Panasonic finally shipped the 3D glasses so I demoed them today. I don’t have 3D capability so all I could test was the 2D to 3D conversion feature on the AE7000.

About the only thing I can say about it is that It’s total crap!

I only demoed 2 movies, Avatar and Star Wars III and 2 video games Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Mass Effect and just couldn’t see any point in trying to like it more. The loss of brightness in converting from 2D to 3D even with all setting dialed up is a deal breaker. The shadow detail I love in movies and live (or died without) by in video games is almost non-existent. Also all associated brightness related image quality issues also go to hell. Black level, colour depth and “Pop and Wow!” factor gone. In fact because of the drop in image quality the 3D image actually looks less “3D” than the 2D image does to me even in bright scenes.

Also, much of the image becomes blurry. Although there are several “3D modes” which you can try to pick from the one which gives the sharpest image you can never get the entire image focused as with a 2D image. In other words you can have the near image, middle image or far image in focus but the other two won’t be as much. Additionally rapid motion when not part of the “focused” image becomes a complete blur.

Although frame creation does “work” in 2D to 3D mode it doesn’t work as well. Scenes where the frame creation, one of Pannys strong points, is needed shows a lot of motion judder. Only instead of the slow pull-down judder this is much faster and in some ways more distracting.

Also annoying, and will likely be so in “real” 3D material are reflected images from the screen on the glasses. I might not be as much of an issue for someone without a blacked out room but for me it was very distracting seeing parts of the screen image reflected in the glasses. It completely destroyed the suspension of disbelief for me.

Another annoyance which I also believe will plague true 3D was how “cross-eyed” I felt after taking the glasses off after only 20 minutes. I can’t imagine watching a 2 hour or even longer movie with them. they’d certainly require many breaks if video gaming with them and no way I’d use them for a movie/series marathon.

Having said all that I don’t think the issue is any problem with the AE7000. I just don’t think that 2D to 3D conversion is going to be worth it. Perhaps a very bright LCD TV or something with a smaller image would overcome some of the problems I’m seeing. However, IMO that defeats the entire premise of my HT design which is total immersion. Based on what I’ve seen so far I don’t plan on migrating to 3D . . . ever, however, YMMV.


3M80 2M22 6QS8 2M2 1EP500 Sony BDP-S590 Panny-7000 Onkyo-3007 Carada-134 Xbox Buttkicker AS-EQ1