LAS VEGAS — Of all the products on display at CES 2013, Samsung's dual-view OLED TV has the largest cool-to-perplexing ratio. Yes, it's incredible that two people can look at the same screen and watch totally different programs, but why would anyone ever want to do that?
Conflicts over what to watch on TV are often sorted in one of three ways:
- Time-shift one of the programs via a DVR (or, going way back, videotape), and have the other person watch later.
- Get a second TV and flip a coin to see who goes to the other room.
- Fight it out.
So why have a dual-view TV? A couple of reasons: If one TV in the home is clearly "the best" screen, the second TV may not be the best option, and sometimes schedules simply don't permit watching things later. Also, if one screen is the only place where a device resides (say, a game console), it may be difficult to move to another room.
The gaming scenario is actually one of the best examples of a dual-view use case. Think two gamers playing together (or against each other) in a title like Call of Duty. Often this kind of scenario is handled with split-screens, but what if the two players could just don glasses to see their own full-screen POV — on the same screen?
That would be awesome, but it would be only as good as the technology allows. I took a brief eyes-on look at Samsung's dual-view TV at CES, and if it becomes a product, there's nothing to worry about on the execution.
Checking out two (count 'em!) 3D signals on the set, each looked super-sharp.Samsung says the TV is capable of delivering two separate views at full HD (1080p), and that definitely came across. The TV showed the hovering droplets of a slow-motion champagne uncorking (it was a demo reel) vividly.
You need to wear special glasses (see the pic below) to see one signal or the other (to the naked eye, the picture looks terribly ghosted). Pushing a button on the top, the glasses toggle between the two signals quickly. There was sometimes a slight delay for the audio to catch up, but nothing major.
The audio, however, was really terrible, but that's easily fixable with better earphones. The demo was a proof-of-concept, after all, and any final product would doubtless improve details like this. Though, for anyone who spent a lot of money on a great speaker system, relegating audio to glasses/headphones would really hurt.
Samsung's dual-view OLED set may seem like a silly idea at first glance, but I wouldn't complain about it becoming a real product. There would be the whole question of formatting and software support, but the benefits, especially for gaming, could be well worth it.
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