Despite being one of the biggest players in glasses-required 3D TVs, Sony is stepping outside the box.
The company has just introduced a new 46-inch TV that provides 3D visuals without the need for glasses. It uses a technology called autostereoscopic 3D, which presents the illusion of depth by incorporating thousands of tiny mirrors within the display itself.
The technology is able to trick your eyes into thinking that the display is more like a window than a flat-screen TV.
There were a lot of advancements in glasses-free 3D tech last year. We saw a start-up company at the mobile CTIA trade show and were blown away with its displays that literally do make it appear that objects are jumping out of the screen.
There used to be a concern that this technology was not suitable for large-screen devices and could not be viewed properly unless viewers were looking at the display head-on.
This has been one of the biggest issues, for example, for the Nintendo 3DS.
Those problems have become less of a concern with advancements in autostereoscopic standards. At the same time, the market for glasses-required 3D TVs has been somewhat dumbed down as low-cost sets have provided competition against the more powerful and sophisticated models.
But if there's anything the 3D TV chapter has taught us, it's that consumers do not want to wear 3D glasses at home. Sony is definitely taking a step in the right direction.
Here's a video of the display in action, from Cnet:
