[Press Release]

Consumer behavior and TV set maker strategies are resulting in widely diverging TV product ranges across the world. While the industry is truly global, regional differences are increasing. For 3D, the most enthusiastic regions are Western Europe and China, while the mix of 3D in North America actually declined in Q3’11, according to the Q4’11 NPD DisplaySearch Quarterly TV Design and Features Report.

”We were surprised to find that 3D appears to be a far more popular feature in China than North America, and the penetration rate was two times higher in the last quarter,” said Paul Gray, Director of TV Electronics Research, NPD DisplaySearch. “Our report also indicates that North American and Japanese 3D penetration is lower than the Middle East.”

The report finds that North American consumers favor large, inexpensive TV sets with fewer features, unlike other regions. Chinese consumers are enthusiastic about richly-featured sets with 3D, LED backlighting and smart TV capabilities.

The report also examines the growth of smart TV in different regions and reveals that there are several emerging markets where fixed broadband appears to be leapfrogged by consumers. In Saudi Arabia, Poland, the Philippines and Indonesia, there are 10 to 15 times as many 3G subscribers as broadband. These consumers still want to view internet video on their TVs, but the usage is totally different in developed markets where the TV is connected directly to a wired broadband line.

This theme of simultaneous new technology adoption is also clear in digital broadcasting. While developed markets have not only introduced digital terrestrial and largely completed analog switch-off, a second generation of digital broadcast (DVB-T2) is now being adopted in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

The report uniquely forecasts the prospects for DVB-T2 reception in TV. It finds that a critical mass of countries have now adopted or committed to DVB-T2. Shipments of DVB-T2-enabled sets are expected to grow from 3.4 million in 2011 to 64.7 million in 2015.

”By 2015 the number of DVB-T and DVB-T2 sets shipped will be equal,” added Gray. “The decision by the Russian and Indian governments to move to T2 has given the industry a huge boost in confidence, and it will kick-start a virtuous cycle of rapid adoption and cost reduction.”

The report finds the new digital transmission technology is not only being introduced in mature markets like the UK and Sweden, but also in Nigeria and Kenya.

The NPD DisplaySearch Quarterly TV Design and Features Report is a quarterly update of the issues and rapid shifts in TV feature developments. The 250+ page report examines and forecasts video processor and signal processing IC market development, including 120/100 and 200/240 Hz frame rates as well as market shares for major IC vendors. In addition, the report also features forecasting for MPEG-4 decoding and the digital broadcast environment around the world, including forecasts for the following technologies: DVB-T2; TV connectivity, such as wired and wireless networked TVs; LED backlighting; 3D-capability and implementation; remote controls and chassis design; and power consumption.

See the original press release here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/DisplaySearch/3DTV/prweb9063643.htm

[Philip Lelyveld comment: this article contains many useful graphs]

[3D Roundaout]

…

Initial questions

My company’s main interests are stereo correction, stereo conversion to multiview and 2D-to-stereo 3D conversion using depth maps. From a practical perspective, the following initial questions arise when developing algorithms and software for 3D video conversion and quality improvement:

• How significant is the difference in stereo perception among different people? What does the stereo perception ‘distribution’ function look like?
• Which characteristics of a stereo image are important for subjective perceived quality?
• In which cases are stereo artefacts (due to imperfect 2D-to-3D conversion, stereo mismatch or a distorted depth or disparity map) noticeable, and when are they not so noticeable? When are perfectly-detailed depth maps important, and when are they superfluous?

A number of tests were conducted to find partial answers to these questions, and the work is still ongoing. The following issues were studied first:

• Stereo sensitivity, ability to perceive 3D.
• Subjective stereo acuteness.

…

Conclusion

On the basis of these stereo sensitivity and acuteness tests, several conclusions can be drawn and common-knowledge opinions confirmed:

• Variance in subjective stereo perception is very large. Up to 30% of test participants are barely susceptible to stereo for, apparently, various reasons – even in the case of close-to-normal 2D vision. Weak 2D vision is not the only cause of bad stereo vision, although it does have an influence. Thus, the question arises, to what extent is it conditioned by the particulars of artificial digital stereo, and to what degree is it due to the individual properties of eyes and the brain’s sensory system?

The second question relates to whether there is a strong relationship between stereo sensitivity and comfort when viewing the same stereo video. If such a relationship exists, how should 3D video be prepared for people with different stereo perception characteristics?

• Subjective stereo perception is adaptive. This conclusion does not relate only to the latency of proper eye convergence; some brain learning is involved. After training, people notice more 3D details under the same conditions. This result is related to the assertion that drastic depth changes over time should be avoided in stereo video, as they ‘defocus’ stereo vision.

• For depth map construction and stereo generation, an important conclusion is that roughness and deviations in depth that are irrelevant to the underlying 2D image are noticeable as unpleasant artefacts only in highly-detailed areas with sharp edges. So, the masking effect of rough surfaces in 2D images, when artefacts in detailed areas are often imperceptible, works in the opposite way with stereo. Likely, very irregular textures are still less revealing because the brain must match numerous random-looking features that are hard to discern.

• 2D-to-3D conversion and stereo correction artefacts in flat uniform areas are invisible to nearly all viewers; only the borders of such areas should be accurately processed.

If you have a 3D display or a pair of red/cyan glasses (red for left eye, cyan for right) you can check your stereo vision using the methods described in this article by watching the following video:  …

Read the full article here: http://3droundabout.com/2011/12/5788/understanding-requirements-for-high-quality-3d-video-a-test-in-stereo-perception.html