First Image From Cameron's Avatar

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If you tied us to a chair, stripped us naked and dripped hot wax onto our most sensitive of areas while demanding we pick one single film that was going to define 2009 then, between stifled screams, we'd have to gasp the word Avatar.

James Cameron's return to the big screen after a 10 year absence is reason enough to get excited but if you'd read the script and visited the New Zealand set of his latest opus (which Empire can rather smugly say we have) then you'd know that Avatar is going change the face of cinema. Yes, it's partly due to the cutting edge 3D technology Cameron is using to bring the film to life but moreover this is a return to Cameron at his best. This is the spiritual successor to Aliens, a passion project more than a decade in the making and quite possible the cure for HIV, Cancer and the common cold. It is Avatar!

Oh and there's a picture of Cameron and star Sam Worthington on set below.

Click the image above for more information on LATimes.com

James Dyer

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Super-thin and 3-D TVs light up Consumer Electronics Show

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LAS VEGAS -- Television as you've never known it -- super-thin sets, Internet programs streamed to your big screen and 3-D viewing -- dominates the new wave of entertainment technology at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show here.

The four-day extravaganza, which opened Thursday and is expected to draw some 130,000 members of the electronics trade, put television at center stage as companies like Panasonic, Sony and LG introduced sets an inch thick or less, and Samsung unveiled a back-lit LCD model just 7mm thin, or a bit more than a quarter of an inch. Its slim profile is achieved by using tiny diodes to illuminate the screen.

The top television makers also signaled what could be historic change in the way we get our TV programming. In recent months, add-on boxes such as Wii, Playstation 3 and Netflix players have made it possible to stream movies and TV episodes from the Internet to standard television sets. But this year, television manufacturers are showing sets with built-in Internet "bridges."

These new sets will let you purchase HD movies and TV episodes from sources such as Amazon or Netflix for instant viewing. And Yahoo has developed interactive software "widgets" to display across the bottom of the TV screen -- like the football stats and news tickers you currently see, but for personalized shopping, weather and looking at your Facebook and Flickr pages. It's not hard to envision the Internet becoming a serious rival to cable and satellite providers.

Prices for many new products will be set later.

The next step for television isn't up, as Panasonic put it, but in -- into the action with that old novelty of the cinema, 3-D.

3-D for HDTV is "not a gimmick. It's ready for prime-time," film director James Cameron said in a taped pitch from the set of his forthcoming movie, "Avatar." The fantasy film is coming to cinemas in December, and it's being shot in 3DHD for eventual home viewing with special glasses. Panasonic is setting up a Hollywood facility to spread its 3-D know-how.

Among other hot buttons at this year's exposition:

• Palm, the honored granddaddy in handheld devices, unveiled its answer to iPhone with a smart new phone of its own, the Palm Pre. It has a touchscreen, a curvy QWERTY keyboard that slides out, and a new operating system called Palm Web OS for elegant switching among calendar, e-mail and video.

• Netbooks, the basic notebook computers for people who mostly just need Web access, are going stylish. Sony's knockout Vaio P, narrow and lightweight, fits in purse or jacket pocket. Coming in February, in black, red, green or white, at $900.

• The "cute" winner: Minoru's cherry-red 3D Webcam , which looks like a cousin of Wall-E sitting atop your computer. Five pairs of 3-D glasses are included to hand out to friends viewing the images you send. Expected to be available shortly at $90.

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Nvidia GeForce 3D Vision and The History of 3D

Watch TV on PC - 12,000 TV Channels and Movies Genuinely three dimensional films and games are something of a technological holy grail – the possibility of taking traditional forms of entertainment beyond the confines of a two dimensional screen in a way that everyone can easily use and enjoy is certainly tantalising enough to have drawn heavy investment from major electronics manufacturers and Hollywood studios alike.

3D Displays, no matter how niche and expensive, are currently on show at this week’s CES show in Las Vegas and James Cameron’s in production film, Avatar, has been shot entirely in Stereoscopic 3D.

While the technology and concept has always shown promise though, it’s only recently that 3D has started to mature into something fit for purpose. Memories of 1930s creature features presented in “terrifying 3D” relied on red and green cardboard glasses to create a painfully unconvincing effect.

The resurgent interest in 3D films in the 1950s and 1980s saw only a mild improvement with the switch to polarising lenses and dual strip film or dual projectors to generate a 3D effect over certain elements.

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NVIDIA Takes Video Games Into 3D

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Its new system, GeForce 3D Vision, beats previous attempts to simulate dimensionality and may soon work for movies and business tasks, too

In recent years several companies have developed 3D computer displays, with results ranging from disappointing to, literally, nauseating. Graphics specialist Nvidia (NVDA) has a new approach that promises to take computing into the third dimension. Video games will be the first to benefit, followed by movies and certain business tasks.

