Cozy Up with a Dual-View TV for Valentine’s Day?
published onFebruary 14, 2012

It’s the ultimate in together-ness… sort of.

We’ve all been there. You want to watch The Walking Dead and your wife or girlfriend wants to tune in to Desperate Housewives. Men have ended the night sleeping on the couch for less. But Samsung (and a handful of other HDTV manufacturers, including LG and Sony) has come up with a possible solution.

The new dual-view OLED HDTVs leverage 3D viewing technology to actually show two full-screen pictures at the same time, depending on which “channel” you choose on the headsets. Yes, you need special, 3D-style active shutter glasses to use the technology, and the headsets also include speakers for audio.

Samsung showcased the new 55-inch HDTV screens at CES, and it was definitely some of the coolest technology amongst aisles and aisles of very cool stuff.

There are a few drawbacks:

1 – the glasses… it’s always back to the glasses, which have been a major stumbling block to 3D HDTVs taking off like they could

2 – the sound quality you’ll get from the itty-bitty headset speakers just isn’t going to cut it for home theater audiophiles who want an immersive surround sound experience

3 – It’s unclear whether you’d need two separate DirecTV or cable boxes for simultaneous viewing of TV programming

Even with these drawbacks — or, let’s look at them as opportunities for improvement — the technology is pretty amazing and will have its uses.

Samsung demo’d the OLED screen by showing two simultaneous TV shows, but the biggest demand for these screens probably lies in the gaming market. No more split-screen when two players are racing or playing a first-person shooter. You get the whole screen to yourself — and so does your opponent or teammate.

And maybe, just maybe, the Samsung dual-view screen can actually eliminate some marital strife and make someone’s Valentine’s Day a little bit sweeter.