A consumer autostereo OLED monitor is on display at the Sony booth in the future technologies area — aimed at demonstrating the capabilities of OLED to offer glasses-free viewing. But it appears that 2D professional OLED monitors will first hit the market.

Aiming at the CRT replacement market, Sony plans to unveil two professional OLED monitors that use the same OLED technology next month at the Hollywood Post Alliance Tech Retreat in Palm Springs.

These professional monitors will be 2D only. But Sony’s roadmap is to develop a professional OLED line that that is upgradable to 3D.

The Sharp booth contains a very interesting display, the Information Intelligent Imaging Wall or i3 Wall (pronounced “i-triple wall”). Many are comparing the display of high-definition TV screens to the 3D holographic “Holodeck” from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Sharp has lined three walls, the floor, and the ceiling with sixty 60-inch LCD displays calibrating a series of videos that project an immersive environment. If you stand close, so the room fills your field of vision, it can be a spectacular, vertigo-inducing experience.

The sweetspot for viewing is at the midpoint of the bar that keeps people from walking into the space.

The theme park and entertainment possibilities with the i3 Wall are endless, but if you’re thinking about setting one up in your home get ready for a second mortgage. The i3 Wall starts in the half a million range.

Although Toshiba is majoring on 3D (in passive, polarized and autostereoscopic form) it is also including Wi-Fi capability and its Net TV platform with most new sets.

For 3DTV the company is debuting the UL610 Cinema series, available in 46-, 55- and 65-inch models. These edge-lit LEDs all run on a 480Hz refresh rate and use a version of local dimming Toshiba calls “Fine Edge” that features more zones of dimming than other edge-lit models. The CEVO processor, a derivative of Toshiba’s Cell processor, allows for 2D-to-3D content conversion.

The UL610 TVs are Wi-Fi-ready smart TVs with Toshiba’s Net TV service plus Yahoo! Widgets.  The larger models are adding Skype video calling capability and will begin shipping in April.

A new TL515 3D TV line uses a passive polarized 3D system called “Natural 3D.” They will be priced below the UL610 line and include less expensive 3D glasses (sub $20). They’ll run on a 240Hz refresh rate and include the same smart TV Internet features as the UL610 TVs. The TL515 series, in sizes 32- to 65-inches, will begin shipping in March.

All the sets include USB ports to share content from thumb drives and portable hard discs.

Its SL415 LED set features built-in Wi-Fi and Net TV with Yahoo! Widgets, and will be available with a 720p resolution 32-inch diagonal display and a new 1080p resolution 24-inch diagonal display, starting in the first quarter of 2011.

The SL417 displays at 42-, 46- and 55-inch boasts a 1080p resolution CineSpeed LED panel and also features built-in Wi-Fi and Net TV with Yahoo! Widgets. They start shipping in February.

The company also has three new Blu-ray players, two of them will play 3D Blu-ray Discs (BDX4700 and BDX5200). Both will have a selection of online apps, and the BDX5200 will include built-in WiFi.

Toshiba is displaying a very cool prototype for a glasses-free 3D laptop that converts from 2D on the fly. The unit features facial tracking software that operates through the screen-mounted camera to ensure that if a user shifts position the 3D sweet spot follows (so no “dead zones”).

The 3D laptop technology is being demonstrated on a custom-built Toshiba Qosmio laptop.

The 3D was crisp, with lots of depth detail in gorgeous 1080p on an expansive 15.6-inch LED backlit LCD display. It’s expected to be available in the US market within a year, according to Toshiba, which already has an active shutter laptop (sold with NVIDIA glasses) that converts 2D to 3D.

Long Term Evolution, or LTE, is an important emerging high speed distribution technology being demonstrated toward the back of the LG booth.  They have both 2D and 3D displays playing HD and 3D video streams. The signal is capable of achieving 100Mbps downstream.

LTE is also garnering a lot of buzz at the show this year as a preliminary mobile communication standard with a variety of 4G LTE smartphones being demonstrated by the likes of HTC, Motorola and Samsung.

As part of the LTE demo, LG showed a handheld 3D autostereoscopic media player previewing 3D movie trailers (pictured here).

