Video Game Deals

Heartrate Monitor Watches from MIO for cheap from Groupon

On Oct 19, 2011 10:07 am, by steve

Here’s a deal and a half from Groupon. That’s right, Groupon, the folks who bring you half price restaurants and dance lessons and pottery making classes.

mio heart rate monitor

For $39, you can get a Motiva Heart Rate Watch that sells on Amazon for $64.22 and retails for $119.99. For $25, you can get a MIO Heart Pro watch that sells on Amazon for $42.03 and retails for $69.99.

Reviews are decidedly mixed, but if you’re just looking for something quick to use with your Wii workouts that doesn’t require pesky chest straps, you can’t go wrong with this. But jump on it while you can, as the dreaded “limited quantity available” message is already up!

Wii Fitness Game Reviews

Review of Get Fit with Mel B for Wii

On Oct 04, 2011 12:06 am, by steve
Cyberbike by
Platform: Wii
Rated:E
4 of 5 stars – “Decent aerobic fitness game led by none other than Scary Spice.”
by ,
Written on October 4, 2011

Get Fit with Mel B was a game originally released for the Playstation Move back in October 2010. When I reviewed it for our sister site PS3Fitness.Com, I found it to be a great and innovative fitness title for the PS3.

In a bit of a reversal from the norm, the PS3 version was ported to the Wii. The Wii version was released last week. Personally, I think this is a brilliant move by the publisher, as there is definitely a shortage of Wii fitness games right now (only Ubisoft is making a push into active gaming with the upcoming Just Dance 3). So if Get Fit with Mel B is worth its salt, it may be a huge hit for Christmas 2011.

For those who don’t know, Mel B. is better known to us old-timers as “Scary Spice”. You know, the only Spice Girl who you felt could (and would) beat you up after spicing up your life.

Starting up the game, it asks you to verify that the time and date on the clock are correct. You’re treated to a video introduction from Mel B, which is of surprisingly good quality for the Wii. You start out by entering your name on an on-screen keyboard, telling her if you’re male or female, entering your birthdate, and entering your height. You then choose your “build” from three icons (a lot more pleasant than entering your weight), and then tell her if there are any foods you don’t eat (by choosing from icons representing pork, beef, fish, etc.).

You can then choose a “workout location” from the following choices: Central Park, The Maldives, Infinity Pool, Forest Meadow, Apartment, or Luxury Yacht. I chose Central Park (which incidentally doesn’t look a thing like Central Park).

You then select a goal. You first choose a goal category from one of the following:

  • General Health
  • Lifestyle (fitness to make you feel better in everyday life)
  • Special Occasions (exercises to get you ready for a big event coming up in your life like a wedding)
  • Sports and Activities (exercises that help boost your performance in specific sports)
  • Shape (working out different parts of your body).

Choosing a category will show you goals within the category. For example, under General Health you have the choices of Weight Loss, Detox, Lower Cholestrol, or Healthy Heart.

Depending on whether you’re male or female you may see different choices for each category (for example, men will see “Six Pack for Summer” or “Slim Down for a Suit” under “Special Occasions”, while women will see “Bikini Fit”, “Drop a Dress Size”, “Red Carpet Ready”, “New Mom”, “Get Fit for an Active Holiday”). Other categories are the same for men and women (for example, under “Lifestyle”, you can choose “All Day Energy”, “De-Stress”, or “Keep up with the Kids”; under “Sports” you can choose general sports, golf, tennis, skiing, or dance).

You can choose up to two goals. I chose “weight loss”, and as a secondary goal I chose “De-Stress”. You then choose whether you want to work on both goals equally or one more than the other (I chose 80-20).

Choosing goals will customize the types of workouts you get later on in the game. In all honesty, I think this is more smoke-and-mirrors than anything else…there seem to be a pretty finite set of exercises, so there is going to be a lot of overlap from one workout to another.

Next, you can choose optional equipment to use, something we haven’t seen on a Wii exercise game since the original My Fitness Coach. You can choose to include a Fitball, a Resistance Band, Wrist Weights, or Ankle Weights in your workout. I went with the Resistance Band.

