Panasonic to Bow Its First 3D LCD TVs This Spring

LONDON -- Panasonic will offer its first 3D LCD TVs this spring, along with new Blu-ray 3D players that offer 3D effect and depth control, as well as new 2D-to-3D conversion technology, the company said this week at its European convention.

Panasonic still thinks plasma is best for 3D, and native 3D is the best way to get depth, but is bowing to market pressure and moving with the times, the company said. “We can now offer 3D LCDs thanks to our new 400 Hz IPS Alpha panels,” said Masayoshi Fujii, director of Panasonic’s consumer TV business. “Plasma is superior to LCD for 3D, but our LED LCDs, with 2 millisecond switching time, are superior to our competitors’ TVs. We have also narrowed the gap between the panel and backlight to improve the picture. And the IPS Alpha panels have a 170-degree viewing angle”.

Panasonic will start selling its 3D LCD TV sets in May and June. Each comes with two pairs of active-shutter glasses. The U.K. and the U.S. will get the 37-inch TX-L37DT30 and the 32-inch TX-L32DT30, while Europe takes the DT35-series models, which are slightly different cosmetically. All sets use an IPS Alpha LED panel with 400Hz backlight, which Panasonic said has the “fastest scanning rate in the industry.” As a result, crosstalk “has been reduced almost completely,” it said.

Five heat sensors on the LCD panel feed back information on hot spots and viscosity changes to the central processor, for auto adjustment of the screen drive signals. The new 3D TVs recognize side-by-side transmissions, as used by most broadcasters, without the need for an HDMI Ver 1.4 flag. The set intelligently switches to the correct display mode when it sees two closely similar images in the same frame.

All of Panasonic’s new Blu-ray 3D can convert 2D Blu-ray or DVD media to 3D. “Take your old movies to the next level: 3D all your 2D movies,” says Panasonic’s promotional material, turning 3D into a verb. “And 3D all your personal movies … for an optimal 3D viewing experience."

In addition to 3D conversion, all players offer menu manual settings to control general 3D viewing effects, ranging from 0 to -5 for image distance depth, and -3 to +3 for what Panasonic calls “leaping out level.” The menu also offers a choice of “flat screen” for a large number of viewers in a room, or “round screen” for several viewers near the 3D sweet spot. Another menu option controls “frame width” with a black, grey, blue or red fuzz added round the edge of the screen image frame.

Although all of Panasonic’s new 3D TVs now offer 2D-to-3D conversion, Panasonic says the system built into the Blu-ray line is “different,” and the TVs don’t yet offer frame width and flat/round control. “Conversion is not something we originally offered,” Panasonic said. “We are answering the direct demand customers made,” justifying the change of the company’s original no-conversion policy. “We think our conversion works better than our competitors’. And it works better on movement than on static shots."

Demonstrations of a 2D disc of Die Hard 4, converted to 3D, and also of 2D camcorder home movies, showed only slight added depth. We noted that the most obvious effect was to make the on-screen menu stand out from the rest of the picture.

Although Panasonic offered no direct rebuttal of the dramatic claims against active shutter 3D made by LG at CES, a series of demonstrations in London set Panasonic plasma and LCD 3D TVs alongside unmarked sets from LG, Samsung and Sony. These variously compared crosstalk, viewing angle, effect of head tilt, flicker, image brightness, resolution, contrast, motion compensation and power consumption. A professional autostereoscopic monitor showed poor quality no-glasses 3D. “Active shutter is the best 3D solution,” Panasonic’s demonstrators stressed. Unfortunately, some of the comparison demos were undermined because the batteries for many of the different active shutter glasses were flat or failing after two days of dealer demonstrations.