The phrase “3D is coming to your living room” was being bandied around freely by the likes of Panasonic, LG, Samsung and Sony in booths worth their weight in gold at the International Consumer Electronics Show last week.

There has been a lot of hype about 3DTV recently. Yet despite the 3D film Avatar having become the second biggest grossing film in history, 3DTV seems more an extension of High-Definition TV and possibly a step towards returning TV to a more unidirectional focus for young people again where the internet has made it multidirectional and periphery. Young people are able to watch programs on the net via their laptops while multi-tasking other activities (homework, music, instant messaging etc). However… 3DTV does hint toward greater possibilities for the next evolutionary entertainment step.

As Tech Tribe 2009 showed us young people are watching TV in a less linear, unidirectional fashion. On average, young people are watching 3.5 hours of TV online a week, compared to 5 hours of average TV consumption and around 20 hours of general online activity. This increasingly multilayered media consumption has clearly had those in the TV industry worried and so it may be suggested that 3DTV is an attempt to reassert the top-down, dominating media style of TV. So what does 3DTV have in stall for us?

With a few possible niche exceptions, it seems as though most of the consumer electronics industry has chosen to implement the active shutter glasses version of 3D as opposed to the lens based passive glasses that are used in current 3D cinemas. The active shutter glasses are powered by a battery which blocks each eye alternately as the display of 3DTV has alternating frames: the left eye then right eye, left eye, right eye etc. The glasses then sync to the display via infrared receivers. Clearly this technology seems a lot more cumbersome than the Buddy Holly time ‘passive glasses’ that are currently being used in the cinema and replacing the battery could well be as annoying and fiddly changing the TV remote.

The advantage of using the active shutter glasses however is that 3DTV has such a fast refresh rate that the set can be used as normal TVs also, which is why 3DTVs will ultimately succeed even if they fail. Similarly to HD it will be hard not to find a 3DTV when you enter go to buy a new Television.

Programming wise it will all be starting this year for definite. Sky used the release of Avatar to advertise Europe’s first 3D channel  and the 2010 World Cup in South Africa is will be shown in 3D. It has been suggested however that watching sports on 3DTV, is “indicative of the format’s limitations. For one the court has depth but the players are quite flat, like a few paper cutouts dribbling a ball back and forth instead of fully corporeal, 6’6” titans.” While promoting 3D through it’s glasses is clearly an attempt to get young people watching TV ‘the old fashioned way’, programming from the top-down once again.

The recent bout of 3D cinema, it could be suggested, initiated an attempt to combat downloading, as the pirates would no longer be able to view the 3D processed films without getting a headache. Yet piracy represents an unmet demand in young people. 3DTV could possibly be suggested to represent an attempt to meet this demand and bring the immersive cinema experience to the living room. Avatar has, since its release in December, gone on to become the second biggest grossing film of all time, making $1,372,993,105 at the box office. Could 3DTV really represent a challenge to cinema? Possibly, if the price, on-demand ease and quality of the sets themselves are to the consumers needs. Yet the current crop of 3DTVs on display at CES seem like a stepping-stone to the fully immersive experience of the near future. One new technology, Intel’s Wireless Display (WiDi) allows your laptop to wirelessly connect to your HDTV, allowing the fully on-demand quality of internet streaming to appear on your TV. While some companies are beginning to invest in non-glasses based 3DTV, which is primarily coming about through gaming technology pushing innovations. Yet the technology that everybody wants to see, 3D holograms, has yet to materialize. Although a lot has been theorized and they are apparently in the pipelines. Yet it appears like young people will continue to use the internet and their laptops to watch films until cheap, accessible and truly immersive alternatives come into function. It feels like this won’t become fully mainstream until the consumer electronic industry recognize exactly what people want out of their products. Youth behaviour is often a good indicator of this.