The next step is calibrating the Balance Board. Once this is done you’ll see a message:

I’ll schedule a different workout for you each day. You can just choose “Today’s workout” each day if you want to stick to the schedule, or you can use “Choose workout” to pick one of the types.

The next screen is a menu selector that’s reminiscent of “My Fitness Coach 2”. This is no accident, as that game had been developed by Lightning Fish games and had been called “NewU Fitness First: Personal Trainer” in the UK. However, when the game was brought to the United States, the publisher, Ubisoft, foolishly chose to change the name to try to “cash in” on the success of My Fitness Coach. But because the new game was completely different, fans of the original were disappointed and felt they’d been misled (which, in fact, they had been). They never gave NewU a chance. Happily, Deep Silver, the new publisher of Get Fit with Mel B in the US, was smart enough to keep the original name.

Ironically, Get Fit with Mel B feels in many ways like the true sequel to My Fitness Coach that we’ve been waiting so many years for. As with that game, you can choose your workout environment (which is a photorealistic setting, not a cartoon), you can choose your own equipment to work with, you can watch your trainer make the exact moves (again, as a video instead of a cartoon), and your workouts consist of reps of many different activities strung together. You really feel like Mel B is your own “personal trainer”. I’d go so far as to say that if you were a fan of My Fitness Coach and have been disappointed by wannabes (no pun intended) like Jillian Michaels, 10 Minute Solution, or Zumba Fitness, you’ll feel like you’ve come home with Get Fit with Mel B.

The Menu options are extremely simple. They are:

1) Today’s Workout: This takes you right into each day’s scheduled workout, which is a different workout each day based on the goals that you selected.

2) Choose Workout: This gives you a couple more options:

–        Workout. You choose between standardized “Fitness” and “Aerobics” workouts, customizing the length of the workout.

If you choose “Fitness”, a standard workout comprised of fitness activities is customized to your goals and put together. You’ll see a breakdown of each of the individual fitness activities (mine consisted of 15-20 reps of push ups, see saws, crunches, jumping jacks, hip swings, squats, chest presses, tricep kick backs, and bent rows).

If you choose “Aerobics”, you can choose from step, dance, combat, cardio, or advanced cardio aerobics. Again, you’re shown a breakdown of the different aerobic moves (Advanced Cardio has you doing pulldown knees, shuffles, jumping jacks, ice skaters, swinging star jumps, toe touch jump squats, side jumps and drop squats, spring hops, twisting tuck jumps, rotating hamstring curls, jumping jacks and drop squats, jumping single leg lunges, high knee runs, and side ski jumps). And happily, all the aerobics exercises use the balance board, and use it well–if you bought a Balance Board for step aerobics but were always disappointed by Wii Fit’s weak “plink, plink, plink” step aerobics, you’ll love how they use the Balance Board here.

You can choose the length of the workout, and then just start working out.

–        Custom Workout: With custom workout, you can literally build your own workouts, choosing the fitness or aerobic move, and then choosing how many reps of each move you wish to make. It takes a while to set up, but the resulting workout is yours alone, which you can play over and over again.

There is a staggering number of individual moves which you can choose from. Here’s a list of Fitness Moves:

  1. Rotation push-ups
  2. Lateral Step-ups
  3. Drop Lunges
  4. Three point push-ups
  5. Push-ups
  6. Push-ups on knees
  7. Staggered Push-ups
  8. Cat crawl push-ups
  9. See Saws
  10. Mountain Climbers
  11. Long arm crunches
  12. Roll up crunches
  13. Squats
  14. Wide squats
  15. Lunges
  16. Side lunges
  17. Squats with kickbacks
  18. Reverse lunges
  19. Jumping jacks
  20. Lunges with running arms
  21. Ice skaters
  22. jumping lunges
  23. Canoe
  24. Twist crunches
  25. Diagonal lunges
  26. Hip swings
  27. Split Squats
  28. Prisoner Squats
  29. Cobra
  30. Flys
  31. Chest presses
  32. Bicep Curls
  33. Hammer Curls
  34. Tricep kick backs
  35. Tricep extensions
  36. Shoulder presses
  37. Shoulder scaptions
  38. Upright rows
  39. Bent rows
  40. Side raises
  41. Front raises
  42. Reverse flys
  43. Seated rows
  44. Single shoulder presses
  45. Front/side raises

…and a list of Step Aerobic Moves:

  1. Step on, step off
  2. kicks
  3. side kicks
  4. steps with turns
  5. diagonal knee raises
  6. hamstring curls
  7. Front knee raises
  8. Side steps
  9. Kicks and leg raises
  10. Hamstring curls and presses
  11. Turns with arm circles
  12. Heel digs and bicep curls
  13. Sideways high knees
  14. Front kicks with scissor arms

There’s a similar list of moves for dance, combat, cardio, and advanced cardio aerobics.

