The IFA 2011 in Berlin (a famous german annual expo for new hifi and video devices)
brought up a new beauty concerning 3D TV. What has been limited to Asia before finally
seems to hit stores in Europe also. The Toshiba ZL2 is not only a glasses-free 3D TV, it
also supports Quadruple-HD (3840×2160) resolution.

Although there’s no video material that uses this native resolution, it shows what is possible today.

The idea that QuadrupeHD might become available via digitalTV and media such as Bluray is still far away but hey, the TV is already available.
is also onboard with the difference that you don’t need glasses anymore. the TV determines where you sit and tries to render the pictures on the screen in that way, that you will see a 3D effect. It will have to be tested by different magazines that test video hardware, such as AreaDVD (a german test portal).

Although HDMI can only process 3840×2160 (2160p) with 24Hz, the question is, what prerequisites are needed to process this resolution in 60Hz also.
Maybe HDMI 1.5 has to be released and maybe it’ll be able to cope with this resolution and refresh rate as well!
While HDMI 1.4a seems already 4K compatible, we speak of 8MPixels here (8’294’400 pixels to be exact). This means twice the data rate as today!

Imagine your computer connected to that beast! Currently there’s no single graphics card that can deal with such immense resolutions at full detail at 60 Hz.
However I doubt, that it will take long until AMD and NVidia throw the nextGen-Graphics cards on us which are able to cope with such resolutions.

Until then, Internet and Video-on-Demand have to be furthermore improved in order to present video material in QHD! No one buys a highend device when it is unsure that the content for it can be delivered.

The TV itself looks fine but is very expensive. Toshiba mentionned an MSRP of 7’999 EUR, not expensive for a next-gen device tho, but I’d invest in a normal FHD device that costs a fraction of the presented TV but can easily cope with today’s video formats.

Also the small bezel design has finally approached Toshiba. I like it when the TV picture ain’t framed by a thick black border.

What I like is a mystic monolithic design as LG’s 55LX9500 has to offer. Small bezel, and when it’s off, it looks like a monolith!