There is a bit of a joke starting to circulate through the press gatherings and cocktail parties at this NAB convention where everything is supposed to be about 3-D. While we all knew that professional 3-D screens almost universally are designed to work with cheap polarized lens glasses (the kind you get in movie theaters), it is starting to become apparent that the home sets will require much more expensive active shutter glasses. In addition, each manufacturer is making them proprietary to their own systems. So if you own a Sony home 3-D set, you cannot take your glasses over to a neighbor’s house and use them with their Panasonic or Samsung set to watch the Big Game. Sure, they all have flicker lenses, but the triggering mechanism each uses is different. So unless you are willing to shell out in the range of $150 for another pair of fancy specs, watching 3-D in the home will really mean watching 3-D only in your home. Read the rest of this entry »