This year, still counting 2009, the audience has for the first time in history since stereoscopic 3-D was introduced decades ago chosen to watch a movie in 3-D format rather than its counterpart 2D version in the theaters. For the cinemas, 3-D has brought the little extra but a big screen to make people leave the comfort of their home to get something extra for their money when going to watch a movie. If you have asked yourself the question "why can't I have 3-D at home?", you have also probably made the assumption that the reason is that the technology is not there yet. This is no longer the case, and the top TV manufacturers has for the past year had 3-D ready LCD,plasma and LED-LCDs just waiting to launch. So why have we still not seen any ads for 3-D tv's, players and shows?

The last showstopper has so far been the agreement on how 3-D content shall be encoded and broadcasted. A big step has now been made as the final 3-d blu-ray specification was announced December 17th. The keynotes are that Blu-rays with 3-D content will be backwards compatible with older players to play 2-D content and that the most used Blu-ray player (the PS3) will be able to play movies in 3-D.

The new 3-D movie Avatar will probably be the first to be released with the new specifications next year.

This article has been consistently using 3-D as describing stereoscopic 3-D content as the blu-ray.com team has unanimously decided to use this spelling.

I'm waiting in anticipation for the first 3-D TV sets to be sold early next year, either using shutter or polarization technology.

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