Avatar is on the loose in 3D; Sky is running cinema ads for 3D TV; and the Blu Ray Disc Association has released the specification for 3D discs.

So, how are your customers going to take it when you tell them the Full HD set you sold them to replace their HD Ready set, which had replaced their SD plasma, is already obsolete - not just because no-one told them about the coming of Freeview HD IDTVs, but also because no-one told them there are several different kinds of 3D TV set coming?
 
I tried last week to give early warning of the likely fall-out from Freeview's failure to publicise (more accurately, effectively keep secret) the Freeview HD logo; now, and with Avatar, Sky and the BDA announcement upping the 3D ante, seems a good time for a quick run-down on the current state of display play.
 
The Blu-ray standard only defines the disc, not the display. So buying a new 3D TV will involve a no-going-back VHS/Beta-like choice between (Panasonic-style) sequential display with expensive active shutter spectacles or (Sky-style) interlaced display with cheap, passive polarised glasses. And there are now clear signs that there may soon be a home version of the Dolby 3D system which uses subtly different shades of red, green and blue for the left and right eyes.
 
When Italian company SIM2 launched its latest video projectors at the British Film Institute in London recently, UK managing director Alan Roser said clearly that SIM2 is now on track to launch a Dolby 3D home system in Q3 next year. He had seen a demonstration of live action 3D material (such as sky-diving) at CEDIA in Atlanta that proved the SIM2 Lumis system could be successfully colour-balanced to meet the Dolby requirement for very precise and accurate colour balance.
 
This confirmed what visitors to CEDIA had been told; SIM2 would ship Dolby 3-D bundles comprising two Lumis projectors and a PC, for $72,000, with the PC used to access 3D content from the Internet, and for stereoscopic videogames available on prerecorded media.
 
But then up jumped a PR spokesperson for Dolby in America assuring us that “Dolby Labs has no plans to work with SIM2 on a 3D solution for the home.”
 
Why? Your guess is as good as mine. And my guess is that Dolby's US PR people may have been wanting to keep their powder dry for CES, or that Dolby has signed a deal to work with another projector company - or TV manufacturer - which has worked out how to display a very tightly controlled colour balance from an LCD or plasma screen.
 
Meanwhile Ofcom has published a report  Beyond HD: Implications for Digital Delivery  which concentrates on the development of 3D TV as well as Ultra High Definition television (UHDTV). Curiously it is on Ofom's website, but wasn’t emailed to Ofcom's distribution list. You have to know it is there to know about it.
 
Beyond HD: Implications for Digital Delivery concentrates on the development of 3D TV as well as Ultra High Definition television (UHDTV), and looks ahead at terrestrial and satellite broadcasting of stereoscopic TV and UHDTV in 2020 .
 
By then, says the report which Ofcom commissioned but not publicised, 3D stereoscopic TV is likely to have either matured into a mainstream service or been relegated to a niche market that is of little interest to broadcasters.

I particularly like the reference to something called the Gartner Hype Cycle which shows how new product hype peaks with inflated expectations, dips into a trough of disillusionment, crawls up a slope of enlightenment and settles on a plateau of productivity.
 
"The current situation has all the characteristics of a classic "Peak of Inflated Expectations" is the verdict on 3D.
 
With that, I wish anyone who has read these blogs throughout 2009 a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
 
If you want to contact me – preferably with suggestions and information rather than abuse – I can be reached at barryphox@aol.com.
 

Barry Fox