Samsung's Active 3D Glasses Gets Priced
Consumers will need to dump more money into active shutter glasses after shelling out a huge load for the 3D HDTV.
Will 2010 be the year of 3D in our living rooms? That may depend on our wallets. 3D HDTVs won't come cheap, and many brands won't include the required active shutter glasses, forcing consumers to shell out even more money for the emerging technology.
Samsung will be one of many who won't include the specs with the HDTV, making it hard for the second class consumer to drop loads of money into the new trend.
According to ITProPortal, Samsung's 55-inch 3D LED HDTV is already on sale at Amazon, tagged with an impressive $3300 pricetag. However Samsung is also selling separate active shutter glasses for a whopping $150 a piece (the SSG-2100AB).
With that said, a family of four will be forced to shell out $600 for the glasses after dumping over $3,000 load into a new 3D HDTV.
ITProPortal also points out the drawbacks to active shutter glasses: they require a CR2025 battery, they may have an effect on brightness and contrast calibration, they they do not fit children. In addition, viewers must have at least own one pair of the active shutter glasses in order to benefit from the 3D technology-- those without the glasses can't watch the content simultaneously because of the way it's formatted.
So the question still stands: is this the year of 3D? For consumers with deep pockets, 3D technology may be tomorrow's investment. Consumers pinching pennies may not jump onto the 3D HDTV bandwagon for a while. Besides, the first version of 3DTV is probably going to not be so great and have kinks that need to be worked on.
We suggest waiting for at least 2nd generations of 3D TVs.
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Pricey.
Thats just unbelievable.
In my opinion 3d isnt going to become mainstream until its on terrestrial / satellite broadcast channels.
At least here in the UK, the thing that will probably kick it off is premiership football on sky sports and the obligatory BBC leading the technology way with the first free to air 3d channel.
I predict it still wont be mainstream until someone figures out a way to do it either without glasses, or at least with glasses that are so cheap you can have 20 pairs knocking about - until then the whole process of making sure you have enough glasses, making sure theyre powered, clean etc will put most people off - if you wanted to make a day of it you could have gone to an IMAX - the vast majority want to be able to just sit down and switch on without having to run through a flowchart and plan a trip to the shops for batteries to get going.
don't forget, 3D technology also encourages immigrants