Sony HDR-TD10 3D camcorder announced at CES

[Alister Chapman]

Sony have just released details of their first consumer 3D camcorder the HDR-TD10 at CES. This is a twin lens camcorder that records two full streams of 1920 x 1080 HD. The camera has two of Sony’s Exmor R backlit sensors behind 12x optical zoom (10x 3D) lenses so sensitivity should be good. To support 3D filming the flip out 3.5″ LCD screen is stated to be 3D ready and allows 3D viewing without glasses, so this must use some kind of barrier/lenticular display which is good for viewing a 3D image but not so good for checking 3D alignment or geometry.

The camera has a pair of optical image stabilisers that apparently work even in 3D as long as the lens is fully wide. Manual focus and exposure control is available by using the touch screen, not ideal perhaps, but at least you can drive the camera manually. I have no information on how the convergence is controlled. The 3D images are recorded using MVC which is a multiplex of 2 streams of H264 in a single file, this is a similar system to the one used by 3D Blu-Ray discs. Recording media is SD cards or Memory Sticks as well as 64Gb of internal flash memory. Normal 2D operation is also possible recording standard H264 in HD and Mpeg2 in SD. Audio is 5.1 surround sound to compliment the 3D video. With a target US street price of just $1499 USD it looks like a lot of camcorder for the money. It is small and compact and the narrow interocular will be quite useful. It’s scheduled for US release in mid April.

More details here:
HDR-TD10 | Full HD 3D Camcorder | Sony | Sony Style USA

[Dave Blackhurst]

Interesting "first strike" at the 3D consumer market - it uses 1/4" chips, but otherwise has some unique features. Probably one more indication that "3D is here",best get used to it.

They also announced some cameras with built in projectors(!!!) that can put up to a 60" image on any flat surface, and an odd updated CX series (CX700V) with strangely a 3" screen rather than the 3.5" of the CX550V.

BUT, all of the new Sony cameras claim 60p AND.... what everyone has always been begging for....

24p!

Also announced a new extension of the TX series pocket cameras (TX110V) that shoots 1080 60p (IIRC also 24p) and 16.2Mpixel stills, OLED touchscreen - since I've used the TX7 and TX9 and really find them to be pretty good for casual use, this should be interesting - I'd say they are up to the image quality of the best consumer grade handy cams from a few years ago. If the new sensor maintains the image quality, it'd be a handy "stick it in your pocket" go anywhere camera.

There were other P&S still cams announced, all with video, the lines contuinue to blur and more and more capability trickles down into "consumer" devices... Hi Def video is about to be forever commoditized, if it wasn't already there! And looks like 3D is coming down that road rather quickly!

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Video Resolution : 3D HD: 2x 1920x1080/60i

It doesn't shoot 60p or 24p in 3D....sigh.

[Alister Chapman]

In many respects the TD10 for me is what the Panasonic 3DA1 should be. Small and portable with a narrow IA. It's hard to tell from the pictures what the interaxial is but it looks to be less than 2.5" which is good for handycam type applications.

[Don Parrish]

"3D is here",best get used to it."


I am not doubting that it is here but I am wondering if it will stay for these reasons.

1. We have a bad economy. Spending is tight for a lot of people.
2. A huge amount of people have just changed to HDTV. Then 2 more generations of HDTV. The market is saturated with new Television sets.
3. Programming and broadcast, how much is out there ?
4. The majority that I speak to do not want to wear anything while watching TV.
5. Technology has moved so fast it has left the industry in pieces.
6. Home recorder/players need a severe technology upgrade, Blue Ray needs competition, we need 1080p disk storage.
7. I am not sure, but if I were to guess, I would think a majority of the camera owners are happy with great looking HD and do not want to continue down the path of more purchasing.

The biggest stumbling block, wearing glasses to watch 3D. I personally hope it stays away. Admittedly, I have not seen the new 3D technology, so far though, no one I have spoken with has been thrilled.

[Ron Little]

I have to agree. I think 3d will fail this time as well. None of my clients have asked for HD yet. I just do not see any demand for 3D. I do however think that this will be the year that clients will start asking for Blu Ray.

