By WILLA PLANK, August 23, 2010

With growing interest in three-dimensional movies, videogames and TV, it’s no surprise that computer makers now offer 3-D laptops.

I tried the Toshiba Satellite A665-3DV, which went on sale in June for $1,599.99, several hundred dollars more than a similar laptop without 3-D. The 15.6-inch screen laptop offers 4GB of DDR3 memory, 640 GB of storage, Windows 7 Home Premium, a player for 3-D Blu-ray discs and a graphics card from Nvidia.
Photos, videos and games can be viewed in 3-D on the laptop — but they require special glasses, just like at movie theaters. The Toshiba Satellite comes with a pair of Nvidia active shutter glasses.

How do the glasses work? Each of your eyes views a different perspective, which your brain combines to create depth. Three-D technology tries to simulate this phenomenon when looking at a flat surface, to create an illusion of depth.

The Nvidia glasses achieve this by shuttering the left eye to deliver one frame to the right eye, then shuttering the right eye while opening the left. The glasses synchronize with the refresh cycle of your computer through an infrared emitter. The Toshiba refreshes 120 frames per second, so each side of the glasses shutters 60 times a second.

First, I tried the action-adventure game “Batman: Arkham Asylum” by Eidos Interactive Ltd. Although the colors of the game were dark, the graphics were very vibrant and clear. There was a lot of depth between the characters and the background. I wore headphones, and the glasses focused my vision entirely on the game, making the experience highly immersive. This was especially true for some of the action fight scenes, in which the characters appeared large and close to me.

Next, I played “James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game” by Ubisoft, a take on the 3-D movie. The graphics weren’t as advanced as “Batman,” but the game play was still pretty good in 3-D. There was realistic depth between the main character, other characters and the background.

Both “Batman” and “Avatar” were designed to be viewed in 3-D. But Nvidia representatives say most games released in the past three years will become 3-D when played on the Toshiba laptop and viewed through the Nvidia 3-D video player and glasses because they are “intrinsically 3-D in nature by design.”

I watched a clip of the 2010 Masters golf tournament, which was streamed on the Internet in 3-D. The golfers and green looked pretty bright and detailed, but not as crisp and sharp as high-definition TV. The video appeared to slow down and blur during fast action, such as a golf ball in the air. A NASCAR clip that was powered by Nvidia’s technology also appeared very pixilated and fuzzy. Crowd shots were very blurry and I couldn’t make out anyone.

I also noticed that I occasionally lost the 3-D effect entirely at times, and I could see a flash of light from the corner of my eye. Nvidia said that the glasses may stop working briefly if the battery is weak, or if I turn my back from the infrared emitter that synchronizes the glasses to the laptop. Flashing could be caused by interference from fluorescent lighting.

Additionally, because the glasses are darkened, my eyes strained to see the laptop screen when watching in rooms with low light.

But the biggest drawback for the Toshiba Satellite and Nvidia glasses is the lack of specially made 3-D content. For now, there are only a few 3-D Blu-Ray discs available, and some can only be bought as bundles with 3-D TVs. YouTube and other video sites have some 3-D clips, but they run on Flash, which is not compatible with the Nvidia player, so they don’t work on the Satellite A665-3DV.

There is a 3-D photo viewer on the laptop, but it only works with photos taken with a special 3-D camera like the Fujifilm FinePix REAL 3D W1. Overall, watching content not specially made for 3-D, such as the sports clips, was underwhelming.

Is the Toshiba Satellite A665-3DV worth it? I enjoyed playing the specially designed 3-D games, which took the gaming experience to a whole new dimension. But with 3-D entertainment still just catching on at movie theaters and TVs, a 3-D laptop seems a bit premature. Until there is more mainstream content available in 3-D, it’s not worth the investment.

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