Stereoscopic 3D has not really taken off in a big way, perhaps not as much as consumer electronics manufacturers would have liked, but I guess they want to create a market instead of waiting for one to develop itself. Having said that, there were just a couple of prototypes spotted at CES last year that required no 3D glasses to view, but those have a rather acute viewing angle for an optimal image. Hopefully things would have changed nearly a couple of years down the road, with Philips’ latest auto-stereoscopic 3D model known as the 42” BDL4251VS. It was developed alongside Dimenco, where you need no glasses to view the images in 3D glory across 42” of viewing real estate.
How did Philips achieve this? for starters, it has 28 lenticular views from which the audience is able to look around objects, and depending on where they are standing in relation to the display itself, things do look pretty good. Philips claims that this unique setup offers the widest 3D viewing angle available in the market, although I do wonder whether that is the gospel truth or not. Of course, it does not do only 3D, but 2D as well, so that you can continue to enjoy the majority of shows and movies without missing a beat. No word on pricing, but the Philips BDL4251VS/00 3D display will hit the market from mid-December onwards.