Keisoku Giken 4K-3D Monitor

OK, this is interesting. In the rear of the Central Hall at NAB — if you’re reading this from the show on Thursday morning, you have time to go back there and check it out — the Japanese company Keisoku Giken (KG) is showing the oddest beast I saw at NAB this year. The company’s 27.8-inch 4K-3D monitor uses two separate LCD panels and the “half-mirror method” to display a 3840×2160 3D image. In other words, it’s sort of like a beamsplitter rig for two displays instead of two cameras.


When you put on a pair of passive 3D glasses, directing the differently polarized light from each monitor to the corresponding eye, you see the resulting image in glorious 3D and at full resolution — without the eyestrain sometimes associated with active-shutter glasses or the resolution hit taken by other passive systems, which only display half-resolution images to each eye.

The picture is gorgeous, with a fine level of detail that fools the eye, making you feel like you’re peering into a tiny, moving diorama. KG sells the product worldwide while Korean partner Red Rover, which has a patent on the structure, is the U.S. reseller.

The companies hope the screen will find a home in the U.S. post-production market, but it’s a fairly unwieldy beast, especially compared to the flat screens that have become commonplace in the post-CRT era. If you want to take one home with you, you’ll have to wait until at least this summer — and you’ll be shelling out $120,000. More info is in KG’s press release.