I got a glimpse of Toshiba's 65-inch panel at the Toshiba booth, where the set was mounted on a wall, with 3 pairs of foot guides (black strips of thick tape showing you exactly where to plant yourself to get the best 3D effect). I started in the middle spot and saw decent-looking 3D images of butterflies and flowers, fishes, sea turtles, and happy children blowing bubbles. Same thing with the left and center spots. But if I moved my head, even slightly, when I was in any of the three spots, the images became wobbly and dizzying. I can't even imagine watching a fast-action movie on this set: guaranteed nausea. Also, the 3D effect was very easy to lose—it came and went several times.
That's because the panel uses parallax barriers to generate the 3D effect, sending different images to each eye to create a sense of depth--so you really need to be in right spot. Even when you do find a sweet spot, the 3D is nowhere near as immersive or impressive as what you'll get from a TV that uses active shutter glasses.
The panel's resolution is 4,096 by 2,160 pixels, which is incredibly high, when you consider today's HDTVs top out at 1,920 by 1,080. Despite that, the images don't look sharp at all, again, the parallax barrier thing. But most distracting are the very-visible vertical lines that run the entire width of the screen, that create a distracting blurry overlay.
Toshiba's demo was just that, a technology display. The company doesn't claim to have a finished product, but it does plan to start selling its first glasses-free 3D TVs by the end of this year. Of course, since there are no real products yet, exact prices were not announced. A spokesperson said, however, that the glasses-free sets would be the flagship Toshiba 3D HDTV line and command premium prices.
Likely realizing that not everyone is going to enjoy this effect, or is willing to shell out a premium for 3D without glasses, the company's 2011 lineup also includes the UL610 Cinema Series of 3D TVs that use active shutter glasses, and the TL515 line, which uses less-expensive polarized glasses.