Despite Toshiba having glasses-less 3DTVs on the market already, Samsung’s spoken out about the future of 3DTV by saying “attempts to put glasses-free 3DTV to market within the next 10 years will be difficult”. Uh-oh.
Samsung elaborated by explaining that they have the means and know-how to make glasses-less 3DTV, “however it can only be viewed from a few viewing spots”. Preferring instead to launch glasses-less 3DTV that works like the current range of 3DTVs, sans glasses of course, Samsung had said they’d prefer to wait until they can “deliver 3D to at least 32 viewing spots”. One of their prototypes they showed off recently had just nine spots.
“We believe that creating a prototype for lab-grade glasses-free 3D TV, broadcasting system and display will take about five years. For mass commercialisation to become possible, manufacturing costs must come down and TV broadcasters will have to upgrade infrastructure, which includes securing transmission bandwidth.”
Toshiba’s foray into glasses-less 3DTV hasn’t gone so well so far. Setting themselves a target of selling 1000 units in the first month, they fell short by more than half. This could be down to the size of the sets, which were a comical 12 and 20 inches, but methinks the industry needs to bring costs down a lot more first before consumers start strongly considering the technology. [SlashGear]