A lot of people are intrigued by 3D TV, but hate the requirement for 3D glasses. No, it's true! Whether it's the weight, the expense, or the dork factor, there are a lot of you out there holding out for glasses-free 3D. Well, if you believe the claims coming from Toshiba, this may happen sooner than some people think.
Toshiba just debuted a few new 3D TVs at the Toshiba World Conference in Rome. Don't get excited; all of them use glasses (passive though!). However, during the launch festivities, they did let a little interesting tidbit slip. The company says that glasses-free 3D is still a priority, and they are still planning to deliver that type of product offering within the next year.
Of course, Toshiba has already launched glasses-free 3D TVs -- two of them! -- in Japan. Back in October, Toshiba debuted the 20-inch 20GLI and 12-inch 12GLI, two teeny TVs that could do 3D without the need for 3D glasses, albeit at a high cost and small size.
At January's Consumer Electronics Show, the company upped the excitement a bit, showing off 56- and 65-inch models. Geoff Morrison at HD Guru said that the technology was still years away adding, "The biggest problem to overcome is the incredibly limited viewing area." In other words, it's not perfect.
However, that's not keeping Toshiba from making promises. According to Pocket-lint, the company says that they will launch a glasses-free 3D TV within the next 12 months. We're guessing it's going to be a little larger than those existing models, and hopefully, available in other parts of the world. At this point, very little hard information is out there.
This definitely sounds like something we expect to see at CES 2012. Stay tuned!
[editor's note: I saw these glasses-free 3D TVs at CES 2011 as well, and while it was impressive that they created a 3D effect without glasses, the 3D sweet spot was extremely restricted and the image detail was not where it needs to be for a high quality consumer display product. Toshiba's early push of glasses-free 3D TV before the technology is really there to support it could be more of a distraction intended to prevent customers from buying competitors' 3D TV sets that are available today -CB]
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