– Practice: Here, you can choose any single exercise and practice it as many times as you like. This becomes handy with some of the more complex moves.

– Challenges: If you’re up for a challenge, these are intensive groups of exercises where you’re pushed to complete a set of themed exercise routines (Dance, Abs Attack, Legs of Steel, Fighting Fit, or Cardio Test) within a certain period of time. I would have liked to see this section be a little more “fun” and interactive, but it’s really not much different than the standard workouts, just a bunch of tougher ones strung together.

3) Nutrition: Here, you’re presented with six meal plans and 140 heathy recipes. I do like the sentiment–any successful workout routine will be coupled with healthy eating. If you have your Wii hooked up to a printer or set up in the kitchen, this section will be useful to you. In other words, this section is pretty worthless. But on a positive note, the recipes do look delicious and they are all relatively short, so it might be worth you copying down by hand.

Whether you select Today’s Workout, a standard Workout, or a custom Workout, they’re all similar. You’ll see a video image of Mel B in the milieu you selected, and she’ll call out the moves you need to make and demonstrate on-screen how to do them. Unlike the Playstation or the upcoming Xbox version, there is NO support for a video camera image of yourself next to Mel B.

Having said that, I didn’t really miss having a video image all that much. The on-screen rendition of Mel B is pretty clear, and the vocal instructions she shouts are very understandable and easy to follow (unlike games like Jillian Michaels, where the on-screen Jillian would shout mundane and irrelevant platitudes).

As for the accuracy of the controls, the game does use the Balance Board for certain exercises, and for most exercises it uses the Wii MotionPlus. But by now we all know that because it’s a Wii, the controls are not the most precise in the world. Most exercises will err on the side of being generous in “awarding” you accuracy points, and of course, it’s easy to “cheat” by moving your hands but not the rest of your body. Of course, if you want to get the most out of the workout, accuracy points aren’t the most important thing–the most important thing is doing the exercise.

Long story short, if you’re looking for a simulation of a real personal trainer working out with you at a gym, in many ways Get Fit with Mel B comes closer than any other game since the original My Fitness Coach. Given the paucity of new fitness titles for Fall 2011, Get Fit with Mel B is a great choice if you’re looking for something a little new and different, especially if you enjoy cardio and aerobic sessions at the gym. 4 of 5 stars.

Video Game Deals

Today’s Amazon Gold Gox Deal is Zumba Fitness

On Sep 20, 2011 9:40 am, by steve

For today only, Zumba Fitness is available on the Amazon Gold Box for only $25.00. It comes complete with the game disc and a leg strap. Zumba Fitness 2 is coming out in November, so they may be looking to clear their inventory.

As I wrote in my review of Zumba Fitness 10 months ago, this game is not a bad one if you’re a seasoned Zumba enthusiast and want to reinforce some of the dances in the comfort of your home. On the other hand, don’t expect to learn Zumba from it, as the tutorials are far too fast and furious!

Video Game Deals

PS3 Move Games and Accessories at a steal at Gamestop

On Sep 13, 2011 3:50 am, by steve

www.gamestop.com

Not sure how long this one will last, but Gamestop has a bunch of Playstation Move games and accessories on sale icon at ridiculous prices.

Some of the intriguing PS3 Fitness Game-related discounts:

  • The Fight-Lights Out – $9.99 new
  • Fit In Six  – $19.99 new
  • Zumba Fitness – $29.99 new

Some of the cooler accessories to go on sale:

  • Playstation Move Controller – $24.99 after discount
  • Playstation Move Sharpshooter – $19.99 after discount
  • Playstation Move Navigation Controller – $14.99 after discount
  • Move Charging Station – $14.99 after discount

In order to see the discounts for the accessories, you’ll need to add them to your cart.

