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Do not adjust your sets

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Ticket sales for 3-D movies at Kowloon's three IMAX cinemas are booming, but sales of 3-D televisions for the home have been slower than expected. Why? Are the bulky 3-D glasses, which nobody complains about in cinemas, unacceptable in the home? Or are most consumers only just getting around to buying their first high-definition television?

Research suggests that 3-D television will only take off when the glasses-free 'multiview' 3-D television arrives - and we've just seen the very first one.

The ZL2 from Toshiba measures 55 inches and will go on sale in Japan in December for about HK$85,000. There are nine views, or '3-D corridors' in front of the television, from where a convincing effect can be seen; but stand anywhere else and an image full of flicker and double images is the result. In our demo, three distinct 'sweet-spots' were physically marked on the floor with carpet tape in front of the ZL2.

Besides the problem of getting children to sit still for the duration of a movie, this is one 3-D television that's probably best watched alone. It performs much better in a total blackout, and includes face-tracking technology that detects a single viewer's position, and adjusts the 'lenslets' in the screen to create the finest quality 3-D effect.

It may not offer the last word in picture quality - it gave me a headache after a few minutes - but successful gadgets tend to be convenient rather than top quality. We're not convinced the ZL2 is either.

Paul Gray, director of European television research for the British analyst firm DisplaySearch, doesn't think the product is quite ready.

'It looks as though multiview technology is about five years away, although there will be some flagship products earlier,' he says, referencing not only the ZL2, but also 12-inch and 20-inch versions released by Toshiba in Japan late last year.

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