CES 2010: Tosh's new TV set will convert 2D broadcasts to 3D.
There's a fairly big problem with 3D televisions: a limited amount of 3D-ready content you can view. Toshiba figures the solution to this problem is to whack a super-powerful processor into your television and convert 2D content to 3D as you watch it.
Toshiba's Cell TV project, outlined at its CES 2010 press conference, has that fairly ambitious goal in mind. The ambition is matched by an as yet-unspecified price or release date (though it is promised for 2010 in North America), and a fairly chunky screen real estate requirement: the smallest model measures 55 inch.
The underlying 8-core Cell processor technology was jointly developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba, and was announced in Japan late last year. Toshiba TV vice president Scott Ramirez said that the processor is ten times more powerful than a typical desktop PC, and (perhaps more relevantly in this context) 143 times more powerful than a standard television. "The possibilities of what we can do with this chip are really endless," he said. "We're going to take anything you watch and you can watch it in 3D." With predictable capital abuse, the process has been branded TriVector 2D to 3D Conversion.
Even if you don't fancy a 3D version of A Current Affair, a Cell-based TV can also be used to improve the appearance of existing video footage. "Super resolution technology will take your video content that is not 1080p and make it look 1080p It actually generates pixels that aren't there," Ramirez said. With Internet video, which often isn't even SD quality, the system applies noise cancelling algorithms before upscaling.