That’s right, folks! No longer do we have to stream Netflix movies or mirror our Angry Birds from the iPhone to our Apple TV in that ridiculous 2D! It is time to go 3D! What’s that, you hate 3D glasses? That’s okay. With Stream TV we are going glasses-free 3D! According to a story from the great team at Macworld, Stream TV Networks, who develop glasses-free 3D technology for TV sets, announced that they are enabling Apple TV users to beam Apple TV content or the content from our other iOS devices to the 3D TVs using the company’s Ultra-D autostereoscopic technology.

This is to say, Stream TV Network will be encoding our 2D content into 3D in real time, with no loss in clarity/quality, or so they claim:

The technology combines an optical lens on a panel and a software and hardware layer to convert high-definition images into a format suitable for glasses-free 3D TVs.

For example, users can stream Netflix movies through Apple TV, and the Ultra-D software layer does the 2D-to-3D conversion into a format suitable for the glasses-free 3D TV.

Now, we have not seen any physical proof of these claims ourselves but it sounds quite promising. Martin Rajan, CEO of the company, says that, “a lot of the major players are banging on our door to add this technology to their products.” Beyond this Rajan goes on to say that they can, and will if necessary, expand to Android devices, Blackberry, and Symbian.

Glasses-free 3D TVs with Ultra-D are not available yet. Stream Networks is now making the Ultra-D technology available to TV makers. The first Ultra-D TVs may come later this year.

According to the report from Macworld:

Glasses-free 3D TVs are not widely available yet, with only a few companies like Toshiba releasing products. Autostereoscopic TVs remain the next big goal in 3D TVs, and companies such as Sony and Samsung have demonstrated prototype TVs, but there have been issues around effectively splitting images between the right and left eyes at the same time for the right 3D effect. Stream TV has tried to overcome the issues with a combination of hardware and software.

3D TVs are gaining popularity, but the inconvenience of wearing 3D glasses remains a hindrance to its growth. Shipments of 3D LCD TV panels totaled 7.8 million in the fourth quarter of last year, up from 26 percent compared to the same quarter in 2010, according to NPD DisplaySearch. The research firm said that 3D TV panel shipments could total 50 million units this year, a 21.6 percent penetration rate of all LCD panels shipped.

So what do you think? Would you go 3D if it was glasses free?

umOuch (Andrew Brasher)

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