Toshiba chose CES 2011 to debut their new line of Glasses Free 3D TV’s and the results are extremely disappointing.
Offered in various sizes including: 65-inch, 56-inch, 12-inch and even a 3D laptop, the units use a technology known as parallax barriers which is basically a barrier with tiny slots that split images in an attempt to trick your eyes on the sets 4K panels (4,096 x 2,160 pixels). The problem? You have to be sitting directly in the right sweet spots for the 3D effect to work, move even a foot to the left, right, forward or backward and what you are left with is a blurry image that quite honestly gave me a headache on all TV sizes.
It was actually quite sad to walk into the darkened Toshiba display and realize they marked three spots with gaffer type in front of each TV, personally I’m not moving my massive couch so I can have the perfect viewing angle, plus those sweet spots weren’t all that sweet.
Sure there were moments where the 3D effects looked amazing, but for the most part everyone around me had the same problem I had, the images often looked choppy and blurry, while headaches seemed to be the buzz word inside the booth.
There is no release date in sight for these units, which is probably a good thing, however one promising option is the 3D laptop technology, where the laptop’s built-in webcam actually detects the users eyes to help push out optimized results, it was the best part of the showcase, but still not perfect.
Personally I don’t like 3D glasses, but at least my headaches while wearing them are greatly reduced and take hours to develop, not minutes.
