications News veteran having joined the company in May 1989 to launch its Audio Week publication. In his long career, Paul has chronicled the rise and fall of physical entertainment media like the CD, DVD and Blu-ray and the advent of ATSC 3.0 broadcast technology from its rudimentary standardization roots to its anticipated 2020 commercial launch.
Sony’s digital cinema rollout has been “kind of a stop-and-start event,” Gary Johns, vice president of Sony’s Digital Cinema Systems Division, told reporters Tuesday in Las Vegas during the ShoWest trade show for theater owners and movie exhibitors. But “I think that’s getting ready to change,” he said. “Our systems are in exhibitors both large and small.” Two of the largest theater chains, Regal and AMC, have agreed to buy Sony 4K digital-cinema systems exclusively, Johns said. “We're really thrilled to partner with both Regal and AMC. We're really excited about beginning the rollout in the next couple of days.” Sony has installed about 900 systems total in the past year for Regal and AMC, 750 of them 3D, he said. “So we're already very big in the 3D business, and you'll see a very dramatic increase over the next year.” Sony has installed about 1,500 digital-cinema systems altogether and will have deployed more than 5,000 by year-end, he said. “And at this point, still, the majority of those will be 3D. But that’s not all. We're offering exhibitors more than just incredible resolution and an immersive movie-going experience. We're working closely with our sister companies, Sony Music, Sony PlayStation, Sony Pictures, as well as many other content providers on development of both 2D and 3D content in theater and for the home.” There’s a “slow floodgate” of 3D programming “starting to open” into homes, said Randy Waynick, Sony senior vice president for strategy and alliances. “That will drive 3D adoption and acceptance by consumers.” He mentioned Sony’s recent 3D sponsorship announcements, including its charter sponsorship of ESPN 3D, which goes live June 11. The briefing was at the Sony 3D Experience, a new research center and screening facility at the MGM Grand Hotel that Sony Electronics and CBS run. It’s an expansion of the CBS Television City facility that opened at the MGM Grand in 2001. Television City has used “immersive research” to test its programming with about 500,000 respondents who have passed through the facility, and “this is where we make the decisions as to which shows make the cut,” David Poltrack, CBS’ research chief. The network chose Las Vegas because it attracts a social, economic and geographic cross-section of the U.S. population, and the MGM Grand because it’s a big destination in Las Vegas even among visitors who don’t sleep over in the city, he said.
Tough new rules proposed at the Department of Transportation for shipping lithium batteries on airplanes (CED March 1 p3) “would have dramatic impacts on retailing” in key areas not even discussed or considered in the department’s rulemaking notice, the CE Retailers Coalition said in comments submitted at the Friday deadline. Among other things, CERC heeds the warnings of the Cargo Airline Association that the proposed rules would cause logjams in the shipment of covered products, especially during the holiday selling season, when retailers transact 25 to 40 percent of their annual business, it said.
CE makers must deal with a big unknown now that they've started shipping 3D TVs to consumers: How many people can’t view 3D properly because of impaired vision?
Panasonic agrees with ESPN that “trying to take 2D content” and doing an “in-set conversion” to 3D will give consumers a poor experience,” Bob Perry, Panasonic senior vice president, told a New York media briefing Wednesday. That’s why Panasonic won’t build conversion chips into its 3D TV lineup, Perry said at the briefing, held at Best Buy’s Union Square store to trumpet the sale of the first Panasonic 3D home theater system to real consumers.
It’s not necessarily true, as a Natural Resources Defense Council blogger suggested this week, that CEA would fight federal TV energy limits tooth and nail as it did in California, Doug Johnson, CEA senior director of technology policy, told us Tuesday.
One of seven plaintiffs with class-action suits pending against Sony in U.S. District Court in Manhattan has reached a proposed settlement with the company, court documents show. Like the other plaintiffs and their classes, Sabrina Cardenas sued Sony for damages because she bought an SXRD rear-projection TV and alleges it had a defective “optical block” that caused yellow stains, green haze and other “color anomalies” to appear on the screen, her complaint said. The other lawsuits will remain active if the court approves the Cardenas settlement agreement. Under its proposed settlement with Cardenas, Sony agreed to extend warranty coverage to a total of four years for each model of TV, the documents said. “While each model has generally the same length of warranty extension, some models have different ending dates because the extensions are based upon the models’ release dates to the market,” they said. The last of the extended warranties expires July 2011, they said. Sony also has agreed to provide “enhanced warranty fulfillment,” they said. For example, Sony will create, train and maintain a “dedicated team” of technical reps to man toll-free phone lines to diagnose problems or arrange for replacement parts or in-home service visits, they said. Should Sony be unable to ship a replacement optical block for 14 days after the phone diagnosis, it will offer the consumer a $200 to $700 check, depending on the model, as an “accommodation,” they said. Sony also has agreed to bear all costs of notifying the class about the settlement, including placing two 1/8-page ads a week apart in USA Today, they said. Cardenas’s lawyers “conducted extensive document discovery” and “traveled extensively to conduct interviews with present and former Sony employees,” they said. They began settlement talks with Sony in September, they said. Among those interviewed were Michael Ehlers, Sony vice president for service, Tim McGowan, Sony’s vice president, TV Engineering of America Group, and Frank Medeiros, former quality assurance manager at Sony’s Mount Pleasant, Pa., factory where the sets were assembled, they said. The factory has since been closed.
SAN DIEGO -- “Very green” OLED TVs with screens as large as 55 inches are “on the horizon,” and could reach the market sooner than most people think, Brian Berkeley, vice president of engineering at Samsung Mobile Display (SMD), said Tuesday at the DisplaySearch Flat-Panel Display Conference. Sang-Soo Kim, SMD executive vice president, will keynote the Display Week 2010 conference in late May in Seattle, and the forecasts he will give for the faster-than-expected rollout of large-screen OLED TVs will surprise a lot of people, Berkeley said. At Display Week, SMD also will present a “breakthrough paper” describing why it thinks OLED TV’s faster response times makes them better suited for 3D TV than LCD, Berkeley said.
SAN DIEGO -- ESPN “will be a key 3D driver; we fully intend to be,” Bryan Burns, ESPN vice president of strategic business planning and development, told the DisplaySearch Flat-Panel Display Conference in a keynote Tuesday. But if manufacturers start flooding the market with TV sets bearing 2D-to-3D conversion chips to do 3D TV on the cheap, Burns hinted strongly that his company may walk away from its support of ESPN 3D.
There’s no reason why people who have had Lasik surgery can’t properly see 3D images, unless their surgery was botched, a prominent New York ophthalmologist told Consumer Electronics Daily. That’s contrary to recent Sony assertions that people who have had Lasik surgery done on one or both eyes can’t view 3D very well (CED Feb 17 p1).