3D-lightful?

A pack of Pringles is how it all started. That's all I wanted from Sainsburys one rainy day back in November. I came out however with about 7 pairs of 3D glasses for Channel 4's 3D week hoping to watch Simon throw up on Carly's brother in 3D or maybe John Snow reporting the news with literally every wrinkle visible in the 3rd dimension. What I got however was some half-baked nonsense that was probably put together in about 14 seconds.

Not a great way to begin the 3D revolution.

What did Channel 4's 3D lineup include on its first night? Some footage from the 1950's of the Queen's Coronation and a Derren Brown programme that was so tacky it reminded me of the shit magicians on an unmade road in the Canary Islands. The fact the 1950's footage was a better 3D image than the Derren Brown show pretty much sums it up to be honest. And so after my very first experience with 3D telly, I threw all my 3D glasses in the bin.

I thought this was it. Colour. LCD. HD. 3D? It was surely a natural progression for tellies. Apparently not. You see, at the moment it's just not a feasible way of watching the box. For starters, you need the technology. And paper glasses with red and blue lenses do not count as technology, seeing as how I used to get a pair free in my Coco Pops about 10 years ago. If you've been to see a 3D movie at the cinema recently, you'll notice the 3D glasses are pretty much normal classes with clear lenses, which provides a much clearer 3D image than the red/blue cardboard ones.

Then there's the TV. I imagine many people were watching the footage from 3D week on Channel 4 on their 14' CRT (the big fat tellies for you techno simpletons) portable box wondering why the 3D image was a bit naff. Even I was struggling to find a 3D image on my 26' Sony LCD. The thing is, proper 3D TV is going to come at a massive cost. Prepare to be inundated with 3D tellies next year from the big players such as Sony, Panasonic and LG, and don't expect to see the prices much below £3k.

Of course, the World Cup is to be broadcast in 3D, so I can imagine many punters will rush out like mad 3D-craving loonies just to see Cristiano Ronaldo's leg snapped quite literally in front of your face. The thing is, the first 3D TVs will have to be good, because technologies improve over their lifespan. The first HDTV's were fine because all of them were better than standard definition. The first colour TV's were fine because they had more colour than black and white TV's. But for three grand, I would want a damn sight better 3D-ness than what I witnessed from Channel 4. And then how do you improve over the next few years? I mean, there's only so far I'd want Adrian Chiles popping out of the T.V...