[by Julian Clover, www.broadbandtvnews.com]

Canal+ is to make its first public broadcast in Sweden using the 3D format. The pay-TV channel has secured the rights to the Spanish league derby between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid on March 19. It will be made available to retail subscribers, though it will also be available to view to domestic households with the necessary equipment.

The transmission is being supported by the TV manufacturer Panasonic and the O’Leary pub chain. “If one combines the excitement of a live football derby with the sensation of 3D and the atmosphere in the pub, I think you manage to get the ultimate sports and TV experience. In connection with that we launch 3D to our customers we kill the drums and take advantage of our unique rights to also send the match to the pubs and taverns, “says Mats Almgren, CEO of distributor Canal Digital.

Although Canal Digital has been testing the 3D format since the spring of 2010, it is effectively playing catch-up with its DTH rival Viasat, which has already screened a number of sports in 3D.

See the original story here: http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2011/03/15/canal-digital-sweden-puts-3d-into-pubs/

[By Eric Griffith, PC Mag.com]

3D will continue to infiltrate the movies while moving quickly to gaming handhelds, but it likely won’t hit your living room–for a while any

There’s no doubt stereoscopic 3D games are on the way. (And don’t confuse that with the phrase “3D games,” which generically covers any game that uses polygons to make images that move in three dimensions; stereoscopic

3D images are the kind that come flying out of the screen at you.) In fact, because gamers tend to be early adopters, they’ll probably help push the tech into homes in a way that a few measly 3D-cable channels can’t.

The Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) already supports 3D games via a firmware upgrade. Sony has the most to gain of any game maker by pushing 3D hard. As Lewis Ward, IDC’s analyst for gaming says of Sony, “They have a TV set line. They also have a movie production company, so they have a content angle to push.” Naturally, the PS3 also supports 3D Blu-ray movies.

Xbox 360 is also fully capable of 3D from a technical standpoint, so there’s nothing to prevent Microsoft from embracing 3D gaming on the Xbox platform. In fact, certain games do support it if you have a 3DTV to play it on, including Avatar The Game and Call of Duty: Black Ops. David Dennis, Microsoft’s Xbox group product manager, recently told USA Today that “the real accelerant to 3D games is when someone cracks the nut of glasses-free TV. That’s when you see it become … mainstream.” Once again, glasses are holding things back.

Nintendo is another matter. The low-resolution capabilities of the Wii mean it’s likely that Nintendo will wait until its next console to add 3D support. But Nintendo is very interested in pushing 3D, as witnessed by the creation of the 3DS handheld. It will be out in the U.S. next month, with 18 games at launch. The clam-shell 3DS doesn’t have a touch screen, which Ward says would be an issue, because 3D and touch screens don’t get along. Imagine trying to maintain the illusion of stereoscopic vision when your thumbs are always in the way.

How will Sony get around that limitation with its Next Generation Portable (NGP, aka PSP2) that’s coming later this year? Perhaps it will put the touchpad on the underside of the unit, so you control what’s on the screen from underneath. It doesn’t really matter, though, because Sony—the big backer of 3D as discussed above—decided not to put 3D graphics on the NGP. Sony’s excuse, given last month to site Eurogamer, is that 3D is best in a dedicated environment with a shared experience. In other words, it’s best to views 3D content on a 3DTV with lots of people.

See the original post here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2381547,00.asp