It's a 3D World

After attending last weeks Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas I know one thing for sure it sure is a 3D world out there.

The big thing that everyone was talking about (and asking about) was the 3D. I made my way from booth to booth checking out the new 3D offerings from every company. I was impressed with what I saw yet at the same time I walked out of CES knowing that I wouldn’t run out and buy one. And that’s unusual for me, as I am an electronics junkie, I am always the first to buy new products and technologies.

I enjoyed watching the 3D (especially the live crowd shots that were done with a new 3D video camera being shown at Panasonic’s booth!) but I still don’t feel the technology is ready for prime time. In fact I would say that watching the 3D demos at CES gave me the blues. You see one thing missing when your watching a 3D TV or even a 3D movie such as Avatar is that there is a lack of color. To me 3D is missing the eye popping color, everything is a color of gray or blue. Bright vibrant colors such as red, yellow and green are too dampened all because your wearing what are basically expensive sunglasses.

In addition today’s 3D does not look as good as the 3D I remember as I kid. Remember getting these glasses with the red and blue lenses to watch the monster movie on TV? Back then they use to use tricks to make it look like things were actually coming out to you. I can remember reaching out my hands as a kid trying to catch the yo yo that was bring shot at me from my TV set. The 3D shown at CES showed great depth, but to me it wasn’t popping out of the screen. We even tried pointing our arms out at he 3D video camera in hopes that it would look like our arms were going to p oke us in our own eyes, but alas it was not like the 3D I remember as a kid.

Maybe is the glasses that the issue, besides darkening the images shown on the screen, the were also uncomfortable and expensive. I can’t see having a Super Bowl party at my house in 3D, doing so would cost me a fortune just for the 3D glasses alone.

I asked one TV company rep why we need new TV’s to watch the new 3D, hell the TV my parents had for us as a kid worked fine for 3D, and his answer was surprising and honest, they want to sell more new TV’s.

I asked if someone could come up with a box that sits between your content box (Blu-ray or satellite receiver) and your existing TV to control the glasses and was told that the answer to that was probably yes, but you probably wont see such a box for awhile if ever, again the TV makers want you to buy new TV’s.

As I stood in the Panasonic booth as a SatelliteGuy I couldn’t help feeling some pride as I stood there though. As near a giant screen there was a sign letting me know I was watching the first actual satellite broadcasts of 3D from DIRECTV. And that was cool to me knowing I was one of the first to be able to see the new technology in action. That to me was almost worth the costs of going to CES alone. Congrats go to DIRECTV for scoring a big one here in being the first.

So while 3D is cool, I think I will wait before getting a new 3D TV, as the technology will continue to improve and why replace perfectly good HDTV’s with new ones just because they can do 3D? If I want to go see something in 3D I will head to the movies where the screen is not only bigger but the popcorn tastes better then what I make in my microwave.