Last night was Samsung’s Spring Fever Showcase, showing off all the products the electronics giant will be hitting the public with in the next few months. Though they plied me with tiny crab cakes, and all the booze I could drink, I stayed on task, and throughout the rest of the day, will give you my impressions of a few of those products.
I want to mention right off though, that the parting gift from this electronics showcase was a regular note-pad. I mean, a really nice notepad, but here I am, taking pictures with my Sony camera, and no-one came up to me and said, “Hey, it looks like your camera is awful. Why don’t you have one of these Samsung cameras, free of charge?” I guess looking doe eyed and sad in the corner doesn’t get you free gadgets? I dunknow, I’m new at this.
Anyway, a little while ago, I posted about Samsung’s 3-D TV. Well, now I’ve got to play around with it, and I can say that it is, without a doubt, pretty darn cool.
First off, all of Samsung’s high-end televisions will come 3-D equipped. There’s a lot of external equipment needed, relatively speaking, including: a sensor for the top of the TV; 3-D glasses; and a PC capable of reading Blu-Ray discs. However, once you do nail down the externals, the set-up is pretty much plug and play.
As you can kind of see from the picture (and boy, wouldn’t it be better if I had a free Sansung camera? Oh well…), certain video games, movies, and more will come equipped with a separate 3-D version that splits the image into two. You then throw on the 3-D glasses, which are much sturdier than the version you get at the movies, flip a switch, and voila, you’re watching images in 3-D.
Another cool feature, which I’m going to call faux-3-D, allows you to take ANY movie or picture on your hard drive, and make it look 3-D. For those of us in the know, you’ll quickly realize that this isn’t really 3-D, it’s essentially one image split into two, and as the 3-D glasses flip their shutter between your eyes, you experience something that is kind of like 3-D views. However, for your parents, who will now be able to view their vacation photos, and films of their grandchildren in 3-D? Awesome.
The one little quibble I have with this, and it’s just a personal one, is that 3-D is very hard to watch if you already wear glasses. I asked the product manager about this, and he seemed at a loss, that there shouldn’t be any difference if you wear glasses or not. Well… There is. In fact, it gives me a little bit of a headache.
However, for the short time that I was able to watch the 3-D images, they kicked ass.
3-D is available on the Series 6 and Series 7 Samsung DLP HDTV's, some of which are already available in stores. Price-points range from a very afoordable $1299 for the 50 incher, to $2999 for the 72 inch monster. You can check 'em all out at Samsung.com.