How 3D Technology Works?

What is 3D Technology?

Full HD Signals for Each Eye: Frame Sequential Method

Separate images for the left and right eyes are recorded with 1920 X 1080 full-HD quality and alternately played at high speed. By watching these images through special LCD glasses that are timed to open and close the right and left lenses in synchronization with the alternating images, the viewer is treated to exciting 3D realism. This brings cinema-level images right into the living room, without the problems of image deterioration and blurring that were common to conventional 3D systems.

How 3D Technology Works?

Why can you look at an object in the real world and see it as a three-dimensional object, but if you see that same object on a television screen it looks flat? What's going on, and how does 3-D technology get around the problem?

It all has to do with the way we focus on objects. We see things because our eyes absorb light reflected off of the items. Our brains interpret the light and create a picture in our minds. When an object is far away, the light traveling to one eye is parallel with the light traveling to the other eye. But as an object gets closer, the lines are no longer parallel -- they converge and our eyes shift to compensate. You can see this effect in action if you try to look at something right in front of your nose -- you'll attain a lovely cross-eyed expression.

When you focus on an object, your brain takes into account the effort it requires to adjust your eyes to focus on it as well as how much your eyes had to converge. Together, this information allows you to estimate how far away the object is. If your eyes had to converge quite a bit, then it stands to reason that the object is close to you.

The secret to 3-D television and movies is that by showing each eye the same image in two different locations, you can trick you brain into thinking the flat image you're viewing has depth. But this also means that the convergence and focal points don't match up the way they do for real objects. While your eyes may converge upon two images that seem to be one object right in front of you, they're actually focusing on a screen that's further away. This is why you get eye strain if you try to watch too many 3-D movies in one sitting.

How do you show two different images that appear to only be one? It's all in the lenses.

World's First Full HD 3-D Camcorder

World's First Full HD 3-D Camcorder

The AG-3DA1 is the world's first professional, fully-integrated Full HD 3D camcorder that records to SD card media. The AG-3DA1 will democratize 3D production by giving professional videographers a more affordable, flexible, reliable and easier-to-use tool for capturing immersive content as well as providing a training tool for educators.

At less than 6.6 pounds, the AG-3DA1 is equipped with dual lenses and two full 1920 x 1080 2.07 megapixel 3-MOS imagers to record 1080/60i, 50i, 30p, 25p and 24p (native) and 720/60p and 50p in AVCHD. It can record for up to 180 minutes on dual 32GB SD cards in Panasonic's professional AVCHD PH mode, and offers professional interfaces including dual HD-SDI out, HDMI (version 1.4), two XLR connectors, built-in stereo microphone and twin-lens camera remotes.

Features:

Easier to Use

Current 3D systems are large-scale setups in which two cameras are fitted to a rig in parallel, or vertically intersect across a half-mirror. Separate recorders are also required. In the AG-3DA1, the lenses, camera head, and a dual Memory Card recorder are integrated into a single, lightweight body. The camcorder also incorporates stereoscopic adjustment controls making it easier to use and operate.

The twin-lens system adopted in the camcorder's optical section allows the convergence point to be adjusted. Functions for automatically correcting horizontal and vertical displacement are also provided. Conventional 3D camera systems require these adjustments to be made by means of a PC or an external video processor. This new camcorder, however, will automatically recalibrate without any need for external equipment, allowing immediate 3D image capture.

More Flexible

The solid-state memory file-based recording system offers greater flexibility to produce Full HD 3D videos in more challenging shooting environments. The AG-3DA1 is lighter weight and smaller than current 3D rigs, while providing the flexibility of handheld-style shooting. Setup and transportation is simplified, making it ideal for sports, documentary and filmmaking projects.

Solid-State Reliability and Workflow

Right and left Full HD video streams of the twin-lens 3D camcorder can be recorded as files on SDHC/SD Memory Cards, ensuring higher reliability than on other tape, optical disc, HDD or other mechanical-based recording systems. This solid-state, no-moving-parts design will help significantly reduce maintenance costs, and the AG-3DA1 will be better able to perform in extreme environments and be more resistant to temperature extremes, shock, and vibration.

