Sorry, but I don’t want to wear glasses. Not 3D ones, anyway. My dream of being able to appreciate 3D without glasses and headache might be coming true.
CES has shown off glasses-free televisions before, but they were all easy to shrug off as something that wasn’t quite up to snuff. This year Sony has some new products that actually have me wanting 3D in my home. They showed off a couple of OLED and LCD sets that require nothing but your two eyeballs to see 3D. On the floor they’re showing off a smaller 24.5″ OLED, which has been drawing huge crowds all day. It was just a few years ago that they first debuted this super flat, super crisp Organic Light Emitting Diode, and now they’re showing glasses-free 3D on it. The attractions at the other booths that require glasses seem silly in comparison now.
Off the main floor and in separate rooms are two other glasses-free sets from Sony: a 46″ 2k x 1k OLED set and a 56″ 4k x 2k LCD set. All of these looked great with sample content, which included bits of Gran Turismo 5, but the 56″ LCD looked the best, with a vivid picture and the most pronounced 3D effect. Movies also looked very nice; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was a stunner in glasses-free 3D.
The good news is that these prototypes have respectable 3D viewing from just about any angle. While dead center is a sweet spot, I tried watching from the side and could still see the 3D easily. The bad news is that these are early prototypes, and Sony was not able to provide pricing or any other specifications. Still, I’m excited for what the future holds for 3D again. Hopefully these things won’t cost too much.
