3DTV Reviewer – 3DTV Reviews And Buying Guides

Archive for the ‘3D Blu-Ray’ Category

Following up their earlier announcement of their Infinia LX9900 LED 3DTV (47in and 55in screens), LG has announced a Blu-Ray 3D player… the BX580, pictured. With Sony introducing their 3DTV’s from June, it seems that LG’s 3D releases are slated for May. Although, neither are the first to the shops because Samsung are rolling theirs out this month, and Panasonic’s Viera 3DTV’s have already gone on sale in the USA at Best Buy. Here in Blighty, we’re still waiting for the first 3DTV’s to appear in shops or online.

New, more detailed specs on the Infinia LX9900 and BX580 are below… note the “glasses sold separately”. With people concerned at the price of 3D glasses, it may make sense to throw in a pair or two with the TV. From what I can tell, Panasonic and Sony 3DTV’s come with one pair of 3D glasses and Samsung 3DTV’s (when bought with their Blu Ray 3D player) come with a “free 3D kit for a limited time” which includes two pairs of 3D glasses and Blu Ray 3D Monsters vs Aliens.

Speaking of prices, this is hot off the LG UK blog press… “the 47 inch Infinia LX9900 will be priced around the £2500-£3000 mark, whilst the 55 inch will come in around £3600-£4000“.

LX9900 Product specs:

•Infinia Design
•Ultra slim depth – 3.16 cm
•1cm frame
•960 LED lights within 55’ model
•864 LED lights within 47’ model
•Full HD 1080p
•3DTV (active)
•Built in Freeview HD
•TruMotion 400Hz
•10,000,000:1 Dynamic contrast ratio
•Intelligent Sensor
•Invisible Speaker (10w + 10w)
•Netcast (YouTube, Accu Weather, Picasa)
•Eco Flower
•Wireless AV link
•Bluetooth
•DLNA
•USB 2.0 (DivX HD, MP3, Jpeg play)
•4XHDMI
•Glasses sold separately

BX580 Product Specs

•3D Blu-ray playback
•HDMI version 1.4
•WIFI technology
•DLNA to connect to your home network
•External HDD playback
•NetCast to access YouTube, weather reports and online photos
•Gracenotes to get more information about your music
•USB connection – for playing movies, music and videos

I thought this was kind of interesting… an amateur review of the Sony BDP-S470. The guy doesn’t have a 3DTV (yet), the BDP-S470 requires a firmware update to play 3D content and there’s no 3D content anyway, so he only goes through other aspects of what you get with this first generation Blu Ray 3D player.

He seems impressed at the amount of content available through Video on Demand via the Internet connection, and the speed with which the content was accessible. Speaking of speed, he mentions that the load time for a Blu Ray disc was about 15 seconds compared to about 5 minutes for his old Blu Ray player and just over 1 minute for his PS3 slim, which is a big improvement. He also shows how the iphone tv remote app can control the Blu Ray player. In part two he shows the use of Netflix to watch streaming HD on the TV using his 8-10Mb Internet connection. If you have a slower connection, streaming HD may not be possible.

Part One: (Caution: language used may not suit everyone)

Part Two:

You want the good news? Ok… we know the British release date for Monsters Vs Aliens on Blu-Ray 3D… and it’s very, very soon… like March 2010!

I’m guessing you want the bad news? Aww, ok… the bad news is that to get your hands on the Blu-Ray 3D of Monsters Vs Aliens, you’ll have to buy a telly! Specifically, you’ll have to buy a Samsung TV or Blu-ray player. Unfortunately, the review of the Samsung 40C7000 3DTV wasn’t particularly complimentary, and even said it would still be a good telly if you left the 3D glasses to gather dust, which kinda misses the point if you ask me!

Samsung has other LED HDTV’s, the C8000′s and C79000′s (which go up to 63 inches) as well as non-LED LCD’s (its 750 series, which go up to 65 inches!) and a plasma range, the PDP7000 TV’s. The 3D models will most likely all require the active shutter glasses so as to cope with 1080p resolution in 3D.

The Sony BDP-S470 Blu Ray 3D player has been spotted on the shelves of Best Buy, in the USA. It’s also available for purchase at Amazon.com.

Unfortunately, there’s no news of it being spotted at Tesco, and it’s not available at Amazon.co.uk yet.

If you happen to spot a Blu-Ray 3D player in the wild in the UK, send us a piccy and your name for instant fame and glory!

More info on Sony Blu Ray 3D players can be found here.

(pic from formatwarcentral.com)

You don’t, technically, need an HDMI 1.4 cable to watch 3D content. After all, if existing Sky HD boxes can transmit 3D content (1080i), and Sony’s PS3 can be firmware upgraded to show 3D content (1080i), then a 1.4 HDMI cable isn’t essential for 3D viewing from those sources. However, if you want to connect your devices up using the new Ethernet ability you’ll need the HDMI 1.4 and, if you intend to watch Blu-Ray 3D in 1080p you’ll need the bandwidth afforded by “high speed” HDMI 1.4 cables. So, here are some HDMI 1.4 cables available at Amazon…

Monster M1000 HDMI Cable 1.22m Monster Cable

Cablesson HDMI 1.4 Cable