Personally I have very little enthusiasm for 3D in the home. It's fine for a cinema event or pub soccer, but with active glasses at £100 a pair it will be an expensive seven day wonder for most families.

But the industry is now trapped in a me-too race to get 3D TVs and BD players on shop shelves.

Following on from last week's hard facts on key points, here are a few more.

As explained, the passive interlace polarisation Half-HD-to-each-eye TVs from LG that Sky is putting in pubs are very different from the active shutter Full-HD-to-each-eye that Panasonic and others have been promoting for home use with 3D Blu-ray players.

I have been nagging LG for months for an answer to the simple question that could matter a lot to dealers – how will LG's passive polarisation 3D sets handle the output from a 3D Blu-ray player, game console or camcorder that uses the active shutter frame sequential system. 

The bare bones answer I finally got from LG is that “both LG’s passive technology and active technology 3D-ready televisions are capable of processing the new standard frame sequential content”.

The devil is in the detail. The passive LG 3D TV going into thousands of pubs and clubs for Sky 3D, is the commercial LD920. Consumers will get the LD950. This seems to have been modified for Blu-ray use, albeit with only half the 3D resolution which Blu-ray 3D can deliver.

So far LG has not demonstrated how the LD950 performs when it is hooked to a 3D Blu-ray player. Presumably resolution is halved. My bet is that it won't be long before Panasonic does a demonstration that shows the difference.

From what LG now confirms, it seems clear that pubs and clubs will only be able to use their LD920 3D TVs for showing Sky's 3D, not for 3D Blu-ray movies, gaming or camcorder movies.
 
Which is doubtless just what Sky 3D wants.

Barry Fox