These are the best prices I’ve seen to date anywhere, bar none. See their PS3 Move sale page icon for more information.

Playstation 3D

The Best 3D Documentary Blu-Rays for showing off your 3D System

On Sep 09, 2011 10:43 pm, by steve

Whether you have a 3D system already or are planning on getting the Playstation one, one of the things you’ll want to think about is which 3D Blu-Rays to buy to really show off your system. After all, one of the best things about being an early adopter to technology is having people over and showing off 🙂 And with Blu-Rays costing upwards of $30-50 each, they’re not cheap. You’re going to want to invest wisely.

I’ve been doing a lot of research myself. It’s hard to look at sites like Amazon.com because half the people are setting their star rating based on the quality of the movie, and the other half based on the quality of the Blu Ray and/or the 3D. I’ve scoured a bunch of review site and I’ve listed here what I believe are the best Blu-ray discs based on the combination of both–which titles are the most entertaining AND have the best Blu-ray AND 3D quality.

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section. I’ll be updating this list periodically as new titles come out.

Best Blu-ray Documentaries

Documentaries are among the best ways to show off your Blu-ray 3D setup. This is because as good as Hollywood special effects people are, it’s hard to compete against the utter beauty and awe you’ll find on God’s green earth. Most of the best documentaries are, of course, transfer from IMAX 3D movies which were originally broadcast in science museums and IMAX theaters nationwide. As a bonus, most Blu-ray 3D titles also come with a standard DVD of the title, meaning you can pass it along to a friend or a school or play it for the kids on an old laptop or in the car.

Based on my own experience, here are the very best Blu-ray 3D documentaries. I’ve put links to purchase them on Amazon, but where I’ve found a cheaper price at another retailer, I’ve put a link there as well.

1. By most accounts, IMAX: Hubble 3D is the current king of the hill as far as 3D Blu-ray documentaries go. It was released on 3/29/11. Note that the title is a little misleading: this is not so much a Blu-ray disc of deep-space images from Hubble, but more so a documentary about the 2009 Space Shuttle Atlantis to repair the Hubble telescope.  The documentary is as educational as it is visually and audibly stunning. You’ll learn about the Hubble telescope, the design flaw that made it unusable, and the mission to essentially place a giant “contact lens” to correct its vision. There are stunningly beautiful images of the Shuttle’s launch, the spacewalks to repair the shuttle, and of course some images from Hubble itself.

Those who say this excellent movie in an IMAX theater have said that it’s the closest thing to being on the shuttle you can experience (and now that the space shuttle program has ended, it’s the only one). The cheapest place to find this Blu-ray is at Best Buy–just click here  to go to their site and search for “Hubble 3D”.

2. IMAX: The Ultimate Wave – Tahiti is another very highly rated documentary. The good news is, this isn’t an hour of surfer dudes galavanting around the South Pacific looking for waves to surf on. The documentary covers Tahiti’s beautiful landscapes, stunning underwater scenes, local culture and customs, and even some the science behind surfing before concluding with some surfing action. Throughout the 45 minute film you’re treated to stunning visuals that maximize the use of your 3D set.

Reviewers have described this title as “spectacular”, “entertaining and beautiful” and “amazing”, particularly the underwater scenes which provide as good an experience than actually going yourself (some would say even better, since you stay dry :P).
3. There are a couple underwater-related IMAX movies out there. By most accounts, the best of these is IMAX: Deep Sea. It shows the variety and beauty of natural life on the sea floor in stunning clarity and depth. Color fidelity is excellent. The film is narrated by Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet. At 40 minutes, it’s one of the shorter Blu-ray titles out there, but what it’s missing in length it makes up for in picture quality and 3D fidelity.

One reviewed marveled at how well images “popped” out of the screen, what you want good 3D to do. One reviewer did note that this title has “excessive parallax” in a few of the scenes, which may or may not affect you (parallax is when you see two objects “ghosting” each other rather than one solid image, which is different from person to person).

4, Diving back under the water,  our fourth best documentary is IMAX: Under the Sea 3D. Rather than looking at deep-ocean waters, this documentary looks at the coral reefs of Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and the Great Barrier Reef. One reviewer, a scuba diver, commented that the colors were among the most accurate he’s seen.