[Alister Chapman]

3D is not going to go away, but even as a big 3D fan, I don't think it will be normal to have everything in 3D, instead it will be reserved for special event television, movies and drama, premium sports and documentaries. It's also extremely useful for attention grabbing commercial and corporate projects. I have done nothing but S3D productions this year and it's kept me extremely busy.

Glasses free TV's will be in the stores later this year, although to be fair we don't know how well these will be accepted. You can get glasses free adapter films for the iPad and iPhone as well as other smaller displays. 3D laptops are becoming more and more common. If nothing else 3D computer gaming will drive the sales of 3D TV's. In a few years time almost every TV sold will probably be 3D capable, whether you choose to add the glasses or not is another question. Just like today when it's almost impossible to buy an SD TV, yet not everyone subscribes to, or has an HD service.

The quality of 3D productions and 3D presentation will improve, there are more people making 3D productions now than ever before so the knowledge and skill base is increasing rapidly as we learn what the end viewer wants and how to create that.

S3D documentaries will take the viewer to places they will never get to see for themselves. It can also show things in ways never been seen before, for example S3D macro photography, hyperstereo of the Northern Lights and Lightning bolts (projects I am personally involved in). Imagine coral reefs, the amazon or programmes like "Planet Earth" in S3D.

What about your home movies or wedding video? How will we be watching movies in 10, 20 years time? Quite possibly with holographic projection or some other yet to be invented system. By shooting in S3D now you introduce a certain amount of future proofing to your material.

So is it here to stay? Well you have to ask.. has it ever gone away? The answer is no, it's just until now it's be extremely costly and difficult to present 3D well in the cinema let alone the home.

I wouldn't compare S3D to BluRay, BluRay has come at a time when streaming and downloading movies in HD is readily available, often on demand and for less money than a BD disc. In addition HD movies on demand via satellite is also cheaper. For commercial and corporate customers file based distribution over intranets and the internet is faster and more cost effective than BluRay. I am very surprised to hear of anyone still doing professional video productions in SD when HD costs no more and gives so many more possibilities and a longer shelf life.

[Don Parrish]

3D always seemed to have a dimmensional error, It seemed compressed or out of square somehow, have they solved this ?

[Ron Little]

My clients obviously are not as sophisticated as yours. But the demand has been for DVD. I moved to HD when it first came out. When my clients ask for it they will get it, and when they ask for 3D they will get it as well. I just do not see that happening any time soon.

Alister you are way ahead of me, and I appreciate you blazing the trail.

[Alister Chapman]

The dimensional error is almost impossible to remove while you use two 2D images to create the illusion of depth and allow viewers to sit wherever they want. But you have to remember that stereopsis (stereoscopic vision) is only one of the cues that we use to build a 3D map of a scene within our brain. Careful use of other depth cues such as scale, parallax, hue, shading and occlusion when combined with stereopsis can create a believable sensation of depth. Indeed it is by distorting this depth that it can be used as a story telling tool to make a character appear vulnerable through miniaturisation or more threatening by making them lean forward in 3D space. Screen size restrictions mean that with current technologies the overall stereoscopic effect will be often be quite flat, but clever producers and directors will learn how to use what depth budget they have to help tell their stories in ever more imaginative ways.

It's not perfect but then neither is 2D. Colours in movies are commonly distorted from true to life for artistic reasons, sounds are enhanced or created purely from imagination and ultra shallow depth of field is used as a trick to mimic depth.

Many of my clients are Hi-Tech or cutting edge businesses so they like to use cutting edge production methods.

[Dave Blackhurst]

Don -

Here's my take - personally 3D gives me a headache, and rather quickly (at least MOST of the samples I've seen do, but not ALL, so maybe), I think it's a DUMB idea, and shouldn't catch on... but games and porn will probably drive the adoption... as has typically happened.

Much prefer Alister's "high end" quality topics/content, but if I had to guess, they've already been talking about 3D porn, and since BR has a 3D spec and all the sales flyers are trumpeting 3D sets, you can pretty much see where this goes... 3D as an "at home" experience makes it different this time (OK, so at one time Viewmasters were "cool", where are they now?!).



To answer your specific and valid questions:

1) Yes, the economy is still "bad", but there are signs it's at least moving off the deathbed, even if one foot is on a banana peel. People WITH money are starting to come out and spend again, those what don't have it, well, that's another story, always has been, and there are more of them...

