WHAT'S THE PROBLEM? The special spectacles required for viewing 3-D on today's top TV sets and at the movies, does add some weight to the nose - though in truth, not more than sunglasses. Plus, the "active shutter" variety of glasses used to produce the highest resolution 3-D requires a bit of maintenance - battery charging and replacement - and delivers best viewing results in a darkened room.
Of course, wearing 3-D specs also interferes with multitasking activities like responding to text messages on a mobile phone. And a small percentage of viewers say the glasses give them a headache.
FIXING THE HOLE: In recent years, major makers Philips, Sony and Toshiba have tried to create glasses-free, depth-defying 3-D TV by splitting the viewable image into a series of left- and right-eye perspectives filtered through a grooved lenticular lens on the front of the screen. This so-called "parallax barrier" technology works fine if you're a single spectator plopped just-so in front of the 3-D screen, as users of Nintendo's 3DS portable game player (and "glasses-free" 3-D-screen laptops) know well.
But even in Toshiba's new, state-of-the-art, auto-stereo 55-inch TV - built around a display with four times the resolution of today's mainstream HDTVs - there are still just a few spots to sit or stand in front of the set and enjoy a good depth effect. And with a price of $10,000, it's unlikely that Best Buy and Sears will want to bring Toshiba's statement piece (previewed at CES in Las Vegas last month) to the U.S.
THE STREAM SOLUTION: Stream TV's Ultra-D solution for auto-stereoscopic TV has solved some, but not all, 3-D's challenges, based on the prototypes I saw at CES.
