The State of Home 3D in 2011

The State of Home 3D in 2011
Last August, I took a look at the state of home 3D and found it serious but wanting.

Last August, I took a look at the state of home 3D and found it serious but wanting. Prices were high, quality of content was low to medium at best, and there were few—if any—compelling reasons for ordinary people to take the plunge. The last nine months have seen a significant realignment of the 3D landscape, and the industry has made some major strides. But is 3D any more worth it now than it was then? I’m still not sure.

You can’t say that some companies aren’t giving it their all. To start with, I must commend Nvidia for leading the battle on several fronts. Its energy behind easy, out-of-the-box solutions like 3D Vision, 3D Vision Surround, and 3DTV Play has provided some of the most compelling reasons out there to leap onto the 3D bandwagon. And their forays into professional applications, with 3D Vision Pro and a version of the technology optimized for streaming over the Web, are only further increasing the number of ways 3D can be adopted and utilized.

AMD has been playing catch-up, but nonetheless seems to be taking 3D more seriously than it used to. The company introduced its own stereoscopic 3D technology, HD3D, with its 6000-series video cards late last year, and has been busy ever since working to position it as an “open” alternative to 3D Vision. The good thing about it is that it potentially lets users take advantage of a wider range of glasses and displays than the competition; the bad news is that not all of AMD’s hardware is compatible with all features (you need a 6000-series card for 3D Blu-ray playback, for example). The affair has been pretty low-key so far (AMD still seems to put much greater stock in Eyefinity), but broader support for such technologies will only help speed mainstream acceptance of them.

Something else that will make a difference is getting younger users interested and/or hooked early. The Nintendo 3DS could be instrumental in this regard. I was astonished by the picture quality on this handheld (and glasses-free) gaming system: It looked much better than I’d expected, and delivered far fewer headaches than I’d been led to believe it would. Impressed as I was by its capabilities, however, its launch library of titles struck me more as proof-of-concept demos than fully realized games, leaving me underwhelmed to say the least. They made me want the 3DS by leaving me hankering for its potential, not by showing me anything I had to play immediately.

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