Let’s be honest, broadcasters are not the most agile and the fastest to adopt new technology. Generally, they will stick to old workflows, old ways of doing things until they have no choices.

At this year’s NAB in Las Vegas, I have the feeling that a large part of the broadcast community still don’t understand what the deal is with 3D… so we are far from seeing that embrace by them.

One example did happen yesterday at the session that was talking about the 2d to 3d conversion of “Titanic”. That movie has been converted with lots of depth and I think the 3D effect is very impressive. They presented some scene from the converted movie and during the question period, one attendee did say that there was not much 3D in what we saw… basically for him if things are not jumping off the screen and comes into your face, this is not 3D!

Now “Titanic” has been done very well in my opinion, using 3D extensively behind the screen… as the producers are saying this is a “window into the world”. They purposely avoided the “gimmicks” of things jumping off the screen and I think we should applause them for that. I also hope that it will make the perception of 3D evolve among viewers and professionals.

On another front, Sony is demonstrating a prototype 46″ auto-stereoscopic display (glass free) that is based on one of their 4K monitor. While the engineer didn’t want to disclose the number of angles, I suspect that there was only a few… the viewing angle was limited within a 45 degree angle and there was only a handful of “sweet spots”. Nevertheless, it shows potential as not only the picture was good (when viewed from the right places) but the text was also sharp (a notable issue for auto-stereoscopic based on HD panels).

It’s going to be a few years for sure before those higher resolution panel reach a price point that is acceptable by consumer but it is interesting to see the progresses.