Toshiba, RealD Ink Marketing Pact for Active 3D TVs, Laptops, Blu-ray Players

Toshiba and RealD said this week they've worked together to integrate support for RealD’s stereoscopic 3D format in Toshiba’s Regza 3D TVs and accompanying active 3D eyewear. The companies are working together under a marketing agreement for Carmen in 3D, filmed at the Royal Opera House in London. Toshiba has presentation rights for the worldwide theatrical release and will have exclusive rights during an undisclosed promotional period to package the Blu-ray disc with some Toshiba-branded 3D TVs, laptops and Blu-ray players.

The 3D movie will hit cinema screens March 5, Robert Mayson, president of consumer electronics at RealD, told Consumer Electronics Daily. It will have a “short window” of exclusivity with Toshiba when it’s released on Blu-ray “around the first of July” before reaching its next video release window in September or October, he said.

Meanwhile, Mayson said full-resolution passive 3D TVs from Samsung, Toshiba and others could be in mass circulation by Christmas 2012. Noting that there will be variations of 3D in the market, and that active-shutter TVs and eyewear will continue “for many years to come,” Mayson said one technology probably will supersede the other. RealD has engineering models of full-resolution passive TVs, he said, “and we'll see more at SID in May” that would be available initially as “niche products.” Passive 3D TV is “easy to demo,” because the glasses are lightweight and inexpensive, Mayson said, adding that for 3D TV to become a mass-market success, “there needs to be a move to passive eyewear."

Active-shutter 3D TV has proven difficult at retail, because of interference with glasses and fluorescent lighting, along with battery charging issues, Mayson said. RealD technology figures into virtually every 3D TV on the market, but passive TVs compatible with polarized glasses that can be used in theaters, as sunglasses or with prescription lenses are “where it’s headed,” he said. Mayson noted that passive film-patterned retarder TVs announced at CES from LG and Toshiba were half-resolution models (CED Jan 10 p4). But he said future TVs using RDZ technology developed by Samsung LCD Business and RealD will bond active-shutter technology to the TV screen rather than the glasses, bringing down the cost and weight of 3D eyewear.