Bendable Media

3D TV is coming to your living room

I had two 3D TV demonstrations on Thursday and both are now open for public viewing. If you are curious as to how 3D technology will translate from the big screen to (the not so) small screen in your living room, you’ll want to check it out.

Whether you want to buy a 3D TV, well, that’s another matter.

Let’s start with what everyone wants to know: Does 3D look good on a TV. Yes. In fact, it looks darn good.

I was particularly impressed by watching soccer in 3D. Indeed, that might be the only way I could be convinced to watch soccer. (Not true, I do catch a little World Cup fever every four years.) Watching a movie in 3D was just like watching a 3D movie at the theater. Things jumped out at you, objects floated in space, and there was that feeling that the movie would somehow surround you.

The first demonstration was at the Sony Style store at the Old Orchard shopping mall in Skokie, where a 46-inch Sony Bravia can be viewed. The Sony Bravia 3D TV (in three sizes — 40″, 46″ and 52″) will go on sale this summer. The Sony Style store at Schaumburg’s Woodfield Mall also has a demonstration set up.

Sony created a reel of 3D content to show off the technology, which included nature scenes from a zoo, a professional soccer match, a clip from “Wheel of Fortune” (not why you’d want 3D TV), and a few video games.

I was impressed by several images. A polar bear swimming in a zoo enclosure felt like it was live. It was just like watching the polar bear from the underwater window at the Lincoln Park Zoo. When the bear swam toward you on the 3D TV, you felt as if you were there.

In the soccer demo, there was real depth of field that made the action feel much closer than it actually was, of course. This was particularly true from the field-level shots. It made me think of how cool it would be to put a 3D camera behind home plate in baseball, with a clear view of a pitch leaving the pitcher’s hand and heading toward your TV at 90 mph. I’d love to experience that.

The video games were mixed. Both were racing games, with one featuring a brightly colored, futuristic track where the race cars floated above the course. (Think Star Wars racing games with super-vivid colors.) It was too much visual stimulation and I started to get a headache. The other video game featured a dune buggy racing through a sandy and sparsely forested landscape. This was much better and it felt a little exhilarating when your dune buggy caught big air after a jump.

The second demonstration was at Abt Electronics in Glenview. I watched “Monsters vs. Aliens” on a 46-inch Samsung model because it was the only content Abt had for the demonstration. The TV just arrived from Samsung and I went to a nearby coffee shop to work as an Abt technician set it up.

The movie looked like a movie in 3D. The picture was sharp, and I was captivated.

But the experience at Abt best reflects the challenges of buying a 3D TV today: the content has not arrived yet.

To watch a movie, you’ll need a new 3D Blu-ray player. They are not available yet. Even if they were, DVDs are not yet being released in 3D. It’s all coming, and expect a big push this summer.

That’s the same issue for Sony, by the way. To play games in 3D, you’ll need to upgrade the software in a PlayStation 3. (It’s a free upgrade, I’m told.)

More content will come when the Discovery channel and ESPN start broadcasting programming in 3D. Discovery is creating a 3D-only channel while ESPN has committed to showing World Cup soccer matches in 3D.

And then there’s the issue of 3D glasses, an accessory you’ll need to buy. Sony will include two pairs of glasses when you buy a TV, but you’ll need to buy more if you have a family of four and a bunch of friends who want to come over for movie night. And these aren’t the same glasses you get at the movie theater.

Rather, Sony uses ‘active-shutter’ technology (and batteries!) to make the 3D work. That’s a fancy way of saying the glasses will cost $133 each. Abt wasn’t sure how much the glasses would cost for the Samsung TV (also active shutter, I was told) but expect them to be somewhere between $80 to $150, a salesman said. Panasonic uses LCD shutter glasses.

Clearly, 3D TV is for early adopters. There will be an audience, and it will grow significantly over the next five years. If you need to be the first on your block to have a decent 3D TV set-up, think summer.

In the meantime, check it out at Abt or Sony Style. It’s cool, but you don’t need it yet.

Related Posts, Bendable Gadgets:

• Movie night at home a costly event in 3-D
• The future of TV and the death of cable
• A Hulu IPO: How much is TV worth?