Ceatec coverage
Pauline Herbst

Covering a Japanese electronics show is like finding yourself in the middle of a DragonBallZ arcade game. The noise is deafening, there are bright flashing lights everywhere, doll-like Japanese promo girls that look like animated mannequins - everyone is clamouring for attention. Now to add to the chaos, you can get all of this in full HD 3D.

Major manufacturers at this year's Tokyo-based Ceatec, held from the 6-10 October 2009, are battling it out for attention in the audio-visual sphere with Japanese giant Panasonic determined to be the first to market with its 3D TV in 2010.
"We're placing a focus on 3D related business at Panasonic and want to establish ourselves as the 3D leader," was Panasonic's bold statement, with Masayuki Kozuka, general manager, Storage Devices Business Strategy Office adding: "Almost all television sets are full HD, so the next step is 3D and the keyword is 4K".

The company has also developed high precision active shutter glasses with a new timing control that allow the right left eye shutters to independently open and close. Although neither Kozuka or Hiroshi Miyai (the director of the High Quality AV Development Center) could confirm a price, they did tell the press that market research has indicated a set of glasses for a family of four that cost Y5000 each would equate to about "10 percent of the price of the television set," making a 3D TV approximately Y200,000 (NZ$3,000).
Toshiba, despite stating at IFA that it was not pursuing 3D, displayed a Cell Regza 3D prototype; as did Sony, Mitshubishi and Sharp. Sharp confirmed its 3D R&D has been conducted over decades but held off with commercialization of its 3D displays until the market was ready.

It displayed its 60-inch 3D LCD with LED backlight for the first time at the show. Like Panasonic, has also chosen to use glasses. As Miyuki Nakoyama, assistant manager of Sharp's Tokyo PR and media liaison office explained, the company is using "a field sequential format for 3D, that is displaying the picture image for the right and left eye at the same time and dividing that image by the glasses to see 3D";.
Due to the LCD technology implemented into the 3D display the company claims the image has a high resolution and a much brighter picture.
PC World can confirm the dinosaurs flinging each other out of the screen and into space really did seem to bulge right out of the screen.