When a 3D TV shows up at your doorstep, it’s hard to refuse. LG Australia ran a competition this month that asked various Aussie bloggers to try out a new 3D Cinema TV along with coupons to purchase movies and drinks to just have fun with friends. The videos with the most views also get to keep the TV and win another one to give away.
Needless to say, challenge accepted.
Having experienced 3D before in both cinemas and other brand TVs, I was genuinely curious how good the 3D would be on this device since it utilizes passive technology – glasses are just polarized filters and do not require batteries.
It turns out to be actually quite impressive for real 3D content, some of what we tried include TRON: Legacy 3D Blu-Ray, Kinect Star Wars and Halo Anniversary Edition. For B-grade 3D material (automatically converted, sample material), the effect was much less convincing.
It hadn’t occurred to me the XBOX 360 supported 3D games until just a couple of days ago – Kinect Star Wars works quite well. Speaking of which, it’s hard to top the dancing to the Star Wars dancing game with 3D glasses on.
There’s also a cool “Dual-Play” feature that enables two special glasses to shows two different images to two different players in a split-view game. This could finally end the screen-cheating debate that dates all the way back to Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64.
The LG Cinema TV also includes the SmartTV technology which enables native WiFi network access to power built-in apps and third-party apps which adds quite an interesting set of features to the TV. The most interesting of which is the web browser which is quite capable with modern websites. The “Wii-like” motion controller the TV comes with actually makes navigation quite easy compared to a standard controller.
Having direct access to free TV show streaming services from free-to-air TV stations like Yahoo7, ABC and SBS is convenient. If TV isn’t your thing, then there’s also YouTube, Twitter and even Facebook. The LG Smart World app store also has a bunch of simple games and interactive content to keep kids entertained like “If You’re Happy and You Know it” singalongs.
The LG TV in the video is a 47LM8600 which retails for about AUD$2799.
Special thanks to Rory McNeice for being the star of the video and Dinesh George for his editing work.
Incidentally, Soniq is selling the LG passive 3D technology in cut-price TVs in Australia. I was able to get a 42 inch TV with the LG cinema 3d panel for AUD (USD) $399: very impressive – especially when complemented with my new HTPC! (Thanks Long!)