Sony prices up PlayStation telly for UK

Sony has put a price to its PlayStation TV and confirmed it will come to Blighty this autumn. The 24in active-shutter gaming 3D TV, first announced at E3 2011, brings with it a technology called "SimulView", allowing gamers to see two separate stereoscopic images, depending on which glasses they wear. Sony PlayStation 3DTV …

[thesykes]

24 inch?

Sounds a good idea in theory, two people playing the same game, without being able to see what the other person is doing, also allowing full screen view rather than split-screen.

But, 24 inches? Seems a little small to me, unless it's intended for a bedroom.

[Citizen Kaned]

agreed....

this is for spoilt teenagers in their bedrooms. no good in a lounge.

[DRendar]

Yep

I have a 24" on my work PC - it 'aint all that big nowadays

[Citizen Kaned]

ditto...

and the same one at home, that 'im looking after for them :)'

even 32" in a lounge seems small. i have a 42" in the lounge and now it feels small too!

[Natalie Gritpants]

Holy CRT Batman!

See title

[forger]

The exchange rate comparison never gets old

According to the linked in reg article it's going to be $499 in the US. Can we have an image for RIP off Britain please?

[Anonymous Coward]

what it should be

$499 is £301.85 at the moment, add on your 20% VAT

and you have... £362.22

To allow for varying exchange rates, import duties etc, probably £370ish

[Annihilator]

Plus

Don't forget to add on sales tax in the US (average ~10% I believe) and it's $450 in real money.

Remember you're only ever able to compare the quoted US prices with the VAT-free cost in the UK.

[semprance]

Maybe it will make sense

when you have 8 of them with slightly different logos and slightly different games... TV should be separate from console. Definitely.

[MJI]

Er

It is seperate - it is a monitor designed to work with the PS3

[Peter Gathercole]

Interesting

although when you think about it, with active-shutter technology, it's a simple matter to make each set of glasses see a separate 2D image by operating each eye in the set in the pair at the same time, alternating with the other set of glasses. It's just a variation on the method of displaying a 3-D images.

If they are going to alternate 2 3-D images, that's a bit more difficult, as they would have to display 4 images, and each person's eye would only be seeing an image for 25% of the time. I suspect that this would be detectable as serious flicker by almost anybody, even if the frame rate was adjusted.

[Duncan Hothersall]

Surprising

Having read all that I was expecting a price tag somewhere north of £1k for this beastie. I'm not in the market for such a thing, but £500 does seem, well, pretty good value for this. And this is a Sony product. Quite a thing.

[killzone]

£500 would be reasonable if...

... This was a 32"+ set as you can easily pay £500 for a high quality 32" HDTV, with what I would call "decent quality" sets available at around £300. nonetheless I'm going to give this strong consideration for one of the kid's bedrooms.

[Select * From Handle]

Spectators?

I don't know about you lot but when i get together with my family/brothers/friends and if we decided to have a game of say, COD. Usually their isn't enough control pads to go around, resulting in people watching/cheering you on. i don't see how it would be possible for people to watch, i assume it would be like looking at the Scanners off "a scanner darkly"...

Although this would remove the old problem of Screen looking!

but because of the lack of spectators and the fact that you will need the specs ( i already need to ware one pair of specs to be able to see HD, wearing 3D specs over my specs is just annoying) i think i would give this a miss.

3D stylish proper specs to help people see from specsavers that can sync with multiple 3D devices, now thats something you should invent sony!

[irish donkey]

Question is?

Will the functionality be downgraded when users find a way to watch standard television on it?

[Anonymous Coward]

tempting

i was against the idea of this, as i couldn't see the point of having it as the main telly in the lounge when it's not big enough

but for that price, it'd make a decent 2nd telly purely for gaming while the S.O. watches her reality tv rubbish on the bigger tv, but we still get the spend 'quality' time in the same room together.

or for putting in the bedroom when i can't stand the reality tv shows any more and want to go play some GTA in peace.

[Annihilator]

re: tempting

Even better, surely with this tech (the shutter/two images) your missus could be watching Come Dine With Me on the same TV as you playing GTA??

I've gone quite weak at the knees at that very thought...

[GrantB]

Split Sound?

Ok, so you can have two screens showing seperate images for two gamers parked infront of the screen; I thought about ways of doing that with LCD shutters ages ago.

But how do they deal with sound? Maybe two headphone sockets but then how does the PS3 deal with splitting the output - deviding up the 5.1?

Harder to shutter two seperate sound streams via LCD googles...