Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Sharp Unveils 3-D-Shooting Cellphone Camera











Sharp 3-D HD Camera Module

Today Sharp announced plans that could turn your cellphone into a 3-D-shooting mini film studio as early as next year. The company today unveiled a mobile-phone 3-D camera capable of shooting in high def.

The module captures 720p stereoscopic (two-eyed) video and is only about two inches wide. To put that in perspective: Fuji's 3-D camera uses much larger, heavier sensors and only records standard-def video.

The camera on its own, though, needs help to produce a 3-D image. As with a 3-D TV or Blu-ray player, there needs to be an integrated circuit capable of decoding the stereoscopic signal, converting file formats, and then sending the information to a 3-D-ready display. Oh, yeah, Sharp has one of those, too: the glasses-less kind. In March, the company announced a small-format screen consisting of two stacked LCD screens; the screen on top only displays thin vertical black lines, which block half of the image at a time, so that your right and left eyes only see their own angles. The meshing of the two images is your brain's job.

It's been rumored for a while now that Sharp's screen will be what makes Mario pop on the forthcoming 3-D Nintendo DS.

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