Attack of the Giant 3-D TVs!

Wouldn’t you know it. Just when I break down and buy a new, HD, flat-screen, fancy-schmancy television (it even comes with a remote!), I find that it’s already behind the times. HD? That’s sooooo 2009. The Joneses are buying 3-D TVs now.

Well, maybe they’re not buying them quite yet. Panasonic and Sanyo just unveiled their first 3-D sets this week, and Sony won’t be selling its own multi-dimensional screens until this summer. Still, television makers believe that folks like us will be screaming for 3-D sets in the near future. “We want to spend $500 more for our TVs!” we’ll allegedly tell them. “And we want to wear funny glasses, too!”

But this is problematic for folks like me who already wear funny glasses. When I go see 3-D movie screenings, I have to slip a pair of plastic, 3-D glasses over my regular specs—a look that would surely make me king of the faraway land of Nerdtopia.

Thank goodness I’m not dating.

But I put up with these 3-D glasses in the theater because, of course, I’d get fired from my awesome movie-reviewing gig if I didn’t. And also because the 3-D effects can be kinda cool. But I think 3-D movies are cool precisely because they’re like a special treat: You have to go to a theater to see them. They’re like Girl Scout cookies: fantastic in small quantities, but you wouldn’t want to eat them for dinner for the rest of your life, would you?

OK, so maybe you would. But the point is still valid. Sure, some folks think a film like Avatar is much improved in 3-D. But how much would it add to, say, American Idol or Iron Chef? And frankly, I can think of a few shows—Discovery’s Dirty Jobs comes to mind—that I’d pay not to see in 3-D.

And here’s another thing: I can’t keep track of my remote now, much less a pair of 3-D glasses. I don’t know if I want to shell out another $40 for a replacement pair every time I lose mine, or sit on them, or remove them from my dog’s mouth.

But maybe I’m just bitter because my television is already obsolete. Plus, I’m old. Maybe I’m looking at this new technology all wrong. What do you think?