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It’s high time you moved your PC into the 21st Century by making it television-capable.

Let’s face it: most of us are missing a trick. Who here ignores traditional broadcast schedules, opting instead to catch up on TV shows via BBC iPlayer, ITV Player or 4oD? How many of us have downloaded a digital boxset from iTunes or spent hours slumped in front of the computer monitor browsing funny videos and clips on YouTube?

The way that we watch TV has changed – so why shouldn’t the way we access TV change along with it? Why watch web-delivered content on your widescreen laptop? You could be enjoying it on that lovely big TV in your sitting room.

If the thought of reclining in your chair and flicking with ease between live Freeview channels, a film on your hard drive and that program you’ve been meaning to catch up on with iPlayer doesn’t entice you, maybe the thought of your wallet will. When you buy a TV, you want to get a good few years use out of it before upgrading again. But entertainment technology is advancing quickly, and that large flatscreen you purchased a couple of years ago is already looking a bit old-
fashioned because it’s not HD. If you want an HDTV, you’ll need to buy a whole new television. What happens when 3D models go mainstream? You’ll have to upgrade again. And let’s not forget the digital switchover, which is happening at the moment. If your set is incapable of receiving digital signals, you’ll have to upgrade, or at the very least buy a set-top box or two. Either way, your wallet suffers. But if you make a PC the centre of your home entertainment system, you can embrace new standards through software simply by upgrading a single component – which is far less expensive than replacing your whole set every time a new technology comes along.

You’re probably wondering where the catch is. If TV PCs are so wonderful, why doesn’t everyone have one? The answer is that PCs and the living room have had an awkward relationship over the years because of one thing: noise. But no more: new advancements in technology have produced quiet machines that still have the grunt needed to handle HD video streaming and more. If you’re not sure which components your ideal machine needs – or if you’re eager to build one to your own exacting standards – then you’re in luck. We’ve compiled a list of the best software that will bring it your PC to life. Trust us: you’re not going to look back.

Media Center

Windows 7 Media Center is one of the most polished 10-foot interfaces around, but in general the software has been slow to evolve. Ignoring the addition of native H.264 support in Windows 7, other improvements to the system have been mostly cosmetic: turbo scroll, faded menu overlays, a new album art display and a handy desktop gadget. Media Center could easily feel old-fashioned and behind the times, then, if it weren’t for the army of bedroom coders constantly beavering away to produce plug-
ins that enhance the core features. Thanks to them, Media Center even has its own unofficial app store.

Another reason that many people still don’t take advantage of Media Center – despite the fact that it’s pre-installed on most XP, Vista and Windows 7 PCs – is that the software is at its best when you have a TV tuner and you’re using it as a fully fledged DVR. The app is hardly anyone’s first choice for general video playback (that’s usually Windows Media Player) or streaming video (most people prefer direct web browser access), so it gets forgotten about. Media Center has always done a great job of cataloguing the photos, music and video on your hard drive, and this could be handy for TV PC users – but its internet TV integration has been lightweight at best. Where Vista’s version had a poorly populated Online Media section, Windows 7’s Media Center just adds an Internet TV option supporting WMV, Silverlight and Flash video. US users have access to a range of internet TV streams from the likes of CBS, Zune, MSNBC and MSN; but UK users aren’t so well served on this front.

Touch makes Media Center more compelling, but don’t expect it on your TV PC

It’s not all bad news, though: you can watch iPlayer and even iTunes content in Media Center. Sky Player is also available as a plug-in, offering access to various Sky channels for subscribers, including Sky Movies and Sky Sports.

The suitability question

To do away with the hassle of having to navigate around your PC desktop before watching TV , you can get your system to boot directly into Media Center on startup. In Windows 7, select ‘Startup and Windows Behaviour’ on Media Center’s Settings menu. Simply check the box next to the ‘Start Windows Media Center when Windows starts’ option. Easy.

Of course, you could argue that Media Center is a little bloated for a system like this one – and the cost of a Windows 7 licence will add an extra £150. That’s a lot to pay, especially when you won’t even be using the bulk of the OS on a day-to-day basis. It’s worth considering lighter-weight alternatives such as Boxee or XBMC; these might be better suited to an Ion-based system.

