Glasses Free 3D Specialists MasterImage 3D Interview

May 02, 2011 No Comments by Jonathan Tustain

MasterImage 3D recently made the headlines after announcing the 3D cinema and technology specialists had been talking to airlines about the idea of glasses free 3D inflight entertainment. 3DFocus.co.uk recently spoke to Matt Liszt, VP of Marketing, to ask him more about the 3D inflight entertainment story and why they believe their glasses free 3D cell matrix parallax technology is superior to the Nintendo 3DS.

3D Focus: At what point can you release more details of what airlines you have been speaking to?

Matt Liszt: At this point we don't have any details. It came form a conversation with Hollywood Reporter where they were asking about some of the other stuff that we were looking into and that's where that came from. We don't have specifics right now.

3D Focus: I've always thought that lenticular screens seem like a natural choice for airlines because people sit in the same place and it's for single viewing only. Do you agree?

Matt Liszt: Yeah I definitely do, especially when you consider that airlines are always looking for premium experiences for different seat classes and things of that nature. As Hollywood puts more and more effort into 3D films, they are going to want to distribute those to more channels. So it's something that the airlines will want to do to provide a premium experience and it's something that the studios will want to make sure that they fully maximize the distribution channels for their 3D films. It makes sense.

3D Focus: Your cell-matrix parallax barrier glasses free 3D technology is a bit different to what is used on the Nintendo 3DS. Explain to me the unique elements of the proprietary technology you have invented.

Matt Liszt: Both MasterImage 3D as well as the displays that are in the 3DS are parallax technology. Both of us agree that is the best way to produce an auto-stereoscopic experience. But that [3DS] technology glasses free 3d applications 300x293 Glasses Free 3D Specialists MasterImage 3D Interview uses a series of barriers called stripes. That provides one strip to act as a barrier for the left eye and the other to act as a barrier for the right eye. An electronic current rapidly switches back and fourth between them. What we have done is created little microscopic cells that are aligned both horizontally and vertically. That allows for a variety of things. One is that it allows 3D mobile devices to be glasses free 3D in both landscape and portrait modes. So you turn on the vertical or the horizontal cells based on how you are using it. That is really important for mobile devices for whether you are gaming, using apps or watching movies. Secondly, it allows for more light to be able to transmit through because there are more gaps. Within parallax technology there is a trade-off between cross talk and brightness. Our glasses free 3D technology reduces cross-talk and offers a crisper, sharper picture.

Lastly, based on the way the TFT (Thin Film Transistor) sits on top of the TN-LCD, it allows for a wider viewing angle than what is offered on the Nintendo 3DS. You have a bit more of a viewing zone.

3D Focus: Can your technology be applied to larger screens or are you looking very much towards the mobile form factor at the moment?

Matt Liszt: At this point, we are creating displays for 4.3", 7.0" and 10.1" but down the aisle we will continue to evolve upscale.

3D Focus: Is it quite a challenge for your type of technology to still offer that kind of high resolution experience? Are you constantly pushing the resolution?

Matt Liszt: Well we think we offer a brighter crisper perspective than the Nintendo 3DS does. Everyone who has seen our screen says that it is the brightest that they have seen.

3D Focus: How did MasterImage 3D come about?

Matt Liszt: It was incorporated in 2004. Our main revenue generating business right now is making passive 3D digital cinema systems. We offer a passive polarising masterimage digital theatre 264x300 Glasses Free 3D Specialists MasterImage 3D Interview filter system and we also sell passive 3D glasses for cinema. We are the fastest growing 3D digital cinema system provider in the world right now ahead of RealD and Dolby. In 2009 we supplied the glasses free 3D technology for the Hitachi Wooo, which was one of the first commercially successful 3D phones in Japan selling over 300,000 units.

3D Focus: The Toshiba 3D laptop will be out soon and that tracks people's eyes so viewers do not need to be positioned in a rigid location to experience glasses free 3D. Do you think that eye tracking will be required to make large glasses free 3D TV a viability?

Matt Liszt: Multi-view auto-stereoscopic 3D TV is going to happen and that is what we are working on down the line; not for this year but down the line. We have just received a $15 million dollar investment from Samsung and a lot of that is going to go into research and development. We do think that parallax technology is the way to go. We want to move up in screen sizes through laptops and eventually TVs but we think there are some challenges.

3D Focus: Is there anything else you can share? What is your general direction this year?

Matt Liszt: We will continue to expand our cinema business but by the end of this year, by Christmas and especially by the end of next year you will start to see lots screens of that will be auto 3D enabled and we are going to be showcasing some of our new demo units in Computex, Taiwan this May.