You need to see it to believe it folks. Yesterday, Sony Philippines pulled out a number of wildcards from Japan. Apart from featuring the new VAIO Duo 11 and VAIO Tap 20 both running on Windows 8, they were also the first to showcase an 84-inch 4K television which will be made available to the (opulent) public for the holidays. The XBR-84X900 is a wonder that goes (waaaay!) over and beyond the “traditional” 1080p resolution. This 4k TV comes with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 and if those numbers mean nothing to you, it simply means that if you’re watching great blu-ray movies on your 40″ or 60″ LED TV, imagine even better “pop out” quality on a bigger 84-incher.
To be honest I was a tad skeptical with 4k quality as you will need a 4k camera to shoot this type of video and this type of technology is nowhere in the mainstream (a 4k camera was used to shoot parts of the Red Bull Stratos jump last weekend). So what happened was I asked the demo guy to show me what a 1080p video looked like when upscaled to 4k resolution. I think the Sony guys knew people would be asking for this (and for good reason) so he showed me some movie trailers from his USB drive. Result: FLOORED. This was great upscaling to 4k resolution. I noticed some lines and flickers on the brights but these were easily forgivable.
Another feature I was glad to demo was the two-player shared screen on the PS3 (named: SimulView Technology). I’ve seen this technology demo-ed on several 3D TV’s on YouTube but never in the flesh. What it essentially is: remember split screen view for 2 players? Where one guy hogs the top part of the screen and player 2 hogs the bottom? Well, using 3D glasses, player 1 only sees the overlay for the first player while player 2 sees the overlay for the other pair of glasses. Two images are being displayed on the 84-inch screen but the 3D glasses separates them into two different experiences. Amazing. It works on a limited number of PS3 games as of late.
So, anyone with PHP 1.2 million to shell out for the holidays?
