CES 2011: TVs at CES 2011 Toshiba glasses-free 3DTV
Toshiba unveiled its take on glasses-free 3D TV at CES 2011. It can display both 3D and 2D pictures and Toshiba claims it should be ready for launch in early 2012. Which? took a first look.
So how does glasses-free 3D TV work? Toshiba use something it calls ‘integral imaging system’ to deliver ‘multi-parallax images in real-time’, but the common parlance is ‘lenticular’. Basically this means a special sheet on the display controls emissions of light from the TV and creates a parallax, or angled images to be delivered to each eye.
Toshiba glasses-free 3D TV video first look
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Toshiba 3D technology
The 3D effect was noticeable, but while it’s impossible not to be initially impressed by a technology that can deliver 3D without the need for glasses, the Toshiba lacked the sense of depth traditional active shutter or even passive 3D TVs display.
Even worse was the total absence of sharpness. The screen resolution appeared to be very low when watching in 3D, making vertical lines and pixels clearly visible to the eye. And that’s despite the display actually being an incredibly high-resolution affair – at 4096 x 2160 pixels (also known as 4k) it’s roughly double the resolution of anything available to buy today.
3D viewing angle is critical
Clearly the lenticular filter not only angles images to each eye, but also severely reduces the perceived resolution, and then there’s the viewing angle problem. Although an improvement on prototypes of yesteryear, just like the other glasses-free 3D TVs we saw at CES, viewing angles and distances are absolutely critical. Move slightly to one side, or even look at the screen with your head at the wrong angle and the 3D effect is completely lost, swamped by a mess of ghosting and warped images.
Toshiba looking at 2012 launch
Nevertheless it’s still a prototype, so we wouldn’t expect it to work perfectly. Toshiba though has set an ambitious launch schedule for its glasses-free 3D TV. It should be available in the US in early 2012 and will display both 2D and 3D images (an advantage over the LG prototype we looked at). Expect a first look from Which? at CES 2012.
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