The documentary is narrated by Jim Carrey, but reviewers are quick to point out that he does the narration in a professional way, with an appropriate amount of humor. The documentary explores many different underwater creatures, and also brings attention to how pollution is harming the coral reefs, but ends with a hopeful note on ways that humans are trying to help.

 

5.  IMAX: Legends of Flight rounds out our list of the top 5. From a content perspective, the documentary walks viewers through the history of aviation, culminating in the development of the Boeing Dreamliner 787 and Airbus A380. While this may sound a bit dry (in fact, most reviewers say that you’ll most appreciate the film most if you’re an aviation enthusiast already), having been on the Boeing Plant Tour recently, you’ll find some of the innovations enlightening if you’ve ever flown in an airplane.

As for the 3D, most reviewers state that it is stunning. There’s a combination of computer generated imagery and actual footage, all of which pop out of your screen.

 

This list is certainly not exhaustive, but there’s clear consensus that you can’t go wrong with these, both to show off your 3D TV setup, as well as to learn a thing or two. As more documentaries come out, I’ll be updating this list.

 

Video Game Deals

Wii Balance Boards on Sale on eBay

On Sep 09, 2011 1:00 am, by steve

If you’re a Wii owner that still doesn’t have a Balance Board, eBay (through seller Buy.Com) has a great deal on Wii Fit Plus with Balance Board for only $59.99. That’s about $40 less than the retail price.

Wii Fit Plus with Balance Board on eBay

But hurry–as with all of eBay’s deals, this one can go at any time. Nintendo has announced that the Balance Board will continue to be compatible with the next-generation Wii, so this should last you for a long, long time.

PS3 Fitness Game Reviews

Review of Virtua Tennis 4 for Playstation Move

On Sep 06, 2011 10:34 pm, by steve

A few weeks ago, I reviewed Top Spin 4 from a fitness perpective. Specifically, I mentioned that as a tennis simulation, it was fantastic and a great game for tennis fans who want to use a Dualshock to play simulated matches. On the other hand, the Move capabilities were not earth-shattering. It just didn’t feel like real tennis.

Today, I’m reviewing Virtua Tennis 4, which is fitting as the US Open is going on right now as I write this. In many ways, Virtua Tennis 4 is the polar opposite of Top Spin 4. While Top Spin 4 focused on an accurate simulation of tennis and its players and stadiums (right down to the swings and the grunts of the players and paying for licensing of the names of the tournaments), Virtua Tennis doesn’t go into as much detail in that regard. On the other hand, Top Spin 4 (as its predecessors were) is a great “arcade style” tennis game. And its implementation of the Move controller make IT the reigning champion as far as a realistic-feeling tennis game for the PS3.

Using the Move controllers to control your tennis racket is remarkably realistic. Unlike Top Spin 4, you can control most strokes with the controller itself, not by mashing buttons. A slice is a slice, top spin is top spin, and a lob is a lob. To approach the net, you take a step forward. To serve, you swing the controller up and then down.

While Top Spin 4 had a “TV camera perspective” view, Virtua Tennis lets you see the play from the player’s perspective. As in real tennis, you need to hit shots when they’re about waist-high, and you can do so with heavy or light force. I guess it would have been a lot more of a workout if any running had been involved, but the system does all the running for you. Still, at higher difficulty levels, you’re going to be doing a lot of arm movement. After playing through several times, I was actually working up a little sweat.

The biggest problem with this game is that the Move can only be used in a tiny portion of the game, namely the Motion Play Mode. You can’t use Move controllers in the rest of the game, including the main “Tournament Mode” portion. My guess is that the developers didn’t know about the Move until they were already well into development, and so they only had time to fit it into a small part of the game.

This is a demo match I played between Federer and Nadal on “Easy” difficulty (you can download and play the same demo in the Playstation Store).

Overall, I’d rate this game a 3.5 out of 5 stars. Don’t get me wrong–the Move functionality is the best I’ve seen for a Tennis game on any system. But you’ll be disappointed if you pay the retail price of $49.99 for this “Playstation Move compatible” game only to find that you can only use the Move on 10% of the game. I hope for Sega’s sake that they’re working on a fully Move compatible Virtual Tennis 5 right now. As far as this one, if you’re a big tennis fan, I’d say it’s worth it once the price drops below $20.



