Sunday, September 6, 2009

SONY'S NEW ERA OF 3-D ENTERTAINMENT EXPERIENCE

       Sony set the stage for a new battle this wek with the unveiling of a 3-D-television, hoping to get a technology currently confined to a few cinermas into living rooms next year.
       The Bravia LCD TV, presented at the IFA consumer electionics fair, will not only enable people to watch programmes in three dimensions, it will be the "centrepiece of Sony's 3-D entertainment experience", Sony promises.
       Users will also be able to plug in their PlayStation games consoles, allowing them to play games in 3-D, as well as Blue-Ray disc players and computers, the Japanese firm says.
       To back up what it hopes whtat will soon become a major cash cow, Sony also makes the equipement needed to make movies and television programmes to play on the TV, which can also be used for regular, two-dimensional viewing.
       "It is the perfect moment for an announcement like this, even if its plans are ambitious," said RalfTanger, an expert on 3-D technology at the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz research institute.
       3-D movies have been around for several decades, with the Lamiere broters' "L'arrivee dud train" filmed back in 1903, according to sensio, one of the many firms looking to get a piece of the future 3-D pie.
       In 1946, the Soviet Union made "Robinzon Cruzo", the world's first talkie in colour and
3-D, and in the 1950s there were more than 60 others ncluding Alfred Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder" before studios put 3-D on the back burner.
       In the 1970s and early 1980s studios tried with offerings like "Jaws 3D" and "Friday the 13th, Part3," with cinemas issuing cardboard glasses, but it was not until the 1986 invention of the IMAX format that 3-D came into its own. The Cannes film festival kicked off this year with a gala opening ceremony that saw goofy spectacles foisted on tuxedo-clad celebrities for Disney-Pixar's 3-D cartoon comedy "UP".
       This year sees the eagerly awaited release in December of "Avatar" by James Cameron, the director of "Titanic". German director Wim Wenders is working on a film about choreographer Pina Bausch, who died earlier this year.
       It is in the cinema that 3-D has stayed, but Sony and its rival are hoping that it will soon break out and one day replace 2-D as a new standard.
       "Now the target is the living room," Tanger said.
       This is helped by the fact that some firms are considering launching channels that will show 3-D programmes.
       "At the moment the big handicapis that we are lacking in material," said Joern Ostermann, head of the Laboratory at Leipniz University in the northern German city of Hanover.

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