E311 Eyes-on: Sony’s 3D display let’s you kinda see two images

At E3 this year, Sony debuted it’s new “affordable” 3D television. The 24″ monitor, which is $500, not only displays 3D visuals, but it also allows for the two included $60 wireless glasses to see two different images in once.  What that means is that instead of split screen gaming, the players will see one 2-D image on the screen through their set of glasses, in full widescreen view.

The first thing I noticed when seeing the screen was the industrial design: curved sides, metallic back.  It looked like a giant PSP Go, and the promise didn’t improve much after that.

Each pair of glasses can switch the view from Player 1 to 2 with a quick push of a button on their rim, and it’s fairly lag-free. I clicked back and forth several times per second to try and catch the TV snoozing, but it was a solid flip. In theory it seems like a terrific idea, great for dorm rooms.  But in actuality it doesn’t quite work as intended.  For one, even with the glasses turned on and seeing one view, the ghosting of the other view was apparent.  Yeah, you’re still kind of seeing both views at the same time, and it was headache-inducing. While the second view wasn’t nearly as visible, it was still there in the background.  The representative there told us that this still wasn’t the final hardware, so there could be some changes and improvements to the tech.

Secondly, I have yet to understand how they will address the audio issue.  You see, while there are two separate images you still hear the same single audio track.  At different points in the racing game demo, we would hear a crash take place and think it was on our “side” of the screen, when in fact it was associated with the other pair of glasses.  I assume that separate headphones may help, but the TV doesn’t come with a way to split the audio, and PS3 controllers don’t come with outputs either.

Another point to note: the TV can only show two screens of the same game, not a game and TV channel, or two different games.  It doesn’t multi-task that way.  For $500 it may be nice for people who play two-player games in close quarters a lot, but at only 24 inches it’s still too small and more expensive than other similar monitors out there.  It comes packed in with two glasses and a copy of Resistance 3, so there’s that.