A few puzzles came out of Panasonic's press and trade convention in Munich last week, where 3D was pushed as the next big thing with the slogan "Step into a 3D World".
 
Puzzle one. Panasonic has developed a very impressive 3D system, based on plasma TVs that can cleanly switch views at 120Hz with shutter glasses that switch without lag because they are controlled by the same signals that switch the plasma cells.

This incidentally means that Panasonic's 3D glasses will not work with other 3D sets, and vice versa.

Panasonic's new Blu-ray player cleverly solves the problem of incompatibility with existing AV amplifiers by using two HDMI output sockets, one for a new 3D TV and one for an existing audio system.

So why demonstrate the system with such rotten 3D material?

The 3D theatre with 152in plasma panel used only a short clip from Astro Boy to give a taste of 3D cinema. The rest of the video reminded of early ping-pong stereo sound demos. Overblown, unreal and fatiguing. After a few minutes of sports balls in the eye, athletes in the lap and scenic views that often looked like cardboard cut-outs, I couldn't wait to take the specs off.

Puzzle two. Panasonic gave excellent technical briefings and one-to-one chats with engineers from the sharp end, to get across the message that plasma panels work far better for 3D than the LCD screens used by rival Sony.
 
Giving Sony the chance to rebut this, I asked them why, for example, when Panasonic has put two HDMI outputs on its 3D Blu-ray player, Sony has only one - so how is it going to pass 3D signals to a TV, via an existing AV amplifier?

Sony's straight-faced answer, verbatim, was:  "Consumers will need to use an amplifier that has a '3D pass' built in in order to view 3D content via the Blu-ray player. "

How many existing amplifiers will have a setting marked 3D pass?

D'oh!

Barry Fox