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3D screens coming to a living room near you

Avatar, and there is my reference to the path breaking, game changing movie that I just ‘experienced’. Like I have mentioned in my post regarding the movie earlier, I would like to touch upon the aspect of 3 Dimensional viewing. And would it be possible to have the technology in homes, as my whole point of returning to the theaters to experience a movie would be completely lost if it was possible to have this at home. I was both overjoyed as well as shattered when I saw this.

Overjoyed because it is absolutely fantastic that a similar experience can be achieved at home, so you might be able to have a more immersive experience with your regular TV Series, not for your average soaps but maybe for other great series like Dexter / CSI / Fringe whatever. Can’t wait for something like that to happen. But having said that, the whole edge that movie makers have would be lost to this new find, well maybe not entirely.

Let me explain, the 3D technology by itself is not a particular standard and many different standards exist for how the movie makers can trick the viewer into looking at a 3D image on a 2D screen, and the most popular ones, or the ones that we have been seeing over the past few years implemented in movies are primarily listed below :

I have linked them to wikipedia so that you can check out technical details on them if interested. However I wanna look at technology that would come to your home, and lo and behold as of January 2010, Toshiba, Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, and LG all have plans to introduce 3D capabilities (mostly in higher-end models) in TVs available sometime in 2010. 3D Blu-Ray players and DirectTV broadcasts are also expected in 2010. Philips is developing 3D television sets available for the consumer market by about 2011 without the need for special glasses. In fact the festival city mall, Festival Center in Dubai already have some TV screens that project 3D images without the need of 3D glasses.

At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, four of the top selling TV manufacturers–Samsung Electronics, Sony, LG Electronics and Panasonic–showed off their latest versions of 3D TVs. Panasonic set up a mini-home theater where its 103-inch, plasma 3D screen showed clips from New Line Cinema’s Journey to the Center of the Earth and Walt Disney Pictures’ animated film Bolt. They also showed high-definition 3D footage from NBC’s broadcast of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

While some manufacturers, such as Mitsubishi, Phillips, Samsung, and Sharp, have already begun selling 3D-ready TVs, the top four manufacturers plan to have new, advanced 3D TVs on sale toward the end of 2009 and into 2010.But the big question is whether consumers, will be willing to upgrade to a new TV just because it has 3D. Pricing for today’s 3D ready TVs is comparable to other flat-screen HDTVs. I guess the only other hold up with the whole thing is to be able to transmit on 3D and I was really surprised to know that there have been TV episodes that have been showing on 3D, ,a small search on wikipedia revealed this :

As of 2008, 3D programming is broadcast on Japanese cable channel BS 11 approximately four times per day. Starting on June 11th, 2010 ESPN will launch a new channel dedicated to 3D sports with up to 85 live events a year in 3D.

And Also the following :

Perhaps the best example of groundbreaking 3D production on television was the sitcom 3rd Rock From The Sun, which peaked in international popularity when it produced the two-part episode, Nightmare On Dick Street, where several of the characters’ dreams are shown in 3D. The episode cued its viewers to put on their 3D glasses by including “3D on” and “3D off” icons in the corner of the screen as a way to alert them as to when the 3D sequences would start and finish.

So is it going to be another technology that will catch on with time like the flat screen TV’s or just be another digital flop. Only time will tell, but for the time being I have complied a list of some awesome 3D web clips already available which you can watch on your monitor with just your cheap 3D glasses. In case you did not have one, NASA has an awesome tutorial which gives step by step instructions to make one yourself. Check it here. Getting to the actual videos

3D wide angle night drive