I think I will look back at October 2009 as an important milestone in the 3D industry. While we are admittedly in the midst of a frenzy of activity and excitement surrounding 3D, I have witnessed two events these past two days here in Korea that may be both important and unprecedented.

Chris Chinnock
Senior Analyst and Editor
for Insight Media

The first milestone was the cooperation that was shown at the 4th International 3D World Fair being held this week in conjunction with SID’s IMID technical symposium and the Korea Electronics Show. The major sponsors of this event were the 3D Consortium (Japan), 3D @ Home Consortium (US), C3D Trade Association (China) and 3DFIC (Korea). What started in 2006 as a cooperative between Japan and Korea has now grown involving 4 major regional organizations - all dedicated to creating a 3D industry.

While an international conference is not new, what these consortiums are doing may be unprecedented. These groups are cooperating on research, on commercialization, on marketing and on pre-standardization efforts. There may have been, but I am not aware of such a band of brothers gathering to try to influence an industry on such a broad scale.

I have heard of a trade organization helping to lead an industry forward. I have heard of companies coming together to solve technical or market issues and standards bodies can focus on defined aspects of an industry need. But four geographical consortiums, each with a wide variety of members, all rowing in the same direction? Unprecedented? Maybe. Impressive? For sure.

In fact, one of the outcomes of discussions between the consortiums was an agreement to jointly move forward in developing guidelines and standards recommendations for content creation and display that will not cause eyestrain, nausea or seizures. It was also agreed that next year, the International 3D Fair will move to China and to the US in 2011.

The second milestone this week was the impressive scale of the 3D exhibition at the KINTEX exhibition center near Seoul. There are 35-40 different exhibitors from all over the world showing their 3D wares in a specially organized section of the show floor, which is part of the larger Korean Electronics Show, which itself is celebrating its 50th year. The special 3D exhibit area, along with multiple additional 3D areas from Samsung and LG Electronics, is the largest I have seen to date and confirms that momentum continues to build.

I have not had time to visit all these 3D booths, but it is clear that professional as well as consumer products are on display. This includes professional and consumer 3D cameras and monitors, 3D processing tools, content creation services and many 3D display systems from small to large.

Samsung showed a 55" 240Hz 3D LCD TV that uses shutter glasses for operation. The set looked excellent and had very little crosstalk - noticeably better from what was demonstrated behind closed doors just 10 months ago at CES. This has an LED backlight and is likely to be commercialized next year, although that is my conclusion - not official Samsung information.

Samsung also showed a 58" 3D PDP which also looked very good and brighter and better performing than a 60" version from LG. Neither company was saying whether 3D PDPs will be coming next year, but with Panasonic leading the 3D charge for PDP, it might make sense to leverage this effort to sell some 3D PDP TVs too.

LG was also showing a 50" LCD model with shutter glasses that looked quite good. In a separate area, LG showed a 24" shutter glass panel, and two panels that use passive polarized glasses - a 24" active retarder panel and a 24" x-pol panel. All were looking good - even the active retarder panel showed improvement in the ghosting, which was evident at SID.

I plan to learn a lot more by visiting many booths and attending some 3D papers at IMID over the next two days. But two milestones for one event? Not too shabby.