3D Television Update: Imax, Sony, Discovery In

Its an arms race to 3D TV is the verdict, and its not even here yet. A triumvirate of Sony, Imax, and Discovery are combating the ESPN 3D TV announcement earlier:

The ESPN network will only operate for live events. The Discovery/Imax/Sony venture will be a full 24-hour channel. David Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery Communications, said in an interview that the 3D move is part of “this overall quest that we’re on for closest-to-real.” [link]

Closest to real kind of misses the point of true 3d, which is purely dissecting modeling matrices into reusable representations of perceptual 3d spaces. Anything other isnt really 3d, but an illusion of depth. Like, where are all the VR headsets? they were only a couple hundred bucks in 1994… wtf? Anyway…

Speaking about the joint venture, he said, “With Sony promoting it on their sets and Imax promoting it in the theaters, and all of us contributing content, we think we can have something that will be pretty strong for consumers.”

Companies like Discovery, Imax, Sony and the Walt Disney Company, which controls ESPN, are trying to place themselves at the forefront of an emerging technology, much as media companies did in the HDTV arms race. 3-D televisions may not be mainstream for many years, but “every TV manufacturer is putting on a 3-D push,” Jason Oxman, a spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association, told the BBC.[link]

Push it out, I say.