Nvidia's GeForce 3D Vision system ($199) consists of software and special glasses that connect wirelessly to your PC. This approach is called stereoscopic because the computer sends separate images to each eye. Objects in the two images are slightly offset from each other—a gap the brain interprets as depth, resulting in a compelling 3D illusion.

Sharp, LG, and others have fielded a variety of displays that don't require glasses, but they don't work very well. Typically they succeed only if you are planted squarely in front of the screen at a precise distance. And even then, only a small part of the field is in focus.

Nvidia's 3D glasses are a far cry from the vintage red-and-blue specs once used to watch The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Each lens is a liquid-crystal shutter that opens and closes 60 times per second, so that at any time you are seeing through only one eye. The shutters are synchronized to the display, which switches between the left and right images so fast that you can't detect any flicker. The glasses, which can be worn over regular eyeglasses, also seem to dim ambient light, focusing attention on the screen.

One beauty of the Nvidia system is that it can create 3D images from any software that was produced using depth information. Most existing games were created with some level of depth, so they become 3D without any modification. The same is true for 3D computer-assisted design drawings.

Games, of course, long have been at the leading edge of computer technology. Movies are also going 3D, so films on DVD eventually will be viewable with Nvidia gear. I also expect to see more business applications tailored to 3D, such as scientific modeling of complex molecules in the pharmaceutical sector or geologic visualizations used for oil exploration.

One caveat for consumers: You need a fairly high-end desktop to run Nvidia's system, starting with a $300-plus display that refreshes the screen 120 times per second instead of the standard 60. Possibilities include 22-inch monitors from Samsung and ViewSonic and an assortment of projection TVs that use Texas Instruments' DLP technology. You also need a Windows Vista PC with a high-end Nvidia graphics adapter, along with the whole 3D Vision kit, which includes a wireless transmitter used to synchronize the screen with the glasses.

I should add that the picture Nvidia makes possible isn't truly natural 3D. Objects seem to be arranged in several planes at various depths, almost as if you were looking at pictures with a View-Master—if you can remember that far back. But game developers can improve the illusion with better encoding of the depth information. When they create the games specifically for 3D, objects appear to pop out of the screen, as opposed to disintegrating when they hit the front of the display.

Today's 3D films weren't produced with Nvidia in mind. But down the road, programs like GeForce 3D Vision could really bring DVDs of these films to life. Your kids won't want to watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix the old way. And you'll probably feel the same when James Cameron releases Avatar, his much heralded 3D movie and game, later this year.

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Panasonic announces 3D Full HD tech standard, more

Watch TV on PC - 12,000 TV Channels and Movies At its CES press conference on Wednesday and a day ahead of the show's official opening day, Panasonic North America's CEO Yoshi Yamada announced the company will work on integrating a 3D HD 1080p standard for TVs, kicking off with a 3D Blu-ray disc by 2010. To reach the goal, the company is working with Hollywood film producer James Cameron who is using Panasonic's specialized gear to film his upcoming blockbuster, Avatar, using the 3D HD tech. The company announced it will also launch its Panasonic Hollywood Advanced Authoring Center (PHL-AC) on February 1st. Demonstrations of the system, comprised of a plasma 3D Full HD home theater system, a 3D-ready digital cinema projector displaying images on a 380-inch screen theater and a 3-D ready MPEG-4 AVC High Profile encoder collectively called 3D Full HD (3D FHD) will be held throughout CES' duration.

The company also showed a prototype plasma display panel (PDP), the Z1, sized at 54 inches that is just 1-inch thick and uses a wireless connection to communicate with a satellite set-top that includes all cable connections. No pricing information or expected launch dates were discussed.

A partnership with Comcast will have the cable provider's digital set-top boxes compatible with Panasonic's VIERA link to allow the use of one remote to control the operation of all compatible home theater devices. The company showed a pair of home theater Blu-ray disc systems that integrate both features, with the SA-BT300 and SA-BT200.

Amazon will bring its Video On Demand service to Panasonic products via the VIERA Cast feature integrated into upcoming products. VIERA Cast will bring with it Internet features such as access to YouTube videos, weather information, Picasa photos and Bloomberg financial information.

Three new Blu-ray disc players have also been unveiled, including the BD60, touted as the world's thinnest, the BD80, and the BD70V, which will bring the VIERA Cast feature in addition to supporting online Blu-ray disc content such as BD Live and BonusView. A world-first portable Blu-ray player, the DMP-B15, was also introduced, allowing users to play back 1080p resolution content outside the home.

