UK Toshiba Cell TV will convert 2D footage to 3D

Posted on 10 Feb 2010 at 17:15

Toshiba has announced that the UK version of its powerful Cell TV will convert existing 2D footage into 3D.

The TV gets its name from the Cell processor used in the external box that connects to the TV. This eight-core 3.2GHz chip is in charge of upscaling, recording TV from multiple channels and now converting footage to 3D. It will do this by analysing the 2D image for a range of factors including variance in contrast to work out different layers in the image, calculating foreground and background objects.

A Toshiba spokesperson told us that the conversion "probably won't be perfect" but there will be "very little errors".

We've been told that the Cell TV will use most of the technologies available in the current Japanese retail version. So, you can expect an LED backlight with 512 zones for local dimming (current Toshiba LED-backlit TVs have just 96 zones), giving a dynamic contrast ration of 9,000,000:1.

The Japanese model ships with 3TB of hard disk space, which can be used to record up to eight channels of HD footage using the eight built-in TV tuners. We're unlikely to see that number of tuners in the UK version, although final specifications have yet to be ratified.

Final pricing and a release date for the UK Cell TV have yet to be announced, but you can bet that it's going to be expensive.

Author: David Ludlow

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