Media Center Alternatives

Microsoft’s Media Center faces stiff competition these days thanks to freebie software like MythTV, Mediaportal, Boxee and XBMC. MythTV has been knocking around since 2002, and the software provides some good DVR support if you’re building a PC for heavy-duty TV recording. Numerous add-on modules can add photo browsing, RSS feeds, Netflix integration and Slingbox-style placeshifting. Mediaportal is unashamedly Media Center-esque, but it has a limited appeal for TV PCs since it only runs on Windows.

XBMC is otherwise known as Xbox Media Center. What started out as a clever hack for Microsoft’s games console has now evolved into an “open-source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media”. There are versions for Linux, OS X and Windows. Using www.xbmc.org’s own guide, you can easily specify a minimal Ubuntu install before you add the software. XBMC can handle a huge array of video files, and playback can be accelerated using the Ion hardware. Usefully, XBMC can either launch a compatible player or function with a VDPAU (Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix) modification to the software. It’s all there in the XBMC wiki.

Out of the Boxee

Another Media Center alternative is Boxee. This freeware media centre solution was born out of the XBMC code base, and it brings a social-networking edge to things. Boxee does everything you expect – it catalogues photos, music and video on your PC’s hard disk and makes them accessible via a sofa-
friendly UI. If you’ve titled DVD rips correctly, Boxee will pull in the background blurb from IMDB.

Boxee apps take things a step further, plugging you directly into third-party video-streaming services including Netflix, YouTube, BBC iPlayer, Last.fm, Flickr, Digg and CNN. Log into your account on the Boxee websiteand you can seek out people you know that are also using the software. Adding a friend to your list will show you what they’ve been watching or what they recommend.

Boxee offers plug-ins for all of the best video, music and photo-streaming services

Boxee is an ideal choice for an Ion-based TV PC, especially as the integrated media player supports hardware-assisted video decoding. Need a cutting-edge remote control to go with it? Type Boxee into the iTunes Store and you’ll find a Boxee Remote app that lets you control your Boxee-powered TV PC with an iPhone or iPod Touch. And if you don’t want a PC at all? At this year’s CES, D-Link announced the first Boxee Box, a dedicated hardware solution that runs the software silently.

Stream Your Video Elsewhere

Having a TV PC connected to your beautiful plasma TV is one thing; being able to watch it every time you want to is another. So what can you do when your partner wants to watch Glee or the kids are pestering you to switch over to Dora The Explorer? No, not go ahead and watch what you want anyway: instead, simply stream your videos to a more portable device. Yes, we know the whole point of a TV PC is to take away the pain of slumping in a hard chair – but it’s handy to be able to stream to a laptop should somebody else fancy watching something too. After all, not everything you watch needs to be viewed on a massive Full HD TV – and you can always take your laptop to bed for some comfort.

So consider the return of the portable TV. Not in the form of the 14in mini-telly of old, but in the shape of laptops, netbooks and Wi-Fi Internet tablets that you can cuddle up with on the sofa. For example, grab yourself an iPhone, iPod Touch or Apple iPad (when available) and, using the Air Video software from the App Store, you can stream videos stored on your TV PC to it. Family harmony maintained; entertainment still on tap.

It’s high time you moved your PC into the 21st Century by making it television-capable.

Let’s face it: most of us are missing a trick. Who here ignores traditional broadcast schedules, opting instead to catch up on TV shows via BBC iPlayer, ITV Player or 4oD? How many of us have downloaded a digital boxset from iTunes or spent hours slumped in front of the computer monitor browsing funny videos and clips on YouTube?

The way that we watch TV has changed – so why shouldn’t the way we access TV change along with it? Why watch web-delivered content on your widescreen laptop? You could be enjoying it on that lovely big TV in your sitting room.

If the thought of reclining in your chair and flicking with ease between live Freeview channels, a film on your hard drive and that program you’ve been meaning to catch up on with iPlayer doesn’t entice you, maybe the thought of your wallet will. When you buy a TV, you want to get a good few years use out of it before upgrading again. But entertainment technology is advancing quickly, and that large flatscreen you purchased a couple of years ago is already looking a bit old-
fashioned because it’s not HD. If you want an HDTV, you’ll need to buy a whole new television. What happens when 3D models go mainstream? You’ll have to upgrade again. And let’s not forget the digital switchover, which is happening at the moment. If your set is incapable of receiving digital signals, you’ll have to upgrade, or at the very least buy a set-top box or two. Either way, your wallet suffers. But if you make a PC the centre of your home entertainment system, you can embrace new standards through software simply by upgrading a single component – which is far less expensive than replacing your whole set every time a new technology comes along.

