This year’s CEATEC consumer electronics floor is all about 3D. You want 3D without glasses, you got it! Want to play Gran Turismo in 3D? You’re set! Want 3D on your laptop, as long as you stand four feet away? Go! Below are the 3D displays I found today, along with some great innovations. Will Consumer 3D will die again, just like it did in the 80s? Anybody remember Swamp Thing and Amityville Horror 3D? Good luck finding those in your VHS collection.

Panasonic 3D HD Wall

It’s the simple things that are way cool. Panasonic had a wall of all their 3D sets, from 40” to 152”, all perfectly synchronized, displaying 3D promotional fluff. I may not want 3D, but I do want that display, and somebody else paying the electricity bill.

Panasonic also showed off their 3D camcorder and 3D LUMIX digital still camera (more info from Gizmodo here).

There was a cool flyer showing all the 3D tech in Panasonic’s booth. Enjoy below:

Sony’s 3D Optimized LED Displays

Ok, 240Hz is more evolutionary than revolutionary, so most analysts didn’t give Sony’s 240Hz sets much space last year. With 3D, however, Sony has come up with a real-world reason for 240Hz.

Figure: What’s the deal with children under six and 3D?

Figure: Sony’s booth and the very cool 3D LED display board.

3D televisions running at 120Hz tend to look blurry. This is usually due to too little data being pushed to your brain – in this case, 60 frames per second per eye – to build the 3D image. By using 240Hz sets, 120 frames per second are sent to each eye – thus supplying a much more “solid” image.

Sony has also taken into account the dimming effect 3D glasses have on the video feed. Take a look at a pair of polarized 3D glasses and you’ll see they appear tinted. This can lead to a loss of brightness in the 3D image. Sony’s solution is to brighten all or part of the displayed image to compensate for the loss of luminance.

Toshiba’s Glasses-less 3D 20” Display

Toshiba’s glasses-less display works well if you’re the exact distance away and viewing at the right angle. Move back too far (they had a red dot designating where to stand), or move/look to the sides, and the typical 3D artifacts appear. It will still very cool.

The display sports an 8.29 million pixel resolution with vertical pixels and a vertical lenticular sheet. A Cell Regza (Cell Broadband Engine) processing unit and a custom multi-parallel conversion LSI are utilized to generate the time parallax images in realtime.

Figure: People standing in line to see Toshiba’s 3D displays.

Toshiba’s Glasses-less 3D Display for Laptops

Toshiba also showcased a laptop with partial 3D window technology. Basically, the system can show 3D anywhere on the screen that marks itself as a 3D image/feed. Details were thin, but I was able to snap a few photos as to how it worked. Oh yeah, the display appeared to be six inches deep, you couldn’t touch the machine, and you had to stand four feet back (again, on a red dot). Hey, it’s a prototype!

P.S.: Glasses-less 3D would be way cool for PC gaming. Then again, 3D gaming with glasses is cool, too. Just check out Sony’s Gran Turismo 5 in 3D if you want proof.

Mitsubishi’s 3D “Laser” Television

Sony appears to have given up on the laser television set concept since they last showed a prototype at CES 2008 (maybe it was CES 2007). Mitsubishi is now shipping a solution, in 2D and 3D flavors, in the form of its LaserVue line. Lasers provide an amazing viewing angle and better color fidelity, although they do tend to appear dimmer. I’m curious how long the diodes last, and how expensive they are to replace. Either way, it’s very cool. Anyone know if staring at a laser set is bad for your eyes?

On a side note, Mitsubishi also showed off their contributions to [I believe] Japan’s space program. You can view a synth of what they were showing here. It was very cool, especially the space probe.

More information on CEATEC can be found at www.ceatec.com.