Sony Stakes ‘Best Practices’ Claim for 3D Theater Viewing in Europe

LONDON -- The battle to ram-rod a standard for 3D theater projection in Europe is heating up, with Sony aggressively promoting its 4K projector with RealD polarizers. Sony also is taking pot shots at Dolby’s color-filtering 3D system, going so far at a private screening here Wednesday night as to slogan its projection method as “easier.on.the.eye” than rival Dolby’s.

Sony’s broadside came at a sneak preview of the Dreamworks 3D movie How to Train Your Dragon, which debuts in the U.S. on Friday and in the U.K. on April 2. During a presentation at London’s Apollo Cinema, Oliver Pasch, Sony’s point-man for digital cinema in Europe, told reporters and families in attendance that “watching three hours of Avatar projection is not the best experience.”

The message from Pasch was that any system which uses “triple flashing” to disguise the alternate projection of left and right images can be fatiguing to watch. So-called triple-flashing is employed to avoid on-screen flicker by displaying the same image three times -- thereby making a total of 144 images per second for triple-flashed left and triple-flashed right. It’s our understanding that all single-projector systems for 3D use triple-flash because they are alternately projecting left and right images. Pasch disparaged 2K single-projector systems, like those used to screen Avatar in Dolby 3D. According to our understanding, the Sony 4k/RealD system is equivalent to using two projectors, so, the left- and right eye images are projected simultaneously.

"We project to both eyes at the same time,” Pasch said. When a 4K projector is used with RealD polarizing filters, each 4096-by-2160 pixels frame can be subdivided into top and bottom 2K left and right images that are simultaneously-projected and oppositely-polarized for viewing with passive polarized glasses.

There seems to be some benefit behind Sony’s brag. At the screening, we experienced less fatigue than when watching Avatar in Dolby 3D, but in fairness, the Dreamworks movie is much briefer. The Apollo theater’s 3kW projector gave acceptably bright pictures. More important, the 3D effect from the Sony/RealD projection showed good resistance to head tilting -- a known benefit of the circular polarization used by RealD.

Real people don’t sit bolt-upright to when viewing, either in theaters or at home. Other 3D systems we've experienced lose their stereoscopic effect when the viewer leans sideways. The result is annoying cross-talk between the left/right images. In the Sony/RealD screening, the 3D image was stable for all but the most extreme front-side locations in the theater, where ghosting suddenly became apparent.