Optimus 3D Vs Optimus Tab: Not All HD 3D Video Is Created Equal

When we caught up with LG earlier today, to check out the freshly announced Optimus 3D and Optimus Tab, we couldn't help but wonder about the discrepancy between the smartphone's 1080p Full HD 3D recording capabilities and the tablet's 720p HD 3D recording. Turns out, there's more to a 1GHz, dual-core chipset than just its ARM cores: the Optimus 3D's Texas Instruments OMAP4430 has native support for Full HD recording in 3D, while the NVIDIA Tegra 2 in the Tab doesn't.

Talking to TI earlier today, the company was at pains to highlight that it had been talking about – and, more importantly, working on building in support for at the chipset level – Full HD 3D support in its chips since the first days of the OMAP4, whereas rivals have come to those capabilities more recently. That means on Tegra 2 the ARM processor has to do the crunching, whereas in the OMAP4 it's shunted to dedicated DSP.

TI's OMAP5, meanwhile, will add in chipset-level support for four simultaneous camera streams, which will mean devices using it will be able to record 3D using twin cameras on both sides. That opens the door to 3D streaming video calls.