Readers Write: Will I be able to get 3D on my TV and Blu-ray player?

You should see the PS3 as more of a computer than anything else.  Like any other computer, by reprogramming it, you can change all sorts of settings, including the frequency of its video output, its decoding capacity or the encoding of the video signal it produces.  The software in your Blu-ray player is nowhere near as complex as the PS3's, and lots of things are hard-wired into the chip, including video decoding.  That's one of the things that prevents Blu-ray players from migrating to 3D: they can't read the AVC-MVC encoding found on Blu-ray 3D discs.  But because the PS3 has a processor comparable to that in a regular computer, it can be reprogrammed to handle this format.

Not much better for TVs

With your TV, the problem is more to do with the video inputs.  The hardware that manages these inputs generally can't handle video signals at frequencies above 60 or 75 Hz--but 3D video needs 120 Hz (2 x 60 Hz, for sixty images per second for each eye).

Even if you thought that was hope for 200 Hz TVs, we're afraid we'll have to dash that too.  To produce more fluid movements, some TVs can display 200 frames per second--but they still start from 60 Hz signals.  They then interpolate the extra frames to reach 200 Hz.  There's nothing the manufacturers can do to the software that can get around these hardware limitations.

So, apart from the PS3, there's not much you can do: if you want to dive into 3D at home, you'll need to invest in some new hardware.

> Product Survey: 40'' to 49'' TVs

> Product Survey: Blu-ray Players