Playstation 3D 1

Toshiba Glasses-Free Laptop (Qosmio F755-S5219) – A unbiased, detailed review (and where to find it cheap)

On Sep 06, 2011 12:20 am, by steve

Update 1/9/2012. Today my “Toshiba Service Station” popped up, and it looks like Toshiba has FINALLY added glasses-free 3D gaming support. They have the following drivers for download:

  • NVIDIA Display Driver V8.17.12.9039 for Qosmio F755 3D Models
  • TOSHIBA Blu-ray Disc Player V1.0.1.299 for Qosmio F755 3D Models
  • BIOS version 2.00 for Qosmio F755 (PQF75U)
  • Super-D IC Driver for Qosmio F755 3D Models

While I’m disappointed that it took over four months for them to deliver something that they’d promised on release date, I’m happy they finally delivered.

In other news, since the release date Amazon has also lowered its price to a more affordable $1200. As always, life sucks for us early adopters 🙂 With the exception of the battery life, this is still one of most advanced laptops you can get, with a lot of power packed in. I’m pretty much using mine as a desktop replacement.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________

While this site is dedicated to answering questions about 3D on the Playstation, since the folks visiting this site are 3D aficionados, since my last post I’ve gotten questions about the laptop I mentioned in the post, the Toshiba Qosmio F755-S5219. I’m definitely happy to share my personal experiences with it. I’ll give my initial thoughts but then focus mostly on the glasses-free 3D experience.

The Deal

First things first, the laptop retails at a rather hefty $1699.99, and at this price, as of this writing it’s already sold out at Amazon. Personally, I would recommend getting it at Best Buy. There, the price is only $1499.99, and it goes even lower if you join Best Buy’s free Reward Zone loyalty program. I’m not sure if this is a price mistake or intentional, but grab it at this price while you can!

The Review

Now for the review. The laptop itself is a high-end machine with the following features:

Processor: an Intel Core i7-2630M processor, featuring a 6MB L3 cache and 2.0GHz processor (with Turbo Boost up to 2.9 GHz). In other words, this thing is fast. I’m surfing the Web right now at speeds I’ve never seen on a laptop before, and have hardly seen on desktops.

Memory: the laptop comes with 6GB of DDR3 memory, expandable to 8GB. (There are two slots, meaning that the laptop comes shipped with one 2GB and one 4GB SDRAM memory module, and to upgrade you need to purchase another 4GB one)

Blu-Ray Disc Reader and Writer: Yes, this drive does it all–reads and writes Blu-Ray (BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE) and DVD (DLD+R, DVD-R, DVD-RAM) discs. It even supports Labelflash which allows you to burn labels directly onto the CD.

15.6″ LED-backlit TFT-LCD screen: The screen has a native resolution of 1920×1080 and a glossy finish. The colors are really brilliant, so gaming or movie watching will be a true pleasure on this thing. I’ve had 15″ laptops before, but for some reason this one looked a lot bigger, perhaps because of the color fidelity. I tried to take a picture with my digital camera, but I don’t think it really does it justice.

Hard Drive: The hard drive is a generous 750GB Serial ATA drive (5400 rpm).

Graphics Card: The built-in video card is an NVIDIA GeForce GT540M card, with 1GB of GDDR3 discrete memory and up to 3826MB total available memory. There is an HDMI connector you can use to connect to a TV, so when your Playstation is available you essentially have another 3D Blu-Ray Player. There’s also a standard monitor connector for a traditional RGB monitor.

Webcam: The built-in Webcam is 1.3 megapixels. But the most interesting thing about the Webcam is that it’s not just there for Web chatting. It’s actively used by the glasses-free 3D system to detect your face and always give you the best 3D experience even if you shift. But we’ll talk more about the 3D below.

Operating System: The system runs on Windows 7 Home Premium Edition. It’s the 64-bit version, which allows you to run both old and new Windows software.

Battery Life: The battery clocks in at only about 3 hours. This was the one thing I was a little disappointed in, although it’s perfectly understandable given the punch that this laptop delivers. I will definitely be purchasing one or two spare batteries on eBay. For your reference, the Toshiba part number you’re going to be looking for is PA3757U-1BRS.

