3D Week: When 2D Becomes 3D

You're probably aware that this goes on in theatrical presentations already, where movies such as Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and Clash of the Titans have been 'retro-fitted' with 3D after the film has been shot, while films such as Avatar where made as 3D films from the start using 3D cameras.  But can this be applied at home? 

After all, it's not as if there are hundreds of 3D Blu-rays lining the shelves or a massive choice of 3D TV channels just yet, so what can we expect our shiny new 3D TV's to do to old, flat 2D content?  Well, sets from Samsung, Toshiba and Sony could offer 2D-to-3D conversion, something like upscaling a DVD to near-HD quality.  Sony have said their initial run of 3D TV's will feature this, but they are hardly making any noise about it, as there are concerns about the quality.

Toshiba's 'ultrapremium' Cell TV series will also house 2D-to-3D conversion, something that should be assisted by the CELL Engine inside, which according to Toshiba is 143 times more powerful than current televisions.  The process is called TriVector and the tagline is 'Watch Everything in 3D!", so they are going in very much the opposite direction of Sony when it comes to letting customers know about such a feature!  However, along with the CELL engine, the 55" or 65" ZX900 (pictured) will have Wi-Fi, a 1TB hard drive and a built-in Blu-ray drive, so expect the price tag to wear plenty of zeroes.

Comments

[John J. Clegg]

It seems odd that anyone would buy a TV with wi fi and built in hard drive when an HTPC already has that. Mine also is remote controlled with wireless keyboard and mouse, optical drive, firewire, usb, sata, tv tuner, and 2TB hard drives. Along with my Pioneer receiver, all a tv really has to do is be a tuner and monitor.