One of the hottest topics of this year’s CES was, as I’m sure you’re aware by now, the advent of 3D television, movies, and games. Although we’ve been seeing this sort of thing on the brink for years, it seems manufacturers are now ready to make that big push that will be required to start landing the units in consumers’ homes.
We actually witnessed the first “3D” TVs a couple of years back (CES 2007 if I’m not mistaken), but those televisions attempted to meet the task without any sort of headgear, and they weren’t perfect. It’s obvious now that the industry has instead turned to specialized glasses to facilitate the delivery of 3D content, and whether or not that jives with you is another question entirely.
In case you aren’t familiar with the technology, the glasses work (essentially) by isolating the frames delivered by the television into alternating eyes (left, right, left), thereby creating the coveted illusion of depth by tricking the brain into thinking it’s viewing the objects on-screen from two different perspectives. This is nothing new; the basic idea has been in practice for years, way back to when you used to sport those sexy red and blue spectacles to make your comic books jump out at you. But now it’s done entirely electronically, and the methodology allows for full frame rate video to be delivered in three virtual dimensions.
Although the new Blu-ray version (1.4) will of course support the technology, specialized television channels will soon begin to broadcast some 3D content, and games will be 3D enabled in the near future as well. Personally, while it’s all pretty impressive in action, my opinion on the whole deal is that I can’t personally see it going beyond the status of novelty in terms of actual broadcast content until the technology is improved. That’s because wearing headgear to be able to enjoy what’s on your TV simply interferes too severely with everyday circumstances (everyone watching must wear it, you can’t simply flip on the television and cook up breakfast while viewing, and so forth). Perhaps once technology allows for more convenient solutions I could see this changing.
Movies are another story, of course. I could easily see a family sitting down on the couch on Friday night to enjoy a 3D flick they rented. On Demand rentals might soon be a huge selling point, for instance, for those families who don’t own a 3D enabled Blu-ray player (or which isn’t firmware upgradeable to 1.4). And seeing as games are frequently a personal form of entertainment, that’s exempt from my skepticism as well.
Nevertheless, a representative from Sony was kind enough to give us a quick rundown of what they had on display at this year’s show in the way of 3D television content. Hit up the video below for the full segment!
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