Sony has announced a new Sony PlayStation 3D 24-inch monitor at its E3 press conference in LA and Pocket-lint was on hand to try out the new screen with it’s new dedicated features.
Clearly aimed at the college students hoping to enjoy 3D their PS3 gives them in their bedrooms – even the demo area was a college dorm - Sony is hoping that by reducing the price and therefore the barrier to entry for 3D more of us will want to embrace the third-dimension.
Currently priced in the USA at $499 you’ll get that monitor, a 6ft HDMI cable, one pair of active 3D glasses and a copy of Resistance 3 for the PS3 (yep that’s one of the company’s new 3D games due out later this year).
Tech specs of the new display include a 5000:1 contrast, a 176 degree viewing angle and 4ms response time.
However where the Sony 3D monitor is hoping to stand out from it’s more expensive BRAVIA cousins is the ability to let you play spilt screen on the same screen.
The idea behind the concept, which is now a reality, is that one pair of glasses will let you see one image, while a second pair of glasses a second image on the same screen.
The technology works by splitting the 3D signal (which is two images anyway) and only showing what the left eye would normally see to one set of glasses and the other to the right set.
While that means that you’ll only get a 2D image in that mode, it will be Full HD thanks to the active shutter technology.
If all that sounds complicated, in practice it isn’t, and by simply physically switching glasses you can see what your fellow gamer can see and vice versa.
But if you think that’s coming to your big state of the art 3D TV in your living room think again.
Sony tell us that even though we’ve personally seen it working on a standard 3D TV with a PS3 in the UK in a demo, the technology in this case has been specifically baked into this set up, and more specifically with the new glasses.