You’re probably wondering where the catch is. If TV PCs are so wonderful, why doesn’t everyone have one? The answer is that PCs and the living room have had an awkward relationship over the years because of one thing: noise. But no more: new advancements in technology have produced quiet machines that still have the grunt needed to handle HD video streaming and more. If you’re not sure which components your ideal machine needs – or if you’re eager to build one to your own exacting standards – then you’re in luck. We’ve compiled a list of the best software that will bring it your PC to life. Trust us: you’re not going to look back.

Media Center

Windows 7 Media Center is one of the most polished 10-foot interfaces around, but in general the software has been slow to evolve. Ignoring the addition of native H.264 support in Windows 7, other improvements to the system have been mostly cosmetic: turbo scroll, faded menu overlays, a new album art display and a handy desktop gadget. Media Center could easily feel old-fashioned and behind the times, then, if it weren’t for the army of bedroom coders constantly beavering away to produce plug-
ins that enhance the core features. Thanks to them, Media Center even has its own unofficial app store.

Another reason that many people still don’t take advantage of Media Center – despite the fact that it’s pre-installed on most XP, Vista and Windows 7 PCs – is that the software is at its best when you have a TV tuner and you’re using it as a fully fledged DVR. The app is hardly anyone’s first choice for general video playback (that’s usually Windows Media Player) or streaming video (most people prefer direct web browser access), so it gets forgotten about. Media Center has always done a great job of cataloguing the photos, music and video on your hard drive, and this could be handy for TV PC users – but its internet TV integration has been lightweight at best. Where Vista’s version had a poorly populated Online Media section, Windows 7’s Media Center just adds an Internet TV option supporting WMV, Silverlight and Flash video. US users have access to a range of internet TV streams from the likes of CBS, Zune, MSNBC and MSN; but UK users aren’t so well served on this front.

Touch makes Media Center more compelling, but don’t expect it on your TV PC

It’s not all bad news, though: you can watch iPlayer and even iTunes content in Media Center. Sky Player is also available as a plug-in, offering access to various Sky channels for subscribers, including Sky Movies and Sky Sports.

The suitability question

To do away with the hassle of having to navigate around your PC desktop before watching TV , you can get your system to boot directly into Media Center on startup. In Windows 7, select ‘Startup and Windows Behaviour’ on Media Center’s Settings menu. Simply check the box next to the ‘Start Windows Media Center when Windows starts’ option. Easy.

Of course, you could argue that Media Center is a little bloated for a system like this one – and the cost of a Windows 7 licence will add an extra £150. That’s a lot to pay, especially when you won’t even be using the bulk of the OS on a day-to-day basis. It’s worth considering lighter-weight alternatives such as Boxee or XBMC; these might be better suited to an Ion-based system.

Media Center Alternatives

Microsoft’s Media Center faces stiff competition these days thanks to freebie software like MythTV, Mediaportal, Boxee and XBMC. MythTV has been knocking around since 2002, and the software provides some good DVR support if you’re building a PC for heavy-duty TV recording. Numerous add-on modules can add photo browsing, RSS feeds, Netflix integration and Slingbox-style placeshifting. Mediaportal is unashamedly Media Center-esque, but it has a limited appeal for TV PCs since it only runs on Windows.

XBMC is otherwise known as Xbox Media Center. What started out as a clever hack for Microsoft’s games console has now evolved into an “open-source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media”. There are versions for Linux, OS X and Windows. Using www.xbmc.org’s own guide, you can easily specify a minimal Ubuntu install before you add the software. XBMC can handle a huge array of video files, and playback can be accelerated using the Ion hardware. Usefully, XBMC can either launch a compatible player or function with a VDPAU (Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix) modification to the software. It’s all there in the XBMC wiki.

Out of the Boxee

Another Media Center alternative is Boxee. This freeware media centre solution was born out of the XBMC code base, and it brings a social-networking edge to things. Boxee does everything you expect – it catalogues photos, music and video on your PC’s hard disk and makes them accessible via a sofa-
friendly UI. If you’ve titled DVD rips correctly, Boxee will pull in the background blurb from IMDB.

Boxee apps take things a step further, plugging you directly into third-party video-streaming services including Netflix, YouTube, BBC iPlayer, Last.fm, Flickr, Digg and CNN. Log into your account on the Boxee websiteand you can seek out people you know that are also using the software. Adding a friend to your list will show you what they’ve been watching or what they recommend.