2) 3D TV's are still at the top of the price heap, but with pretty sweet HDTV's at price points that will bring people into the stores, how many will "upgrade" since they are already shopping - may not be many, but I'll bet there's a percentage who WILL.

3) BR burners and players have broken the $100 price point relatively recently and definitively, content can now be had at "DVD prices" - how many movies (for better or worse) were available in 3D last year - I venture more than in the prior several DECADES?. Did I mention that BR already has a 3D spec built in? And recent 3D releases are coming out on BR.

Vegas 10 has 3D handling... although I've got NO IDEA WHATSOEVER what to do with it just yet! But how many others DO, and will be producing some good and interesting content (don't forget that "other market"... low budget, low story line, but the visuals might translate to 3D!).

4) I agree that glasses are doofy, and give me a headache... but there's already a lot of technology and R&D being thrown at eliminating them - 3rd generation (considering the current crop as "gen 1") 3DTV's will probably be glass free, IMO. Maybe they will get it so people like me don't get headaches too... maybe.

5) The entire economy has experienced a serious shake up, tech changes rapidly, that's the way it is. Companies are looking for "the next big thing", and 3D (as HD before it) will be the nauseating buzzword we'll be hearing EVERYWHERE for a while (blech).

6) BR HAD competition, it was HD-DVD or something like that... bygones. DVD as a standard made it easier to adopt, IMO, and the "HD wars" did more harm than good (again IMO, but no way I bought EITHER format until one was the "standard", and not at premium prices either!!). BR is rapidly becoming affordable and commoditized with VOLUME, as it should have been all along if the competing corporate interests hadn't been so interested in a pissing match.

Not sure we NEED a tech upgrade, but those BR players (with streaming capabilities too!) are looking pretty inviting at sub $100, even to me, THE super cheapskate customer!

7) How many "3D" cameras were available 3 years ago? How many cameras has Sony released with "3D" capabilities (still and video), how about Panasonic. The size of the "market" has increased from basically non-existent to "it's right there on the Big Box store shelf" in short order.

Will every camera buyer buy a 3D camera? Nope, but now they CAN, last year they couldn't. And some WILL, just because. If enough DO, finding a non 3D cam in 5 years will be like trying to buy a tape based consumer cam is today... the only ones available are several model years old!


Did I mention I really HATE the whole 3D thing and it gives me a headache... but I'm already trying to learn as much as possible, for future reference, the writing is floating about 3 feet in front of the wall right now...

[Don Parrish]

I remember the first time I ever saw 1080p, I was at a store that had a special 1080p player, but no 1080p player for sale. It was drop dead gorgeous. Everyone who viewed it drooled. As I read reviews on the internet, 3D seems to be a 50/50 love hate thing and even the lovers have complaints. I think we are un unchartered territory when it comes to this much technology this quick and a recession this deep. It's just when I combine all of this together it spells no. Some poeple are on their 3rd generation HDTV. I however have to admit that in the past I said "no way" and I was wrong. People are buying 3D sets, but will it be enough to push content ?

[Les Wilson]

Meanwhile...back at the ranch, [play dramatic stab here] JVC announces it's consumer 3D camcorder:

http://newsroom.jvc.com/2011/01/jvc-...world’s-first/

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

$2000 vs $1500...but the details on the sony give it better specs than the JVC...I think very soon we are going to see a prosumer 3D camcorder under $5K.

[Les Wilson]

The point of my post was nothing to do with specs/value of the cameras although the JVC lenses are f1.2 vs the Sony f1.8. Rather, the point was about the emergent 3D market. What's quite different and very relevant now that hasn't been the case in the past is that until now, creation of 3D content was the domain of pros. The Panny STD750 put consumer 3D video content on the map. 3D stills cameras too. And now, there's a Sony, a JVC and a second version of the Panasonic for a total of 4 under $2K 3D video cameras.

I think the lack of traction of 3D TV sales is a function of several thing not the least of which is content. Having consumer generated 3D content is a significant change albeit the underlying economic problems can still attenuate it's ability to keep the market above water long enough to maintain R&D costs. I'm just saying this is a key difference from prior 3D markets.