For an industry used to hyperbole, 3D is having quite an effect. Avatar has taken $2.6bn in worldwide ticket sales, and it took just three days for Alice in Wonderland to became this year’s highest grossing film. Parallels with the switch from black and white to colour are rife, and it is not just cinemas and film studios getting excited. On Tuesday, Sony announced it will join Panasonic and Samsung in launching 3D-TVs in the US this year.

The hope, particularly for Sony and Panasonic whose TV divisions lose money, is for higher TV sales. Consultancy iSuppli predicts that shipments of 3D-TVs will rise from 4.2m this year to to 78m in 2015, or around two-fifths of the global flatscreen TV market. But the aim is also to sell kit for filming in 3-D, as well as more Blue-Ray discs and PlayStations.