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Author Topic: Has anybody seen Dolby Digital 3D in action? Lyle Romer Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1400 From: Davie, FL, USA Registered: May 2002 posted 11-20-2007 04:19 PM                     If you have, how does it compare to Real-D in all aspects (brightness, resolution, 3D effect, color reproduction). The best thing I can see about Dolby's system vs Real-D is that once you pay for it, there are no ongoing licensing expenses.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 11-20-2007 04:28 PM                     Dolby 3-D blows Real-D(umb) right out of the water. Brighter, better color and you can sit anyplace in the auditorium including walking right up to the screen if you like and the 3-D effect stays the same... Real-D(umb) is nothing more than another example of the half-baked cauldron of bodgery which is called 3-D at the moment!  |  IP: Logged Lyle Romer Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1400 From: Davie, FL, USA Registered: May 2002 posted 11-20-2007 04:49 PM                     Does Dolby run at the same frame rate (144 fps, showing each eye frame 3 times) as Real-d or is it lower so the entire imaging chip can be used. If it is lower does anybody notice a difference?  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 11-20-2007 11:13 PM                     One big zingger for the Dolby system is the current cost of the glasses. The cost of equipping a typical screen for just the glasses will often exceed the cost of coverting the projector and those glasses are going to have a limited lifespan. I know that Dolby is working on getting the costs way down but right now they are very costly...though kinda cool to look at. You do need a fair amount of light with Dolby's system (seemingly as much as with Real D)...though you don't need a silver screen (the silver screen helps offset the light loss in the polarizer in addition to it keeping the polarization). Dolby uses a white screen, so you aren't going to get any real gain there...though with a pearl screen you might see a range from 1.5 - 1.8. The glasses are going to knock the light levels way down. Dolby was limiting the screen size to 40' on their initial roll out to ensure that it would look good. Steve  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 11-20-2007 11:27 PM                        Does Dolby use shutter LCDs?  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 11-21-2007 08:44 AM                     No. Dolby 3D does not use shutter glasses. Regardless of that, the glasses currently in use are expensive ($50 a piece) and must be collected after every show and hopefully cleaned -if they can even be safely cleaned in an industrial/restaurant quality dish washing system most health departments would require. Count on a good number of customers damaging glasses. That situation is not exactly the most practical thing for a standard multiplex theater to accommodate. Another problem with Dolby3D is that it only works with the Dolby Digital Cinema system. It isn't compatible with anything else. Real D works with any of the leading d-cinema systems, including Dolby Digital Cinema. For example, Harkins Bricktown 16 theater has one Dolby Digital Cinema equipped screen also equipped with Real D. quote: Mark Gulbrandsen Brighter, better color and you can sit anyplace in the auditorium including walking right up to the screen if you like and the 3-D effect stays the same... The "brighter, better color" claim is questionable since the system Dolby is licensing from Infinitec obscures even more light than Real D and is limited to even smaller screens than Real D. Both Real D and Dolby claim they are working on ways to get their respective systems to work on large screens. For the time being, the only way to get 3D to work on giant sized screens is with IMAX-3D. The "3D anywhere in the auditorium" comment actually makes me wonder how "fake" (using Joe's description) Dolby 3D looks anywhere in the auditorium. Both Real D and IMAX-3D work from two discrete left eye/right eye images. And, yes, if you sit right up in the front rows objects that are meant to poke in viewers' faces (such as the knitting needle in the Coraline 3D trailer) will seem to split in two for those viewers too close to the screen. I've watched Beowulf twice in Real D and both its color quality and 3D quality were very good. On the 2nd viewing, I walked around in various places in the auditorium and the 3D held up fine. Again, only in the very front rows things could get a little wacky (objects doubling when poking at the audiences' faces and a little bit of ghosting). The licensing cost issues with Real D are the only thing I think can get that system in trouble. However, I doubt companies like Carmike Cinemas are really paying $20,000 per year per screen to rent the Real D equipment. They wouldn't stick 3 of those systems in a modest 8-plex in little 'ol Lawton, OK if the cost was truly that high. I'll bet some kind of volume deal was worked out between Carmike, the movie distributors and Real D. And finally from the customers' point of view, they're paying a $2 premium (or more) to see Beowulf in 3D regardless of whether the movie is in Real D or Dolby 3D. No difference there.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 11-21-2007 09:07 AM                        quote: Bobby Henderson No. Dolby 3D does not use shutter glasses. Then why are they $50 each?  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 11-21-2007 10:19 AM                        I would guess it breaks down something like this: $5.00 for the technology $20.00 for advertising $25.00 for the Dolby name  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 11-21-2007 10:49 AM                     I don't know why the glasses cost $50 each. The price quote on those glasses is according to a c|net news article about Dolby 3D: (linky linky). I can only guess the lenses in the glasses have to do some color filtering trick with that spinning color wheel mounted to the projector and that filtering technique is difficult to mass produce in lenses. Shutter-based glasses work well, but are expensive to produce, require infrared synchronization with the projectors. The resulting 3D effect is good, but subject to flicker since techniques like triple pass cannot be used. Most IMAX 3D screens I have visited only use standard polarized glasses. Very few go to the expense of using the LCD shutter glasses and PSE speakers in the headset.  |  IP: Logged Peter Castle Expert Film Handler Posts: 220 From: Wollongong University, NSW ,Australia Registered: Oct 2003 posted 11-21-2007 03:48 PM                     The method used by Dolby 3-D involves using narrow pass filters so that the red/green/blue base colours used to produce the full colour picture have different frequencies for each eye - but not that different that a colour shift is detectable. The production of the narrow-pass filters are, it seems at present, expensive. I've only seen a few examples of Dolby 3-D and only in a small demonstration room, but the effect is as good as Real-D without any noticeable colour change.  |  IP: Logged Brian Michael Weidemann Expert cat molester Posts: 944 From: Costa Mesa, CA United States Registered: Feb 2004 posted 11-21-2007 06:44 PM                        The eyes can adapt quite well to color balance differences between them. Wear the classic red/blue glasses for ten seconds while staring at a white wall, take the glasses off and look at that same wall with each eye on its own. If one eye sees basically the same image but with a slight frequency shift, the brain will very quickly interpret both eyes as seeing the same colors. Considering how long my own eyes take to recalibrate themselves after even 10-20 seconds of red/blue glasses, I'm wondering if 90-minute exposure could affect my eyes more permanently, even if by such a narrow band.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 11-21-2007 07:30 PM                        What I do after wearing red/blue glasses for a few minutes is swap them so that they are backwards for about 5 to 10 seconds. That helps my eyes recalibrate faster.  |  IP: Logged Hillary Charles Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 748 From: York, PA, USA Registered: Feb 2001 posted 11-22-2007 08:47 PM                     Is there any word about these "flicker" types of 3D triggering epileptic seizures? Or are they completely safe for epileptics?  |  IP: Logged Bill Enos Film God Posts: 2081 From: Richmond, Virginia, USA Registered: Apr 2000 posted 11-22-2007 09:09 PM                     Are the Real D glasses the same as the ones used for the past 50 years for film 3D ?  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 11-22-2007 10:13 PM                        Real-D uses circular polarizers, which reduce the effect of tilting one's head while viewing polarized 3D images. The glasses also use circular polarizers and aren't interchangeable with regular Polaroid glasses. Not sure on the cost of the Real-D glasses, but I assume that they are more expensive. The Chicken Little glasses were (are?) made of plastic...not sure if their regular glasses are plastic or cardboard.  |  IP: Logged

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