The device was announced last night, and people flocked to the demonstration in a dark makeshift theater today, where the wait was nearly an hour early this morning. The reason? Because finally, mercifully, a TV maker has come up with a way to watch 3D at home without those ridiculous plastic glasses.
There were three sizes on display: 12 inches, 20 inches, and 56 inches. While the smaller size models are destined for the Japanese market in December, the 56-incher is just a prototype and there are no imminent plans to make it into an actual product, according to a Toshiba representative here.
The 3D Regza TV uses the Cell Broadband Engine that takes a 2D image and then simultaneously creates nine images of it from nine different directions, in real time. It's displayed on a high-definition LED TV.
With the 12-inch version, move more than a few inches to the left or right and the 3D effect is lost. However, the viewing angle was better on the 20-inch model, and the best on the 56-inch one. And there's another matter of practicality: to get the best effect, you have to stand pretty close to the TV, closer than any normal person would want to for fear singeing their retinas.That's why the glasses-less 3D laptop, a Toshiba Dynabook, is a far more realistic application of the glasses-less technology: It's the same size as the 12-inch TV, but since it's natural to sit very close to a laptop and look at it straight on, the aforementioned problems are negated.
The 12-inch 3D TV goes on sale in Japan at the end of this year for 120,000 yen, or $1,500. The 20-inch will have a 240,000 yen price tag, or about $2,900.
Sorry, rest of the world, you'll have to wait, since there's no timetable for bringing either to other markets.
- 12 INCHES for 1500$ US
Suddenly the 3DS price doesn't seem so bad. Infact (1500 divided by 3/12ths = 375) its pretty much spot on in terms of an estimate.
“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.
