New-ish
The theme of Computex 2010 so far has definitely been tablets, but NVIDIA has been banging-on about these since the start of the year at CES. So with tablets already thoroughly covered, NVIDIA decided to focus on its 3D technology at its Computex press event, but it's not clear how much more news there is in that direction.
"3D is hot," insisted the NVIDIA press release, before going on to recap on how aroused everyone got about Avatar. The problem now, it seems, is that we're not sure how to bring this 3D experience home. Enter the ‘3D PC', which NVIDIA is claiming as a new category of PC being debuted at Computex by itself and an ecosystem of partners.
A 3D PC is then defined as one that comes with 3D active shutter glasses, a 120 Hz 3D-capable display and a graphics card capable of handing the job (as well as the right drivers, of course). The thing is, all three of these things have been available for quite some time, and MSI was demonstrating a 3D PC running on ATI graphics at this year's CeBIT, so what's the news?
If anything it's probably a formalisation of the partner ecosystem required to deliver a 3D PC as a complete and, ideally, functioning system. A bunch of partner spokespeople were call upon to eulogise about the category. Here's what they had to say.
"ASUS has a strong track record of pioneering new categories of PCs, as we did with the netbook," said Jerry Shen, CEO of ASUS. "Now ASUS is very bullish on developing the 3D PC category by shipping notebooks, desktops and an all-in-one PC equipped with NVIDIA 3D Vision. We believe that all entertainment-based PCs will become 3D capable within a few years."
"People wondering where the cool 3D content is, need to look no further than a 3D PC," said Hidehito Murato, chief marketing executive at Toshiba. "We embrace the advent of 3D Vision-based notebooks which allows users to go 3D 'on the go'. This is by far, one of the most captivating technologies ever introduced on the PC and has uses for practically every type of digital entertainment. The era of 3D is upon us!"
"The 3D PC will accelerate the development of stereoscopic 3D as it brings a wealth of 3D content, games, movies, photos and the internet -into the 3D ecosystem," said Eisuke Tsuyuzaki, CTO, Panasonic North America. "Now with the HDMI 1.4 standard, 3D PC content can be easily enjoyed on large-screen plasma Full HD 3D TVs, whose fast refresh rates and deep black levels make for a more immersive and magical gaming experience."
NVIDIA also announced it is demonstrating 3D video being streamed live over the Internet using Microsoft Silverlight and IIS Smooth Streaming technology. We can presumably expect to see some of these complete 3D PC systems coming to the market soon.
