Glasses Free 3D In-Flight & In-Car Entertainment Nearer

Apr 25, 2011 2 Comments by Jonathan Tustain

Glasses free 3D specialists MasterImage 3D has told The Hollywood Reporter that it is in advanced talks with airlines and car makers to license their technology for the purposes of 3D inflight entertainment and luxury car 3D systems for back seat passengers.

Speaking to Hollywood Reporter, Executive VP and GM of 3D Display at MasterImage Roy Taylor confirmed that there is a great deal of interest and said "Most models of cars will also have Wifi — that means that car owners will have the ability to download 3D movies and (passengers could) watch them on a trip.”

He would not announce what airlines or car makers the company is in discussions with but Roy Taylor did say it would be about 2.5 – 3 years before passengers will be watching 3D movies 30,000 high in the sky.

3D inflight entertainment is highly technically feasible. Seat back televisions in airlines are for single viewing and are usually of a reasonably small size; two factors that make current glasses free 3D viewing methods viable. This could even provide a benefit to restrictive economy travel –at least your head would remain in the viewing zone!

Inflight entertainment is one way an airline can differentiate itself from another so it is inevitable that major airlines who already invest considerable money into their I.F.E. systems such as Singapore Airlines and Emirates (the Emirates I.C.E system now offers over 1200 channels of entertainment!), would consider 3D as another way to show innovation.

It would also provide 3D content producers another distribution stream. Inflight entertainment and other forms of ‘non-theactrical’ entertainment can bring in much needed license fee revenue and 3D could add to this. Who knows, we could also be playing 3DS style games at 550 MPH whilst nibbling pretzels and wine!

Masterimage 3D offers “cell-matrix parallax barrier’ technology to third parties and it is MasterImage 3D technology that can be found in the Hitashi Wooo 3D phone. It is said to be a vast improvement on the type of 3D technology deployed in the Nintendo 3DS and HTC EVO 3D phone although 3DFocus.co.uk can't verify this. The company also received a $15 million injection from Samsung.

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