The Blu-Ray Disc Association has just standardized their 1080p stereoscopic 3D definition, and just in time for Christmas.  Which sounds all well and good.  The specification tells you how to play 2D content on 3D players, and even 3D content on 2D players.  And includes mention of the Sony Playstation 3.  Further, the specification itself doesn’t require any specific hardware to implement, so in theory it could be used with any number of 3D devices.

Which sounds great.

Until you ask the question, just what 3D devices are available to play these 1080p 3D movies?

Um …

Err …

Yeah.

And like that, the whole thing brings us back, well, over at least the last 20 years where 3D has been all hype, gizmos, and gimmicks … but no show.  From bubble-domed 3D projectors that were going to replace “boxy” TVs to clunky stereoscopic glasses, to shutters, to special lenses, to even dual-layered TV screens that used a slight angle of viewing to give you a stereoscopic display, 3D has just soooo not happened.

So congrats!  We have a 1080p high definition Blu-Ray format for 3D movies this Christmas.  Great!  But it’d be a whole lot better if someone would finally market an affordable and usable device to watch them on.

And then there’s that whole content thing…

It also should be important to note that the whole Blu-Ray 1080p 3D stereoscopic format is just that, stereoscopic.  So the data necessary to generate actual fully three dimensional holograms is not there.  We’re merely talking about gimmicky “3D” that has tricked our brains and amazed us back since the days of drive-in movies and colored glasses, not any actual use of three dimensions.