Mobile 3D Abounds at CES
January 18th, 2012Yesterday, we published a 113-page edition of Mobile Display Report. Clearly, there was a lot of mobile-related news at CES. If you want to get our complete coverage of CES, we will offer a special publication in early February that combines our CES coverage from Mobile Display Report and Large Display Report. This is likely to be well over 200 pages of well organized and carefully compiled information amassed by our crew that visited CES. A second report will contain just the 3D information from CES and the rest of the industry over the last month. Stay tuned.
For today’s Display Daily, let me briefly summarize some of the mobile 3D products we covered in MDR. For example, we saw number of releases of new consumer-oriented 3D camcorders that feature dual lenses for capture of 1080p video and still images in 3D. Products include:
- • Aigo: AHD-X30
- • DXG: DXG-5F9V - $299 now
- • DXG: Fip
- • Toshiba: Camileo Z100 - $219 in April
- • Sony: TD20V - $1,499 in March
- • Camsport: 3D Fuzion 599 Euro in April
- • LO3D: 3- or 6-lens cameras
In last month’s MDR, we did a product review of the Aiptek DV iH3 3D camcorder, which appears to be similar to offerings from Aigo, DXG and Toshiba. This has some nice positives, but plenty of negatives too. Although for a starter 3D camcorder, you can’t go wrong in this price range.
As for 3D laptops, LG launched the P535 and the A540 models. The P535 offers buyers the option of a 15.6-inch 2D screen or a 3D screen with a film patterned retarder for passive polarized 3D viewing. The A540 model offers the same two screen options along with a third glasses-free option. This also comes with some editing programs to help improve your 3D pictures and movies.
Toshiba has offered the glasses-free laptop model F755 3D since summer. This features a switchable lenticular sheet along with eye tracking to keep the user in the two-view sweet spot as they move their head from side to side. At CES, the company announced a deal with Nvidia that allows hundreds of 3D games to now be viewable on this glasses-free display.
And let’s not forget that CES also saw the debut of the first 3D tablets. We saw models from Polaroid, Steam TV, Gadmei, WikiPad and Aigo. Some of these will make it to market and some may not. We will be tracking them in our 3D product database (also due to be updated in February).
We didn’t really see any new 3D smartphones at CES, but we did cover the Sony Xperia S handset that features dual cameras for 3D acquisition, but no glasses-free display to see the 3D images. You have to output it to a monitor or TV.
Attachable lenticular sheets were also in evidence at CES. These sheets can attach to a smart phone, tablet, notebook or monitor to quickly turn it into a glasses-free display. Global Wave was there to offer their sheets to consumers and product brands, as was Spatial View. Spatial View is going a lot further to develop the market, however, by aggregating 3D content on its 3DeeCentral site so users can get free and purchased content for playback on glasses-free and glasses-based 3D systems. It has also licensed its 3DeeCentral’s back end to Master-View so they can create their own branded site featuring digital 3D images from its 100-year old collection of 3D stills. What a great idea.
Well, that’s all for now - more later.