And users will enjoy a fast, highly-productive file-based workflow, with instant, random access to recorded content; easy plug-in to both Mac and PC-based platforms; and longer recording capacity.

More Affordable

Using a standardized, fully integrated design, the AG-3DA1 is being offered at a much lower price than traditional 3D rigs. Transportation expenses for this handheld unit will be less and faster setup times reduce labor costs. Using standard, re-recordable SDHC/SD Memory Cards available already everywhere, media costs become almost insignificant.

OLED: A New Generation of Television's

OLED: A New Generation of Television's

Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays are energy-efficient and crisp, but high manufacturing costs have kept them from being as widely available as liquid-crystal displays (LCDs), especially in larger devices such as TVs. A new type of OLED electronics could help bring down manufacturing costs and make the technology much more widely available.

Transistor test: The glass slides in this image are patterned with transistors designed for driving OLED displays. The metal probes and wires are being used to test their performance. 

The pixels in OLED displays use transistors to stimulate organic molecules, which then emit different colors of light. OLED displays do not need the light-wasting filters that make LCDs such energy hogs. But LCDs dominate the market in large part because the amorphous-silicon transistor arrays used to drive LCDs can be made over areas as big as a single-car garage door and then sliced into smaller pieces to make displays for TVs and other devices. Manufacturing at this scale helps keep costs down.

OLED display makers can't use the same electronics because switching the pixels in an OLED requires relatively high currents that rapidly burn out amorphous-silicon transistors. Instead, today's OLED displays are built on more expensive polycrystalline-silicon transistor arrays. The largest OLED display on the market is a 15-inch model made by LG. It sells for just over $2,300; the same size LCD TV costs under $200.

Less-expensive OLED electronics could, in theory, be made by using organic materials for the electronics as well as the pixels. Transistors made using organic semiconductors provide the high currents needed to drive OLED pixels. But electrons move through conventional organic transistors slowly, which results in a display that doesn't refresh the picture fast enough. To speed these transistors up, engineers have altered the design, shrinking components to bring the source and drain electrodes closer together and make the channel smaller. This makes the device faster because the electrons don't have to travel as far through the organic material that makes up the channel, which can't conduct the electrons very fast. But making such high-resolution devices requires expensive lithography techniques.

A less expensive method, is to bring the source and drain electrodes of a transistor closer together by stacking components on top of one another instead of side by side. These transistors are made by depositing a film of aluminum on a glass substrate to act as the gate electrode, then oxidizing it to create a thin insulating layer on top. Next the researchers deposited an ultrathin, dilute layer of carbon nanotubes to act as a source electrode, followed by a layer of organic materials to act as the channel, and finally a top layer of gold as a drain electrode. Each of these films is very thin, enabling good performance without the need for high-resolution lithography techniques.

New electronic devices, also operate at a tenth of the voltage of conventional OLED electronics, which saves power. The researchers have not yet made large-area OLED displays driven by the vertical transistor arrays, but the transistors operate at suitable current and voltage to do so. While the researchers have so far been making these arrays on glass, the techniques used to make them are compatible with flexible substrates and could be used to make flexible OLED displays.

The vertical electronic structure was first proposed in 1994 by Yang Yang, professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Alan Heeger, professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Heeger shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery and development of conductive polymers like the ones used in the new device. In the mid-1990s, Yang and Heeger began developing these devices through a company called UNIAX that was subsequently acquired by DuPont. When the two did their original work, the performance of the available materials wasn't as good as it is today.

"Carbon nanotubes weren't available in 1994," says Yang. The thin nanotube layer allows very little current leakage, a problem that drained power from previous designs. The devices also switch much faster than was possible in the past. 

The OLED display architecture is being simplified in hopes of further reducing manufacturing costs and complexity. Instead of building a light-emitting pixel next to transistors, build low-power organic transistors that emit light themselves. It's possible to make light-emitting organic transistors if the active materials are electroluminescent, but these transistors only operate at high voltages, making them impractical. The vertical, nanotube-electrode-based architecture could greatly improve the efficiency of these devices.