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Thursday 06th January, 07:00 AM JST

LAS VEGAS —
Toshiba Corp said Wednesday it will market outside Japan its 3D liquid crystal display television sets that do not require use of dedicated glasses beginning in its business year from April. Forty-inch or larger such TVs will first hit the North American market before moving on to Europe and emerging economies, the Japanese electronics maker said.

The company will showcase its 56- and 65-inch models in the Consumer Electronics Show due to open in Las Vegas Thursday. Toshiba began selling its 12- and 20-inch glasses-free 3D TVs under the 3D Regza GL1 brand in Japan in December.

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I'm not a fan of 3D, but if any technical advance can push 3D towards the mainstream, it's this one.
 

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Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 01-06-2011, 08:21 PM:
 
I read about these TVs a couple of months ago, they had SUPPER HIGH prices. I wonder what the picture will look like. I tend to think about the greeting cards with lenticuler (sp) screens, yes, the image moves, but it also looks like CRAP. I wonder if this is why they are carefully picking where they are selling these TVs. I also wonder if this is why the video game that was to have this same sort of screen was not brought to market before Xmas, and I have not heard anything about it since.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-06-2011, 10:28 PM:
 
I remain very skeptical about glasses free 3D TV sets as well as 3D computer screens. Out of products that have been released so far, particularly those two Toshiba 3D TV models, the viewing angles SUCK. You have to sit in a certain viewing sweet spot to see the 3D. That's not going to work in a regular living room viewing environment.

If Toshiba can make their glasses free 3D TV sets at large sizes, make the picture quality great and have the 3D work at wide viewing angles then they'll definitely have a big hit product and make a lot of money. I just don't think they can deliver on all those quality points.
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 01-07-2011, 04:44 PM:
 
I just cannot understand why a lot of people hate 3-D movies because they have to wear glasses to view them. As a person who has been wearing prescription glasses almost all of my adult life, I never had any problem wearing them so I just cannot understand why people complain about having to wear 3-D glasses when the watch a movie in that format for about two hours. For many people like myself, I have to wear the 3-D glasses over my regular glasses and still have no problem.

-Claude

-Claude
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 01-07-2011, 10:29 PM:
 
Lenticular lensed 3D, if that is indeed how Toshiba is doing it -- taking the two images, slicing them vertically and then sequentially interlacing them behind a lenticular overlay, I have to tell you, the lenticular screen disappears if the image is large enough. If you sit back even at a moderate distance, the minuscule hills and valleys of the lenses disappear, same as the strips of the Cinemrama screen became invisible or the holes in a perf screen simply vanish at a given distance.

I have a STAR WARS poster in lenticular 3D and it is about 25x30in and I stand no more than three feet from it and I can't see the lenticular surface at all. I can also tell you that the off-axis degradation is marginal -- you certainly don't have to sit in any sweet spot. I can walk six feet on either side of the 3D poster and the only thing that happens is that all the objects seem to move in relation to each other. It's an optical illusion, of course, but the 3D stays in tact and only gradually flattens as you get really far off axis; however the image is still perfectly visible as a 3D-ish, near-2D image. It doesn't get dull or out of focus or any other anomalies.

Again, I have no idea if the lenticular technology is what they are using in the new glasses-free 3DTVs, but if it is, my feeling is that they will only release a product that has been thoroughly R&Ded and they think will pass muster -- the Toshiba folks are no slouches. I also think that prices will come down significantly, as they always do, ala plasma TVs. They get better and cheaper with each generation.

But as Claude says, for lots of us more studly guys, we don't whine about wearing glasses so I plan to get a 3DTV with glasses, not going to wait for the glasses-less version. Hey, what they need to do is just slap a designer name on those active glasses -- let them say RayBan or Niki and raise the price another hundred bucks and then people will fight to wear them. I never heard anyone ever complain at the beach about wearing their RayBans or Polos or Serengetis sunglasses...even the clip-ons over their script glasses, yet somehow asking some people to wear 3D glasses is like asking a vampire to wear a cross on his forehead.
 

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Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 01-10-2011, 12:32 PM:
 
Don't forget that Toshiba brought HDDVD to market, even though BluRay was the better format (more storage, higher data rate = better pix and sound). Sounds like Toshiba's upper managemnt-moron types, are just that.

I think that the complaints about wareing the glasses are just a symtom of the real problem: 3D movies and TV present confilcting images to your brain. Your brain is thinking: I'm being told that there are things at different depths, but my eyes are focused ONLY on the screen. Things at the edge of the screen may only be seen by one eye, or have a full image for one eye, but only a half image for the other eye. This is confusing.
 

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