The product roll-out continued with an HD camcorder, the C-TM300, which sports the highest resolution sensor in the world, at 9,150,000 pixels. Another world-first in camcorders was the 70x optical zoom feature found in both the soon-to-be-released H-80 and H-90 camcorders, which sport onboard hard disk drives, the former with a 60GB capacity, the latter with 80GBs and an SD card slot.

At the same time, Panasonic deepened its commitment to recycling electronics, promising to progressively open up more collection sites, topping out at a total of 800 locations nationwide by the end of 2011.

Cameron's Avatar, expected to be released on the new Blu-ray 3D HD format in 2010, will make its theatrical release in December.

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3D cinema comes to Llandudno Junction

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CINEMA bosses have installed the first 3D cinema screen in North Wales at Llandudno Junction’s Cineworld complex.

And the first film will be acclaimed new Disney films BOLT 3D! in its Delux auditorium on Friday, February 6.

Cinemagoers will be given advanced technology 3D glasses to watch the film.

The Delux room will also offer customers a bar and luxury seats to relax in.

Other films available on the 3D screen at Cineworld in Llandudno Junction will include Monsters vs Aliens, Toy Story, Ice Age and the eagerly awaited new James Cameron film, Avatar, which is released at the end of 2009.

Cineworld Llandudno general manager Paul Williams said: “We are very excited to bring such new and innovative cinema to North Wales. It offers our customers the chance to see some brilliant films in 3D quality.”

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From video games to movies, 3D is on the march

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LAS VEGAS (AFP) — Two-dimensional television is so last year. Viewing in three dimensions is everywhere at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) -- from webcams to video games to home theater systems -- and some TV manufacturers are betting it could be the biggest thing since high-definition and flat screens.

This year's edition of CES, the world's largest consumer technology showcase, even featured the first national 3D broadcast of a major sporting event, the US college football championship game between Oklahoma and Florida.

Some products -- such as the Minoru 3D Webcam -- may end up being little more than a novelty item, a description which pretty much sums up Hollywood's decades-long flirtation with 3D.

Heavy-hitters led by Japanese electronics giant Panasonic and Oscar-winning director James Cameron, are seeking to change that.

"Make no mistake about it, 3D is not a gimmick any longer," the Titanic director said in a taped message during a presentation at CES of Panasonic's 3D Full High-Definition (HD) home theater system.

"3D is ready for prime-time," said Cameron, who is putting the finishing touches to a 3D movie, Avatar, scheduled for release later this year.

More movie theaters in the United States are equipped to show 3D films in which action threatens to spill out of screens but bringing 3D into the home may still be some ways off.

One of things holding 3D back is the absence of a common standard for 3D content, which in turn is holding back the movie studios which will provide that content.

With its 103-inch plasma display and breathtaking visual effects, Panasonic's 3D Full HD home theater system received rave reviews but a spokesman said there is no firm date for bringing it to the US market.

"It depends on whether or not we can get a format established," said Dan Tarwater. "Panasonic is interested in being able to come to the marketplace with a standard in place rather than venturing out on their own.

"That will involve the cooperation of not only the hardware manufacturers but also the software side of things," he said.

Then there's the little problem of those glasses.

"I don't think it will be a mass market technology until content improves and manufacturers can come up with a way to do 3D without the glasses," said Paul Gagnon, a television market analyst at research firm DisplaySearch.

"There are some demos without glasses, but they have lots of room for improvement," Gagnon said.

The CES coincided this year with a major 3D initiative on another front, the broadcast of the Oklahoma-Florida football game in 3D to some 80 movie theaters in 35 US states.

"It's taken eight years," said Bud Mayo, chief executive of Cinedigm Digital Cinema Corp., a company seeking to turn movie theaters into 3D entertainment centers which would show sports, concerts and other events in three dimensions.

"We've invested hundreds of millions of dollars converting theaters all around the nation and built the satellite network that enabled this to happen," he said.

The 80 theaters showing the football game sold out but the jury's still out on whether the venture will be a success.

The future is less uncertain for 3D video games.

"This is the year 3D goes mainstream," said Ujesh Desai, vice president of GeForce desktop business at computer graphics chip specialty firm NVIDIA, whose demonstrations of 3D video games were a CES highlight.

"I think 3D has a great opportunity as a niche technology at first, for gaming mostly," agreed Gagnon.

John Jacobs, a notebook PC analyst at DisplaySearch, said the 3D video game displays were "off the charts impressive."

"But the challege to me becomes how big are those markets and how many resources do you want to invest?" he said. "The challenge is to go mainstream. But then Ferrari's not mainstream and they make a boatload of money."

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