Home > News

3D TVs: Panasonic take the first set

Vincent Alzieu
September 14, 2009 1:13 pm

While others are offering 540 lines per eye, Panasonic have 2x1080p. Naturally, this is more impressive. And when, moreover, you're invited to discover the system's effectiveness with James Cameron's next film Avatar and you know that the film studios are behind the technology and that the plasma screen used suffers from no ghosting or marking problems, obviously plenty of people want to try it out…

First thing we noticed were the queues: you have to wait 5 minutes to try out the 3D options offered by the competition, at the Panasonic stand we had to wait over half an hour.

Once we got inside the viewing room, we were give a large pair of electronic glasses.

The demo is about to start, but STOP:
photos and videos are forbidden and I get caught straight away.

Then follow, before Avatar, a series of very interesting and diverse sequences. We were treated to:

a Formula 1 race,
extracts from a football match (during a free kick, the person in front of me flinched and moved her head, so real was the experience),
a mountain descent on skis to promote the 2010 games,
closure of the games in Beijing. This was magnificent in 3D. The image was precise, deep, sharp… really impressive!

Then we had Avatar... Unfortunately, it was less impressive than the rest. We were given three successive viewings:

Avatar in 2D: tested on the normal television at the Panasonic stand. Not that great. The humans are much more realistic than the other characters that look as if they’ve just been extracted from a video game.
3D Avatar on a Panasonic TV: better. But we still aren’t getting the realism we were hoping for.
Avator in 3D cinema: according to Romain, a journalist friend who compared all three, this is better. The moral of this story: watch the film in 3D at the cinema when it comes out in December.

And now, the trailer for you:

Previous story / Next story :

Check out all of our High Tech offers: TV, Computing, Camera, Gaming, Telephony, Blu-Ray DVD on Pixmania