3D TV Technology is not for everyone!

That's correct, 3D Television is definitely coming to the homes of millions in the coming few years ahead. Studies show that a massive 78 millions 3D HDTV sets will be sold globally 2015.

But rest assured that not everyone will be willing to invest in the present 3D television technology. And this is not just a matter of an expensive price tag. After all, by 2012, prices of 3D HDTVs are exacted to fall drastically.

Nor it is the result of those annoying 3D glasses that are necessary with the present 3D TV technology to render the two 2D-images produced by these sets as a single 3D image.

Rather, it has all to do with the way 3D television technology creates that undesirable disparity between eyeball accommodation and convergence, referred to in 3D TV technology as fundamental disparity.

Why not everyone can see 3D TV?

We have stated in the second part of this 3D Television guide that the way 3D TV technology renders an impression of depth is not exactly the same as the way our human vision system works. And this difference is such that it leads the brain to detect an abnormality.

The two most important cues for the human brain to determine relative image depth information are stereopsis or image parallax as resulting from the convergence of the eyes, and eyeball accommodation, or focusing. Present 3D content technology as applicable to 3D Television and the movie industry addresses the issue of stereopsis only.

Eyeball accommodation does not feature anywhere into the 3D filmmaking process and 3D TV technology with the result that the eyes of the viewer remain focused at a fixed distance on the screen surface.

This disparity is a totally abnormal situation for the brain. For the majority of viewers, this is not much of a major problem as for most people, convergence is sufficient for the brain to generate relative depth information about an object in space.

Yet for some 4% (some researchers say this can be as high as 10%) of the American population, the conflicting depth information resulting from the disparity between convergence and focusing cues as presented in 3D TV imaging is such that their brain would not work out the object depth.

In other words, while these person do still have a good perception of depth in real life, their depth perception relies on more than just a matter of convergence; for these persons, the parallax between the left and right eye images alone as used in 3D viewing does not convey sufficient depth cues and eyeball accommodation needs to be catered for as well. These persons are literally 3D TV blind.

Is there a solution in the pipeline?

The irony is that TV manufacturers and the movie theater entertainment industry are not doing anything at all to help 3D TV blind persons experience the sensation of 3D viewing. And considering, even if we were to assume that only 4% of the population is 3D TV blind, these would still amount to a market of several millions. Why?

Some may find this strange but if you were to think about it, it does not take much investment for TV makers in particular to come up with a 3D-enabled HDTV. All it takes is to simply modify their 120Hz and 240Hz 2D TVs to display two simultaneous streams of 1080p 60Hz content - in a field sequential fashion, to render the impression of a three-dimensional image when viewing the displayed 3D television content with 3D glasses.

We say when displaying 3D content. Keep in mind that any 3D-enabled TV is still a good 2D TV and therefore from a TV maker's perspective, one may very well argue that enabling a TV to display 3D images does not cost more than adding an extra feature to a good 2D TV! The only real costly item is the extra LCD shutter glasses which in most cases are being burdened on the consumer. Luckily, for the end-customer, some TV makers stated that they will bundle 3D glasses with some of their flagship 3D HDTV sets; but then the flagship models are the most expensive within these manufacturers' HDTV lineups.

This relatively low investment in 3D HDTVs is more than understandable. Despite the much noise in CES 2010 about 3D TVs, and the preference to 3D movies in the theater by moviegoers, the TV industry knows very well that consumers will not be spending too much money on 3D TVs - at least for the time being. A recent poll carried out on our site showed that 75% of the correspondents said they would not be investing in 3D TV now.

And this is not just a matter of the present bad economy. As we say in our article entitled, Challenges of 3D Television in the Home, 3D TV technology is still a long way from being considered the mainstream TV technology in home entertainment.

Furthermore, with the recent DTV transition we had last year, many have just replaced their CRT TV with a flat screen TV, while many others have just invested in a second LCD or plasma HDTV. The likelihood that these would now invest in a 3D HDTV to get what is being touted by the industry as the latest and greatest in TV technology, is simply close to nothing.