3-D TV Is Closer Than You Think

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NEW YORK (Forbes) - While we're busy comparison shopping for flat-screen TVs and upgrading to high definition broadcasts, the consumer electronics industry is readying a whole new television proposition to sell us.

The new "new thing" is three-dimensional television viewing, sans glasses. And although it sounds more sci-fi than Circuit City (nyse: CC), engineers who are working on bringing this technology to the masses say it should arrive within the next ten years. For the most part, the technology already exists, but with the exception of some videogames and scientific and engineering modeling programs, the content does not. With the technology ready long before the content, it's an evolution that's similar to that of HDTV, and it will require equally daunting upgrades to the infrastructure that delivers television signals into homes.

Nevertheless, a small New York startup called X3D Technology demonstrated a 3-D 50- inch plasma screen at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, and it had a roomful of analysts and attendees transfixed. "It was the coolest thing I've ever seen, and I've been in technology for 20 years," says Andrew Shulklapper, an analyst with DisplaySearch, which is not doing or seeking to do business with X3D. X3D is starting out by shopping its screens to retailers looking for displays that are literally eye-catching, with its sights set on 3-D TV down the line.

Content format standards are also emerging. Recently, the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), along with the Web3D Consortium, formally adopted a new standard for 3-D video in the MPEG-4 compression format, which was developed to provide better picture quality and more compression than its predecessor MPEG-2, which is used currently in television and DVDs.

But MPEG-4 is by no means guaranteed to prevail at these early stages. "We're currently working with MPEG-2, but we are researching other formats," says X3D Director of Software Development Keith Fredericks. "MPEG is one of a number of methods that can display 3-D without using glasses."

Plenty of other outfits besides X3D are pursuing the 3-D TV grail, each of them taking a different approach in terms of technology with roughly the same outcome. To see anything in 3-D without special glasses requires a combination of screen coatings and set-top box software that make certain pixels visible to the right or left eye, which generates a false sense of depth.

The upshot is content that the viewer controls, much the way videogame players can determine which street they'll turn down. Instead of watching linear content, with a story that starts and ends, viewers will eventually be able to explore various programming avenues. TV will be interactive in a way that far surpasses the old saw about viewers ordering the sweater that Rachel is wearing while they watch Friends.

Like most tech trends, this one got its start in places like Japan and at NASA, and had its commercial debut on cell phones and PCs. In November 2002 Sharp Electronics launched in Japan a mobile phone handset featuring a 3-D LCD screen with NTT DoCoMo (nyse: DCM), and in 2003 they updated the device with a new version. The phones have sold 3 million units and can only see special Sharp content in 3-D. "It also has a camera and software built into it that can turn any image the user captures into 3-D," says Ian Matthew, director of 3-D business development for Sharp.

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