Dubai: Capitalising on the latest three-dimensional craze spurred by the hugely successful movie Avatar, two brothers running a Dubai-based electronics company say they have released the world's first portable 3-D movie player that does not require special glasses.
Dubai-born brothers Sharad and Rohit Bachani say their UAE-based company Merlin has launched its new Pocket Theatre 3D on big-named store shelves across the country.
"Glasses-free 3-D — also known as auto-stereoscopic 3-D is a technology that promises to change the way people view 3D content," Rohit, sales and marketing head of Merlin, told Gulf News.
"The Merlin 3D player incorporates a high-end digital LCD display with a parallax barrier to ensure realistic 3D viewing without the need for any special glasses. Aside from being very convenient, this also greatly reduces the cost of bringing 3-D to the user as the glasses can be quite costly."
After six months of product research, Merlin is building the user-friendly unit in partnership with original equipment manufacturers.
"The Merlin Pocket Theatre 3D is great for watching 3-D movies like Avatar or photos taken with a 3-D camera like the new Fujifilm or the Merlin 3D camera launching next month," Rohit said. "But it's also great for watching regular 2-D movies and photos. The Merlin 3D player has a built in auto convert feature that allows you to watch any regular movie or image in 3-D."
Merlin earned a nomination last month in the Middle East Retail Academy 2010 Awards in the category of Middle East Digital Lifestyle Brand of the Year. Merlin was the only local company to vie for the award.
Weighing less than 250 grammes, the unit retails across the UAE for Dh1,500.
Would you buy this technology from an unknown, home-grown brand? Or would you wait for an established brand to launch a similar product? Is 3D the future of visual media?
