Even though 4K TVs are dominating the market, it is still funny to know that wherever there is a 3-D television on display, people are still attracted to take a sneak peek.
To watch 3D, it usually takes a pair of glasses and a good position for a great 3D view. If there’s a depth illusion happening pretty weird without the 3D glasses on, then you are looking at an autostereoscopic piece of tech!
Popular and has been making the rounds at the electronics trade shows for a couple of years now is Ultra-D. Representatives from the company at DICE hopes to actually have some TVs using the tech in homes within this year. So who knows, maybe you’ll be trying this for yourself soon enough.
If you’re going to be in the market for a giant 4K TV this year, I mean. Stream TV Networks, the company behind Ultra-D, isn’t actually manufacturing televisions. It’s looking to spin up what it refers to as the “Intel Inside”-style business model: Licensing the technology to a range of manufacturers, who can then build it into their sets. It estimates that including its 3-D display might add around 10 percent to the retail price of the television.
Stream TV says that Ultra-D displays will have a 140-degree viewing angle, which means that multiple viewers should all be able to see the effect while hanging out on the couch. If you’re outside of that window, you’ll just perceive a 2-D image.
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But Ultra-D is promising more than just a glasses-free 3-D display. It also includes a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, which enables the sets to convert any 2-D content on the fly to 3-D. I didn’t actually see this in action—Stream TV’s reps showed me a snippet of the classic 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life in 3-D, but said that had been converted by hand. (And we’ll leave for later the question as to whether anyone should be converting It’s a Wonderful Life into 3-D.)
While Ultra-D will thus add depth effects to your existing videogames—while the TV sets must be 4K to work with the tech, the content doesn’t have to be 4K resolution—Stream TV also said it would work with game developers if they wanted to add native support into their games.
Source: Wired.com