A month or so ago me and my wife decided it was time to demote our aging Samsung 32'' LCD to the bedroom and buy a bigger and better television for the living room. Since we're a family of gamers and movie watchers I decided it was ok to go for something really good. After a period of research I decided that the Panasonic TC-P50VT25 plasma TV was the best TV I could buy without breaking the bank completely. Don't get me wrong, the VT25 series is still not cheap but compared to a lot of other large screen TVs it's priced pretty competitively. To add to that this TV pretty much has the best picture money can buy at the moment. The only thing that may or may not be better is the discontinued Pioneer Elite KURO line. Needless to say, this TV rocks. It beats the hell out of any same size LCD TV on the market in terms of picture quality and costs a LOT less too.

But... this post is not a Panasonic TC-P50VT25 review. There's enough raving reviews of this TV on the net already. Instead I'm going to talk about the stereoscopic 3D feature this and some other TVs currently on the market offer. It's important to note that I did not buy this TV because it has 3D. I consider the 3D a (very welcome) bonus to a set that's overall extremely good. Let's take a look. First I will discuss my 3D gaming experiences so far, then I'll take a look at 3D television and finally I'll summarize the good and the bad and take a look at the future of all this.

3D gaming: the PS3 leads the way

Last week, Sony released the first four PS3 games that support stereoscopic 3D. Additionally they promised 20 more titles this year. Funnily enough, this was received with a lot of 'meh' from the fanboys which I found strange for a new offered capability that doesn't actually cost any money. Probably because most of them don't actually have a 3D capable television. It seems the majority of people who downplay stereoscopic 3D as a FAD have not experienced it themselves. The PS3 will also receive a firmware update to enable playback of Blu-Ray 3D discs. I hope they will hurry with this because for now I can't watch any Blu-Ray 3D. I decided it's not worth buying a dedicated player that costs more than a PS3 if the PS3 will have the capability in the near future.

I know for a fact that the much anticipated Gran Turismo 5 is going to have a 3D mode. Being a big fan of this series I find it extremely exciting that 'The Real Driving Simulator' is about to get a whole lot MORE real. For now we have the following titles:

• Wipeout HD (full game, including Wipeout Fury add-on)
• Super Stardust HD (full game)
• Motorstorm Pacific Rift (demo only)
• Pain (some levels with 3D I think. I don't have this game)

Wipeout HD running in its regular 1080p glory

I'm interested in how good they will manage to make Gran Turismo 5 look because 3D gaming places massive demands on the processing power of the console. For each regular frame the console now has to render two different frames. One for each eye. For Wipeout this means they had to drop the resolution to 720p per eye. Believe me though when I say it still looks unbelievably good. Because of the added dimension it's hard to see any drop in quality anyway in my opinion. Wipeout HD in stereoscopic 3D is pretty amazing. The game has an incredible depth and the sensation of extreme speed is better than ever. I also found the game easier to play because of the 3D because of the added realism helping to judge the track better. Awesome job, Studio Liverpool! You guys rock the frontlines of the future of gaming.

Obviously you can't see the 3 dimensions on your computer screen but I still thought I'd add a 'through the glasses' shot of Wipeout HD

The other two titles look great as well. In my opinion these first titles show a lot of promise for the future. I for one welcome the addition of stereoscopic 3D by Sony. As you already know, it will work on any 3D capable TV. NOT just Sony's new extremely expensive Bravia 3D line.

The birth of 3D television: FIFA World Cup in 3D

When I heard Comcast is offering ESPN 3D last week I was stoked. This meant I get to see Holland play in 3D! Apparently it required a modern cable box that can do MPEG4 so I had to swap mine out. Luckily this was no problem and I got it all up and running yesterday. This morning I got to give it a good test run with the Germany - Australia match. It was a pretty amazing experience. It's hard to really describe it to people who haven't seen it but I can tell you that this is the closest thing to being in the stadium we're gonna get for a long, long time. Shots taken from the spectator area feel like you're one of them. Wide angle shots allow MUCH better tracking of what's going on in the game than when watching in 2D and the closeup shots are nothing but amazing. 3D adds a whole new level to watching sports!

The only disappointing thing about ESPN 3D is the way they have chosen to broadcast it. The signal is broadcasted in 'side-by-side' format. This means the frames for both eyes are crammed into one 1080i frame.

