Berlin - Sony set the stage for a new battle this week with the unveiling of a 3D television, hoping to get a technology at present confined to a few cinemas into living rooms next year.
The Bravia LCD TV, presented at the IFA consumer electronics fair, will not only enable people to watch programmes in three dimensions, it will be the “centrepiece of Sony's 3D entertainment experience'', Sony promises.
Users will also be able to plug in their PlayStation games consoles, allowing them to play games in 3D, as well as Blu-Ray disc players and computers, the Japanese firm says. And to back up what it hopes will soon become a major cash cow, Sony also makes the equipment needed to make movies and television programmes to play on the TV, which can also be used for regular, two-dimensional viewing.
3D movies have been around for some time, with the Lumiere brothers' L'arrivee du train filmed back in 1903, according to Sensio, one of the many firms looking to get a piece of the future 3D pie.
In 1946, the Soviet Union made Robinzon Cruzo, the world's first talkie in colour and 3D, and in the 1950s there were more than 60 others, including Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder.
It was not until the 1986 invention of the Imax format that 3D came into its own. - AFP