Toshiba touts glasses-free 3D laptop

Toshiba has demonstrated a laptop with a special display technology because of which 3D content can be viewed without the need of special 3D glasses.

Toshiba unveiled its glass-free 3D display technology last year and will reveal the working models of the new laptop and a 3D flat screen TV at the CES 2011 in Las Vegas this week. A prototype of Toshiba’s glasses free 3D laptop called Qosmio was revealed recently and the device expected to ship for retail by the end of 2011. Related: Will CES 2011 lift 3D TV sales?

The glasses-free 3D laptop from Toshiba has a rectangular box behind the LCD display and has a refresh rate of 120 Hz, which is the least required for 3D. Toshiba has 3D televisions as well as a 3D notebook called A665 3D Edition that requires special glasses, a part of Toshiba’s Satellite series.

Photo: Toshiba Qosmio 3D laptop

3D glasses are often expensive and bulky and they need to be carried around if one’s 3D laptop requires them. Because of these drawbacks, an alternative to special 3D glasses, i.e., display technology that can work without them, is being researched upon by Apple, Ezio Nintendo and Microsoft, among other firms.

Glasses-free technology such as the kind Toshiba uses works by employing face recognition techniques to switch on 3D when the user’s eyes are aligned to the webcam above the screen. This would force the user to sit still right in front of his laptop, or the webcam will lose sight of his face and the video will go into 2D mode.

It also means that more than one person cannot watch a 3D video simultaneously. This is unfortunate because the limit to the number of viewers is a problem with 3D technology (such as television sets) that need special glasses for viewing because a 3D TV owner will have a limited number of glasses and more people can’t then join him while he watches a 3D movie. There were hopes that glasses-free 3D display technology would solve this problem. Also see: 3D TVs in India

According to PC Mag.com, Toshiba acknowledges these bugs in its 3D laptop and is working to fix it; while technology website Electronista.com says Toshiba’s Qosmio does overcome viewing angle differences – at least to a large extent. This is achieved with a six-axis accelerometer with relates the device’s tilt angle to the position of the viewer’s head and maintains the alignment between the webcam and the viewer’s eyes. This way, Toshiba has attempted to increase the 3D laptop’s field of view to make it a comfortable device to watch movies on.