Side-by-side 3D displayed in 2D

The above photo immediately reveals why this is a bit crappy. When cramming 2 frames in one we lose 50% of the horizontal resolution. Since 1080i already loses 50% of the vertical 1080 pixel resolution this means each eye only gets a 960x520 pixels picture. Barely better than 420p DVD resolution! The PS3 sends whole frames, rapidly alternating while in this case the TV has to create the two frames by stretching each half of the picture back to 1920 pixels wide. The result is a somewhat fuzzy 3D image through the shutter glasses. I suppose choosing this format was done for bandwidth limit reasons. Still this means there's a lot of room for improvement. Blu-Ray 3D produced two true 1080p images per eye which is four times the resolution of what ESPN 3D provides. Let's hope future 3D broadcasts will get better! From playing Wipeout (720p per eye) and Super Stardust HD (true 1080p per eye) I know there's tons of improvement possible here.

The processed ESPN 3D image, seen through the glasses.

That said, it does NOT mean the experience sucks. Quite the opposite. Like I said before, the 3D adds an amazing amount of realism to watching a match that makes it easy to forgive the lack of resolution. Just like with the Wipeout HD downgrade from 1080p to 720p, 3D adds so much that it doesn't seem to matter as much as you'd think from reading this post.

Thoughts about stereoscopic 3D television

Like I said before, I do not yet have access to Blu-Ray 3D because I'm waiting for Sony to release a PS3 firmware update that allows me to play these discs. I don't mind too much at this moment because there aren't all that many movies out in this format yet. I have however seen some Blu-Ray 3D material in an AV store and I can tell you it's mind blowing. Especially on the Panasonic VT25 series. I can't comment on Sony's new sets because I haven't seen them but I do know it looks considerably less good on Samsung sets, both LED TV's and Plasma. They exhibit a visible annoying ghosting that I'd personally not be able to tolerate for a long time. It gave me nausea within minutes. Luckily on the Panasonic everything is fine, at least it is to me. Obviously this technique is very new, making me one of those 'early adopters'. I'm sure future sets are going to make it look even better. A thing to note is that even theatrical 3D can exhibits. I definitely saw some while watching Avatar in 3D. On a TV however the ghosting can be eliminated almost completely because active 3D is fundamentally better than passive 3D which is used in theaters. Heck, I don't see ghosting on my Panasonic which proves to me that it can be done. Active 3D wouldn't work in a theater for obvious financial reasons. Active glasses are too expensive while passive ones cost almost nothing.

The bad

The biggest disadvantage of stereoscopic 3D television is the need to wear special active shutter glasses in order to be able to see the 3D effect. The first big disadvantage of this is the fact that you need a set for every person watching. They don't come cheap either (around 130 dollars) so this is somewhat of a ruiner. Also a lot of people really hate having to wear glasses. I personally don't mind it too much but I understand the people who do. Unfortunately it will be a long time before we will see 3D TV (and movie theatre experiences) that don't require glasses. So for now if you want to see 3D you'll have to either put up with the glasses or miss out on it altogether.

A second disadvantage is the distinct loss of brightness/contrast introduced by the fact that each eye is only seeing something 50% of the time. You can compensate for this somewhat by bumping up the brightness on the TV but the loss is definitely there. While it didn't really bother me I feel I do need to mention this as a disadvantage.

Wishlist for the future

I'm gonna wrap up this post with a wishlist for the future:

• MORE games. Bring it on, Sony and Microsoft please jump on board as well!
• Sony, please hurry with that PS3 firmware update for Blu-Ray 3D.
• More TV broadcasts.
• BETTER TV broadcasts. I'd love to see at least 1080i native 3D or maybe even 1080p native.
• For the far future: 3D without glasses. Since this is a long way off for now I'd like to see much cheaper sets of active shutter glasses.
• Cheaper TV's that support 3D so more people will be able to afford it

I'm interested in your thoughts. Do you have a 3D capable TV? Did you try one in a store? Let me know what you think!

Disclaimer: Panasonic did NOT pay me or sponsor me to write this post. I paid dearly for this TV and didn't receive any compensation for this post. I just happen to really like the TV.