LG’s 84-inch Ultra Definition 3DTV is a proof-of-concept 4K display. The LG set is capable of displaying a full HD resolution 3D image, sending a 1080p picture to both the left and right eye. There is no announced market date for an Ultra Definition TV. It demonstrates that a polarized display is capable of displaying the full 3D images delivered by 3D Blu-ray Discs, undermining one of the unique marketing features of active shutter glasses 3D displays.

Active shutter 3DTVs alternate filling the screen with the full 1080 line left eye and right eye images streamed from the Blu-ray disc. Current polarized 3D HDTVs show the left eye and right eye images at the same time on alternating lines, creating an image with only 540 lines of vertical resolution. This proof-of-concept 4K display matches the resolution of an active shutter screen by using 1080 lines to display each eye’s image.

Sony was the first major manufacturer to announce Google TV products last winter, but its rollout of the product line across Europe has been stalled as Google reigned in its initiative just ahead of CES.

Sony Google TV-powered products are available in the US including Bravia HDTVs and a Blu-ray player but this line up will not be extended into Europe for the forseeable future. And one senior executive is doubtful it will ever see the light of day.

According to Tim Page, senior manager, technology marketing, Europe, “We are studying whether we can launch it but there are no plans on pricing or launch dates yet. There was a plan to have something, but for various reasons that was withdrawn. We may see it at some point this year but nothing concrete unfortunately, although we haven’t ruled it out completely.”

Page noted that all of the company’s new TVs launched here contain, for the first time, a basic web browser.

“That’s the first step,” he said. “But integrating it with a search function like Google makes the product much more attractive.”

Sony is showcasing the future of 3D in a series of technology prototypes on the show floor. These include what it claims to be the world’s first double full 1920×1080 HD camcorder.

The $1500 Handycam HDR-TD10 boasts 10x optical zoom in 3D and viewing on an integrated 3.5-inch LCD autostereoscopic screen. It incorporates double image sensors and dual processors and uses sequential framing so that the left eye and right eye are encoded separately 200 times a second so that Sony can claim full 1920×1080 resolution for each eye. It records to a 64GB flash card.

Could it be used for professional production? Certainly says Tim Page, senior manager, technology marketing, Europe. “We are seeing DSLRs being used to shoot professional features and there’s no reason why technologies such as this could not be adopted by filmmakers perhaps for run and gun shots.”

He acknowledged that imaging from the camcorder would not be as good as the professional twin lens 3 CMOS sensor single bodied shoulder mounted camera capable of shooting 240 fps and previously announced at IBC last year. It is shown as a prototype here.

Also on display is a head-mounted viewing device which wraps around the eyes and features two 3-inch OLED screens “for full immersive viewing experience,” said Page. “Since we are delivering left and right eye views separately there is no crosstalk or ghosting familiar to some LCDs.” There are no plans to launch and no pricing.

Sony also revealed prototypes of a 24.5-inch OLED glasses-free screen in 1920×1080 resolution and 46-inch and 56-inch 4k x 2k LCD autostereoscopic screens. These employ a lenticular screen. Again there are no launch plans and no pricing.

“The glasses free area is one we are very interested in, but it’s too early to launch now since the technology has not evolved enough to bring to it to market at a reasonable price,” added Page. “It’s just to show we are working on the technology, that it can be done.”

LG Electronics Thursday tossed its hat into the 4G arena, debuting its first 4G phone, the Revolution, which will be offered through Verizon. The Revolution supports the streaming, playing and recording of high definition video. The Android 2.2 device has a 4.3-inch touch screen and a 5 megapixel camera capable of 720p capture. The package also includes hotspot capability for up to eight Wi-Fi enabled devices. Verizon president Dan Mead said at a press conference that customers can expect download speeds of speeds of  5 to 12Mbps and upload speeds of 2 to 5Mbps in areas with 4G coverage.

At the LG booth, the company was also showing off its Windows 7 phone, the Quantum. Windows 7 phones hit the market in October, and there are only three models currently available, the LG Quantum being the only one with an actual keypad. Sold through AT&T, it’s a bargain at $99 (with contract, after rebate) and has numerous nifty features, like an always-on camera with a dedicated button.

LG also presented proof-of-concept technology for a mobile lenticular display that looked pretty great, and got a buzz going. But company reps said there was no timeline for product.