Samsung LED9000

The Samsung system has much in common with the other 3D tech we’ve seen, in that you wear a pair of active glasses that turn the left and right lenses off and on in synch with the image being portayed onscreen. Samsung is currently including two pairs of glasses with each TV sold.

Samsung LED8000

Samsung also had one trick up its sleeve that its competitors had not shown at their demonstrations, although Sony says it does have the technology. It will convert 2D video to 3D on the fly. Just hit a button on the remote and the 2D source signal coming into your TV is processed by the TV’s video chip to produce a 3D image. Interestingly, you can also vary the depth of the resulting image on a sliding scale from one to 10. If you love a full-on 3D effect you’ll bump it to 10 but if that messes with your head too much you can back it off so the effect is much less pronounced. In demonstration I found this technology a little hard to come to terms with when watching a soccer game, but couldn’t quite pinpoint why. It seemed to add some kind of lag to fast motion so that it appeared almost blurred.

Samsung LED7000

The same 2D to 3D effect can be applied to your photographs too. And here it was rather nice. landscapes really popped with the added depth.

Live action was variable depending on the amount of lens zoom applied to the footage. A Black Eyed Peas concert looked brilliant except that the zoom compressed the image to create a sort of layered look. Elsewhere, where zoom was not applied as in some wildlife footage, the 3D effect was mesmerising.

Samsung LED6000

It seems to me that the quality of 3Dviewing is going to come down to the quality of the source material. Live footage shot originally in 3Dlooks excellent, footage converted to 3D after the fact looks not so great. Animation and games look awesome.

Samsung is covering all bases with 3D, offering it on bog-standard LCD, LED backlit LCD and plasma.