New Toshiba 3-D TV system doesn’t need glasses
Toshiba Corp. has come up with a new 3-D TV technology that’s missing one key thing.
At a trade show in Tokyo the consumer electronics company unveiled its new line of 3-D televisions that don’t require viewers to wear special glasses.
“It was sharp — sharp as any other 3-D you’ve ever seen,” said software developer Auri Rahimzadeh of Indianapolis, who was at the CEATEC technology show last week. “It was bright, it was like watching a regular TV, but it was 3-D. It was freaky cool.”
But bargaining with the 3-D devil is not easy.
Toshiba’s new 3-D models may have cut out the glasses but the technology provides only a very limited viewing area.
You can’t just plop down anywhere in the living room and watch 3-D shows on these TVs. The sets have nine designated angles from which the format can be viewed. Otherwise, the screen is a blur.
“Toshiba had the nine spots where you could stand and see the 3-D marked out on the floor,” Rahimzadeh said, describing the scene at the company’s unveiling event. Not only did viewers have to be aligned with one of those angles, they had to stay there.
“You move your head and you lose the 3-D,” he said. “It had the same ghosting effect that you’d see when you take off your glasses with the sets we have in stores now. It’s not very similar to sitting on your couch watching TV and moving around with your kids or anything like that.”
That’s the catch with the sets that Toshiba will be selling under the name Glasses-less 3D Regza GL1. The first sets will go on sale in Japan in late December, the company said. There will be a 20-inch size for about $2,950 and a 12-inch size for about $1,500.
For the time being they will be sold only in Japan, Toshiba said. The company wouldn’t talk about plans to sell them elsewhere.
Toshiba says the sets will be the first glasses-free, 3-D production LCD televisions to hit the marketplace. But several different glasses-less prototypes have been shown at trade shows over the years. Some of them had to be viewed head-on.
“Nine viewing angles is a lot better than what we’ve seen in the past,” said analyst Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group. “Toshiba has cracked this, and I’d guess that over the next few months we’ll see other manufacturers coming out with their own glasses-free sets at trade shows and eventually in stores.”
If the restricted viewing hurdle is largely overcome, 3-D TV could be a lot more palatable to consumers.
Earlier this year, several major manufacturers brought out high-end 3-D sets (Toshiba was an exception), all needing glasses. Detailed sales figures have not been released, but shipping orders aren’t nearly as high as manufacturers would have liked for the inaugural year of 3-D in the home, said Riddhi Patel, an analyst with research firm ISuppli.
An estimated 32 million HDTVs will have shipped to U.S. retailers by the end of this year, but only about 1.2 million of those will be 3-D capable, she estimated.
Patel put some of the blame on the glasses, which usually have to be purchased separately.
“3-D TV, it’s not a huge hit,” Patel said in an interview this month. “It’s a hard sell and there are a lot of hidden costs that people don’t want to take on right now.”
But the introduction of a line of glasses-less 3-D models — even in a country far away, and with an obvious drawback in the technology — could chill sales of regular 3-D models even more.
“Some who already are opposed to the glasses might just end up waiting,” said analyst Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies Inc. “It doesn’t help the consumer come around to buying into the technology right now.”
The drawbacks didn’t damp enthusiasm at the CEATEC show, however, where people lined up to get a two-minute demonstration of the sets in the designated viewing spots, said Rahimzadeh, whose company is called Auri Group.
He was one of the judges at the show, which gave the technology the top innovation award.
“3-D should be as simple as turning on your TV and getting 3-D content, without glasses,” he said, “and this is a huge step.”
nathan.olivarezgiles@latimes.com
