LG’s Dual Play capability allows two player split screen gaming without the split screen. We’ve seen this kind of thing before with Sony’s Playstation TV, but not on this scale.
Computerworld reports on LG showing off its Dual Play capability for 3D TVs.
It uses the same kind of stereoscopic trickery we first saw in Sony’s smaller PlayStation TV to allow split screen play for console games without the split screen. Instead, anyone wandering past your game is likely to hurl up; the vision that gets pushed out is seriously eye straining without the glasses on.
They use pairs of left or right lenses (which means you can make your own if you’re willing to hack glasses you already own) to display just one image per player, which also means you’re limited to 2D play only.[Computerworld]
TSH
Monday, September 5, 2011 at 9:13 AMBrilliant! Much better use of tech than 3D images anyway… :–]
Chuck
Monday, September 5, 2011 at 9:32 AMIf they had developed and advertised that capabilty earlier instead of 3D then a lot more units would have sold.
glennc
Monday, September 5, 2011 at 10:09 AMso who’s going to be the first to get a bullshit patent on this?
Jackson Bison
Monday, September 5, 2011 at 10:15 AMApple.
Graham
Tuesday, September 6, 2011 at 2:16 PMSony patented it a few years ago, however there was already prior art from what I can establish so perhaps their patents are invalid.
Namarrgon
Monday, September 5, 2011 at 12:23 PMIt should be possible to make any 3D TV do this, and most games too.
All that’s needed is to hack your glasses a little. For 3D, shutter glasses block each lens alternately, but for simultaneous 2D, you need to block both lenses at the same time. It should be straightforward to identify the two signals that block each lens, and install a small switch that directs the lenses to sync off one signal or the other (mark it P1, P2 and 3D for the original signals).
Then, if your game renders each player’s view in the top & bottom halves of the screen, set your TV to expect an over/under 3D image, switch one person’s glasses to P1, the other to P2, and off you go – the P1 glasses will see only the top image (intended for the left eye) and P2 will see the bottom. Maybe someone is selling pre-hacked glasses for different models?
Only downside is that the image will be vertically stretched to the full screen height, but it’d be trivial for game devs to compensate for that, if the technique became popular.
Bez
Monday, September 5, 2011 at 7:48 PMDoesn’t have to limited to games.
Instead of fighthing over the remote, you could have to TV channels or 2 different video sources displayed simultaneously. This however would require the viewers to wear ear/headphones as well.
chris
Monday, September 5, 2011 at 10:11 PMmy friend was looking into this then got a couple of the ‘real 3d’ cinema glasses he had laying around ($1 each) and swapped out the lenses and walla, it worked! so if anyone looking to try it out or just for cheap 3d glasses, there you go :)