SENSIO 3D

page introduced on Sept. 20, 2003
last update: Sept. 20, 2003

This is not a review, since I had no chance to actually test the Sensio.

SENSIO 3D brings 3D movies to most projection based home-theatres 

A Sensio3D setup consists of a specially formated Sensio DVD, called 3DVD, a standard DVD-player, the Sensio processor, wireless shutterglasses and a monitor or projector which can handle a 60 or 70 Hz progressive signal without screwing any frames.

The standard DVD player delivers a standard interlaced NTSC-signal, which means 720 x 240 @ 60 fps, which is equivalent to 720 x 480 @ 30 fps in terms of information.

A Sensio DVD contains the left and the right eye view in a split-screen format. The Sensio processor takes these images and digitizes them. Finally the Sensio processor delivers an analogue component signal (RGB, YbYc, VGA) of 640 x 480 @ 60 fps in 3D. These are 30 full-frames for each eye.

Most progressive display devices, such as LCD, DLP, D-ILA and LCoS projectors have a native, internal frequency of 60Hz. That's one reason why the Sensio should work on most projectors.
The other reason it works is the Sensio's time-gap-compensation feature. Digital display devices usually are not in sync with the analogue input signal, since the digitizing and buffering takes time. This time-gap often causes standard TV-shutterglasses to be out of sync. With the Sensio the time-gap can be manually compensated - via remote control. If the projector doesn't exactly sync to the 60Hz input signal, like my humble Infocus LP70, one may have to recalibrate a lot. Home theatre projectors with real sync to input (I think Infocus calls this 'movie-mode') won't have this problem.

Other features include flicker reduction filter, 2D-pass-through and control of the processor via Palm handheld devices. The bundled wireless shutterglasses come from i-O Displays Systems (like Revelator, eDimensional, X3D, etc.).

Currently the Sensio3D processor can't handle frame-sequential, interlaced 3D-material, like standard 3D-DVD, 3D-VHS and NuView-recordings. Frame sequential NTSC-3D support may become available by the end of 2003, PAL-3D by the end of 2004.

The list price for the Sensio is $2995. The product is targeted at mid- to high-end home-theatre owners. Honestly for this amount of money I hope the industry will once come up with a 1-chip-XGA-120Hz-3D-DLP-projector with shutterglasses, which can handle frame-sequential 3D-video and 3D-VGA signals. Technically it's possible!

Special Sensio3D-formatted  DVD's are available from Slingshot Entertainment. There are currently 5 titles available. The price of the Sensio3D-formatted 3D-DVD's is $34.99, while the same titles in standard frame-sequential-formatted 3D come at $19.99.
 

Thanks to Sensio (TEG Sensorial Technologies Inc.) for kindly answering my inquiries.