Sound: The sound is provided by built-in harman/kardon stereo speakers. After my last laptop (a horrible Lenovo) which had speaker output that was barely louder than headphones, I was happy to be able to hear music and audio loudly and clearly. 

Other stuff: The other features of the laptop are pretty standard but comprehensive. There’s an SD card slot in the lower left hand corner of the laptop, there’s one USB 3.0 and three USB 2.0 ports (the USB 3.0 port enables you to charge USB devices even with the power off). There’s a built-in 10/100/1000 Ethernet port,  and built-in Wifi (802.11 b/g/n). It comes with 4G WiMAX built-in, which means that you can get always-on 4G WiFi to your laptop with the right plans from CLEAR or Sprint which support that standard.

How it looks and feels: This laptop is the “red Ferrari” of laptops. It’s got a bright and glossy red finish with little stylized indented “dots” providing it texture. It looks extremely stylish. Again, due to the power it packs, it’s a hefty 7.5 pounds.

qosmio u755 bright red glasses free 3d

Okay, this is the part I know you’ve all been waiting for. How does the glasses-free HD work? I’ve split my experiences into three pieces:

The Glasses Free 3D: YouTube 3D videos

My first instinct was to test it on YouTube’s 3D Channel. But when I went there and selected the option for “HTML5 Stereo View (including NVIDIA 3D Vision)”, YouTube tells me that “HTML5 Stereo View is not set up”. When I click the link to set it up, I get sent to a help page, which in turn provides me a link to go to NVIDIA’s site.

On the NVIDIA page it says “You have an outdated NVIDIA driver version. Please update your driver to Beta Release 275.27 or above”. The problem is, when I try to do that, the system then tells me this:

GeForce GT 540M Has been detected in your system. Compal%2FToshiba requires that you download the driver for your GPU from their support site.

At this point I’m getting a little miffed. I paid a lot for this laptop, mainly for the 3D experience, and I expected Toshiba would have done a lot better a job at quality control before releasing it (who in the world is going to buy this laptop and not visit YouTube?).

I called Toshiba tech support. The tech support specialist “Carla” was obviously someone in an Indian call center and very obviously had no clue how to troubleshoot this. I don’t blame her, it’s the product folks who built this laptop who really, really need to arm their customer service personnel with the right information. Without this information, poor “Carla” was left to try to troubleshoot on her own with obviously zero knowledge of how 3D works (much less glasses-free 3D).

I first told Carla that my glasses-free 3D was not working on YouTube. The first thing she said was to visit another site to try it there. She sent me to 3dvideoclips.net. Here’s the problem. 3dvideoclips.net is just a site that aggregates–you guessed it–3d YouTube videos. Worse, 3dvideoclips.net shows the default videos in anaglyph format, which is irrelevant for anyone with a 3D video card (glasses or not).

I tried to give her “hints”. I told her that on the NVIDIA site, I got the message above. But she plowed through and had me uninstall and reinstall the video driver. As I expected, it did nothing. The driver that was installed was still the same outdated 8.17.12.6807 driver dated 4/4/2011.

She had me go back to YouTube, and as I expected it still gave me the same error message. She told me to try different viewing modes, and I had to explain to her that side-by-side and anaglyph modes were irrelevant.

Finally, she told me that my laptop was broken and that I should take it back to Best Buy for a replacement. At this point, I had enough, thanked her, and hung up.

Long story short, as much hype as the Qosmio F755-S5219 got for being the “first glasses free 3D laptop”, it doesn’t look like Toshiba is thinking very much about its customers–nor its customer support–as far as viewing 3D videos online. I expected much better.

The Glasses Free 3D: 3D Blu-Ray Disc

Here, my experience was much better, although it took a little trial and error.

The first thing you’ll want to do is go to Toshiba’s support site and download a copy of the unfortunately named X-Tune (instead of being cute, why didn’t they just called it “3D adjustment utility”).  This is a utility from Toshiba that lets you configure your system for optimal viewing. I’m not sure why Toshiba didn’t mention this at all–I had to discover it on my own in the “Downloads” section. If you don’t use this first, you’re probably going to get unpredictable results.

