With consumers doubting the supply of content for their new TVs, 3D would never have gained traction

Towards the end of 2009 and at the beginning of 2010, every tech analyst, journalist, blogger and fan made some sort of list of predictions, projections and wishes for the new year. For those who are in the right place at the right time, all of this culminates in a visit to the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where companies delight in revealing their plans and showing off concepts they hope will be popular enough to release during the year. CES, always held in the first half of January, is now famous for being the place where practically the entire industry gathers to reveal their secrets and bask in the joy of the crowds.

This year something was slightly different. Rather than being surprised by each major company’s announcements, the audience was treated to more and more of the same thing—3D. One by one, every company unveiled its grand vision of 2010 as the year of 3D television: Samsung, LG, Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba and JVC all had a single agenda, and they all did it at the same time. It wasn’t just TVs either, there were 3D cameras, 3D content services and channels being announced, 3D games, 3D Blu-ray, 3D movie making programs… even prescription glasses with the required polarization for watching 3D! in fact an entire ecosystem with enough grunt to sustain an entire industry basically popped up overnight.

Can this be mere coincidence? It’s highly unlikely that every single major consumer tech brand decided this was a cool new thing to try and sell. It seems that either some magical new tech suddenly popped up and made 3D super easy to implement, or the companies all got together in advance to decide how they were going to manipulate the market.

The answer probably lies somewhere in between. Each of these companies has partnered with a small firm called RealD, which developed the particular type of polarization that they all use. And the reason for everyone jumping in at the same time is quite straightforward: if only one or two did it and their techniques weren’t interoperable, 3D would have continued to be a niche gimmick, and that too an expensive one. With consumers doubting the supply of content for their new TVs, 3D would never have gained any traction. But with enough weight behind it, not only will there be a flood of devices, but also a flood of content. There’s now guaranteed to be enough to make people believe not only that this is the new standard to work towards, but that this is the new top-end, desirable technology. And it might just distract from the pain of buying all-new TVs, Blu-ray players, HDMI cables, and set-top boxes.