Nikon Corp and Nikon Imaging Japan Inc will start a service of converting a normal image into 3D and displaying it on a digital photo frame viewable with the naked eye.

The announcement was made Oct 26, 2010, and the service, “my Picturetown 3D,” will be launched in early December 2010 in Japan.

The service will be provided as part of Nikon’s “my Picturetown” service, which enables to share and store image files on the Internet. 2D images converted into 3D on the my Picturetown can be displayed on the “NF-300i,” a digital photo frame dedicated to the my Picturetown 3D service.

It is possible to share 3D images among digital photo frames. And Nikon will deliver 3D image and video contents to the NF-300i.

The NF-300i has a 7.2-inch LCD panel and lenticular lenses on it. 3D images can be viewed within a distance of about 1m. The resolutions of 2D and 3D images are both 800 x 600. As external interfaces, it has an Ethernet port supporting 100Base-TX, a USB port and a wireless LAN capability compatible with IEEE802.11b/g.

The NF-300i comes with Android (ver 2.1) as a software platform and a dedicated application software that enables to show 2D and 3D images and play movies.

The fee for the service is ¥1,995 (approx US$24.49) per month or ¥19,950 per year including rent for the NF-300i and a fee for converting up to three 2D images into 3D per month. Nikon does not intend to sell the digital photo frame separately.

(Thanks, Thomas Edwards, Fox, for the story)

The NF-300i, a dedicated digital photo frame on which 3D images can be viewed with the naked eye

by Tomohisa Takei, Nikkei Electronics

original post: http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20101027/186890/