When you run the program, you’ll be asked to verify that the laptop’s face-tracking technology is working (it’ll show your face with yellow lines superimposed over it identifying where your eyes are). Then, you’ll be shown a simple 3D image (the letters “3D” in the middle of the screen popping out, with four smaller “3Ds” on the corners sinking in). You use the arrow keys to reduce the amount of parallax (ghosted duplicate images) until you get a fairly crisp image. Then, you press Enter.

The only 3D Blu-ray I already had was The Universe: 7 Wonders of the Solar System, which I only had because it was on sale at Amazon one day (I’ll write another post to talk about the best Blu-ray documentaries you can buy to test your system). As poor as the reviews of the disc are, it gave me a good taste of what this laptop could do. Images really “popped” out of the screen at me, and unlike with 3D system that require glasses, there was nothing inhibiting my viewing of the full brightness nor color depth (something that happens a lot when I watch 3D with glasses, made worse by my own glasses).

I will say the experience is not perfect. When in 3D mode the image is decidedly “grainy” versus the 2D image. My guess is that in order to serve up the 3D image, resolution had to be sacrificed. This is something I’m sure will get better in future iterations of this technology as processors get more powerful.

One other gripe I have is that the “eye tracking” technology really left something to be desired. I’d have a pretty good experience when I moved my head to a point where parallax was minimized and then kept my head there. But when I moved my face slightly, the entire picture would shift, which after time became extremely disconcerting.

Despite the negatives it was overall a very cool experience, especially for first-generation technology. Some images were breathtakingly gorgeous, while others gave me a bit of a headache. I’m not sure if this is due to the laptops technology, the quality of the Blu-ray I was looking at, or both. I’ll update this post as I try different Blu-rays.

Even more amazing, I could play the Blu-ray in one window in 3D and keep my other Windows programs open in other windows in 2D. The eye-tracking was hit-or-miss. The way it’s supposed to work, the 3D image is supposed to be automatically adjusted based on the position of my face. I actually found it to be a bit distracting, as there’s be a noticeable lag as the computer tried to adjust the picture whenever my head moved. I think they probably have to work on that feature a bit more, but bottom line, as long as I kept my head relatively still, I could enjoy the 3D Blu-ray immensely.

The Glasses Free 3D: Conversion of 2D to 3D

Another feature which Toshiba touts is the ability to “convert” 2D DVDs (not Blu-rays) to 3D images on the fly. I was skeptical about this at first; after all, “true” 3D requires the original image to be shot with two lenses (mimicking our two eyes). If a movie was originally shot with one lens, even if they tell you it’s “3D”, it’s not really–they either manually or automatically separate “layers” of images in the 2D image to make it look like 3D. But as with the “colorization of black and white movies” fad that happened years ago, such conversion is done after-the-fact and doesn’t really do a good job of capturing the nuances of a true 3D environment, especially when the film was originally created for 2D. In other words, don’t trust a movie that says it’s in “3D” unless it was origially filmed that way.

That said, I popped in an old DVD. The Toshiba DVD player played it. On top of the window, there’s a little button that says “3D”. When I pressed it, I saw the screen split, and then lo and behold, I saw a grainy 3D-like picture. I have to say, the effect was a lot better than I thought it’d be. The images really seemed to pop out at you. That said, the resulting image is so grainy and the 3D effect is hardly clean, so I got a bit of a headache after a few minutes of trying to watch a DVD this way.

Bottom line, I think this feature is more of a gimmick than anything else–the Toshiba marketing department probably figured that people with large DVD collections and no 3D Blu-rays would still buy the laptop so they could see the DVDs that way. I can honestly say that it’s not worth buying the laptop for that reason–your old DVDs are meant to be seen in 2D, so keep it that way. That said, it’s a nice little trick to show off what your laptop can do.

In summary, overall I was impressed by the Toshiba Qosmio F755-S5219. It’s been years since I paid this much for a laptop, but it was worth the wait. As with all first generation products, over time you’ll see other laptops with better 3D and cheaper prices. That said, there’s something to be said about being the first one on the block with this great new technology, and the specs of the laptop are impressive enough that this machine should last you for years to come. Highly recommended.