Toshiba to Launch No-glasses 3D TV This Year in Japan

From PC World: Toshiba is readying two 3D televisions that can produce images with the illusion of depth but don't require the user to wear glasses, it said Monday. It will launch the televisions in Japan in December. By dispensing with glasses, the TVs answer a key complaint of would-be buyers -- but they won't come cheap.

Toshiba will offer a 12-inch model and a 20-inch model. They'll cost around ¥120,000 (US$1,430) and ¥240,000 respectively. Toshiba didn't announce launch or pricing plans for markets outside of Japan.

The company is waiting on larger screens before it launches the TVs outside of Japan, said Masaaki Oosumi, president of Toshiba's digital media network unit, at a news conference. Markets such as the U.S. demand televisions with screen sizes starting at about 40 inches, making these first models a little small.

3D TVs can simulate depth because they deliver a slightly different image to each eye. In current 3D TVs, images for each eye are displayed rapidly one after the other. Filters in the glasses flash on and off in sync with the TV picture so the right eye sees one image and the left eye sees the next.

Toshiba's new TVs have a thin sheet of small lenses in front of the display.

Behind this lens screen is a custom-developed LCD (liquid crystal display) panel. Each screen has 8.29 million pixels -- four times the number of pixels in a conventional "full HD" television -- organized into groups of nine pixels of each color. The nine lenses split light from each bank of pixels and send it to nine points in front of the TV

View: Article @ Source Site