3D Vision Blog

LG has launched in Korea what seems to be their first 3D-capable laptop, the LG Xnote A530, and the laptop is expected to be also available in Europe, the Middle East and Africa later this month followed by other markets soon after (no work on North American availability yet). LG A530 is a 15.6-inch laptop that uses the company’s Film Patterned Retarder (FPR) technology for providing a 3D display capabilities in the device and this is essentially a passive 3D display that requires you to wear a pair of passive polarized glasses to see the 3D effect. So far nothing we haven’t seen from other companies, however LG is going a step further by adding a built-in 3D webcamera as well that consists of essentially two normal 2D webcams that seem to be about 2 centimeters apart (less than an inch). Having a 3D webcamera on your laptop may seem like a cool idea at first, but it is something that is still not very usable as most video conversation software solutions still don’t support 3D video. So maybe you can be stuck at using it only for anaglyph 3D mode if supported, as this can also be easy for the person sitting on the other side to see you in 3D if he does not have a dedicated 3D-capable display. Although there is yet again integration with YouTube’s 3D support, so you will be easily able to upload 3D videos of you record with the 3D webcam, another thing that does not seem way too practical like having a 3D camera on a smartphone for example.

It is also interesting to note that on the official pres photo from LG there is the LG 3D Space software displayed, something that you may be familiar with if you’ve seen the company’s LG Optimus 3D smartphone, so this 3D interface should be giving you similar features to that found on the 3D phone. The 3D video and photo playback, as well as the ability to play games in stereoscopic 3D mode are apparently provided by DDD’s TriDef 3D software which LG also uses for their other passive 3D displays. There also seems to be a Blu-ray 3D video player and something that makes me a bit curious, a 3D Presentation mode that uses unknown for the moment software. The 15.6-inch display is apparently with Full HD 1920×1080 resolution that turns to half vertical (1920×540) per eye of that when you activate the 3D mode due to the way all of the passive 3D displays work. The LG A530 is using a second-generation Intel Core i7 processors, comes with up to 8GB of system memory, GeForce GT 555M graphics card that should be quite Ok for most not so demanding games even in stereo 3D mode (not fast enough to call this a high-end gaming laptop), a built-in solid-state drive (SSD) together with a traditional HDD drive, integrated fingerprint reader, SRS Wide 3D Sound system, USB 3.0 support, and the 3D webcam already mentioned. We’ll have to wait a bit more and see the first reviews when the laptop comes out in order to have a better understanding of the performance and extra features it will be offering in stereo 3D mode as the currently available information for the upcoming LG A530 laptop is not very detailed.

It is now official as HP has announced their plans to release the HP ENVY 17 3D, a 3D-capable multimedia laptop for the holiday season this year. There were a lot of rumors going on about HP getting a 3D-capable laptop since quite a lot of time, at first for a professional solution, but now we actually get a quite powerful consumer laptop. And if we are lucky enough we may also see the HP 2310g 120Hz LCD monitor too, as apparently HP is finally ready to also jump on the 3D wave.

It is interesting to note the fact that the HP ENVY 17 3D is actually the first 17-inch notebook to support 1080p 3D, meaning Full HD 120Hz screen for gaming and Blu-ray 3D movie playback apparently. But more interesting is the fact that the laptop is based on an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850 graphics card and that means no Nvidia 3D Vision, but an alternative solution also based on active shutter glasses. So that can either be some HP solution developed on their own, or more likely the AMD/ATI stereoscopic 3D solution that we’ve been waiting to see for quite some time now. The powerful video card should be backed by a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, so there should be no problems in using this laptop not only for watching multimedia content in 3D, but also playing games in stereo 3D mode.

Also as a part of HP’s ongoing partnership with the National Basketball Association (NBA), select models of the HP ENVY 17 3D will include some 3D action from the 2010 NBA All-Star Game. Additionally a 3D movie trailer for the upcoming animated film “MEGAMIND” from DreamWorks Animation will be included, which is certainly Ok, but definitely we could use some more 3D video content.

The HP ENVY 17 3D is expected to be available this holiday season with pricing yet to be determined, but considering that the currently available non-3D version of the HP ENVY 17 with similar parameters starts at $1,399.99 USD, the standard configuration of the 3D version of the laptop will most likely be in the range of $1600-$1800 USD.

- To visit the official website for the upcoming HP ENVY 17 3D laptop…

It seems that LG is not only interested in 3D HDTV market as well as 3D Gaming monitors, but also in providing a mobile 3D-capable solutions and as a result the company announced their first such product – the LG R590 3D notebook. The 3D laptop has a 15.6-inch screen with resolution of 1366×768 pixels and uses a passive polarization filter along with passive polarized glasses to provide the 3D effect. The software LG is relying to provide the 3D capabilities is DDD’s TriDef giving the user a 3D photo and video player, 2D to 3D video conversion and the option of gaming in stereo 3D mode. As with other such passive polarized solutions you should be aware of the fact that the vertical resolution is being halved when in 3D mode meaning that you get just 384 pixels per eye which can be an issue sometimes as it makes harder to read small text etc., so it is not the perfect solution as it also goes with more limited viewing angles and other typical issues for products using the passive polarization technology from other manufactures like Acer for example.

The laptop can be equipped with a fast mobile quad core Intel Core i7 processor, using HM55 chipset and Nvidia GeForce GT335M video card (72 stream processors) along with 1GB of GDDR3 video memory (128-bit memory bus) which makes the system quite capable in providing quite comfortable experience when you play most not so demanding games in stereo 3D mode with the available lower resolution display. But I will not be surprised if in a few moths time LG decides to switch to a 120Hz LCD panel and 3D Vision shutter glasses and/or maybe if there are alternative solutions using active shutter glasses by that time. The LG R590 3D notebook is expected to be available on the market around the middle of August, but there is no information yet about what will be its price.