Boxee offers plug-ins for all of the best video, music and photo-streaming services

Boxee is an ideal choice for an Ion-based TV PC, especially as the integrated media player supports hardware-assisted video decoding. Need a cutting-edge remote control to go with it? Type Boxee into the iTunes Store and you’ll find a Boxee Remote app that lets you control your Boxee-powered TV PC with an iPhone or iPod Touch. And if you don’t want a PC at all? At this year’s CES, D-Link announced the first Boxee Box, a dedicated hardware solution that runs the software silently.

Stream Your Video Elsewhere

Having a TV PC connected to your beautiful plasma TV is one thing; being able to watch it every time you want to is another. So what can you do when your partner wants to watch Glee or the kids are pestering you to switch over to Dora The Explorer? No, not go ahead and watch what you want anyway: instead, simply stream your videos to a more portable device. Yes, we know the whole point of a TV PC is to take away the pain of slumping in a hard chair – but it’s handy to be able to stream to a laptop should somebody else fancy watching something too. After all, not everything you watch needs to be viewed on a massive Full HD TV – and you can always take your laptop to bed for some comfort.

So consider the return of the portable TV. Not in the form of the 14in mini-telly of old, but in the shape of laptops, netbooks and Wi-Fi Internet tablets that you can cuddle up with on the sofa. For example, grab yourself an iPhone, iPod Touch or Apple iPad (when available) and, using the Air Video software from the App Store, you can stream videos stored on your TV PC to it. Family harmony maintained; entertainment still on tap.

New 3D films such as Avatar show more restraint than earlier offerings, which overwhelmed viewers.

The future is here – and it’s looking pretty. I’m sitting in a darkened room at Sky’s HQ in West London, peering through a pair of polarised glasses at television’s next evolutionary step. In front of me is a 46in JVC TV displaying a show reel of Sky’s best efforts in the brave new world of 3D entertainment.

It’s impressive. The action appears to be happening an inch or so behind the razor-thin bezel of the TV, then telescoping off into the distance. There’s a real sensation of depth. With Sky’s Senior Product Development Manager John Dollin, I watch clips of a Champions’ League game, a boxing match featuring Ricky Hatton and a spot of rugby. The ball zooms into the screen from the corners and the players run convincingly in front of the distant stands.

“All the investment we did in 2005 and 2006, when we did HD, is what enables us to do 3D. We’re just piggybacking off that,” Dollin says. The changes Sky needed to make to its broadcast technology to offer 3D channels were “small and incremental”, and it plans to launch its first 3D offering in 2010.

The three dimensional clouds are gathering into the perfect storm. In December 2009, it was announced that 3D Blu-ray discs will be available from this summer. Graphics card manufacturer Nvidia already markets a 3D solution for PC gamers, complete with a high-spec monitor and 3D glasses. Even better, the tech works, and big-name manufacturers and content producers are getting in on the act. “Every single [television] manufacturer you can think of has a 3D TV coming out,” says Dollin.

But promises of a 3D future are all too familiar. Since the advent of 3D cinema in the early ’50s, entertainment companies have sporadically announced that the future is 3D – and it’s arriving soon. Whether it was House of Wax in the ’50s or the 1983 box office smash Jaws 3D, the future has worn silly glasses for as long as most of us can remember. What makes this time any different, and how is the entertainment industry going to make 3D stick?

The third dimension

Happily, 3D technology has progressed beyond recognition since the days of glasses made of cardboard and red and blue cellophane. The only constant is how we detect depth – each eye sees a slightly different image and the brain merges them together. Flatscreens use a little trickery to display a 3D image: each eye is fed a different picture by filtering out light, and the brain is fooled into providing information about an image’s depth.

One of the oldest – and least commercially successful – tricks in the book is adding red and blue tints to a pair of images and displaying them simultaneously. Known as anaglyph 3D, a pair of coloured glasses filter out either the blue or red channel, tricking the brain into thinking that it’s seeing different perspectives. However, the technology isn’t that impressive visually, and anaglyph has failed to find favour with the new wave of 3D technology.

Now there are two frontrunners. The first is known as passive polarisation, and it’s what Sky is demonstrating. Footage is shot using two cameras that are placed in slightly different positions but converge on a single focal point – like your eyes. It then broadcasts two images, each 960 x 960 in size. These are stretched across a special HDTV with what Dollin calls a “pixel perfect” polarising filter across it. Finally, a pair of polarised glasses filter out light line by line, providing your eyes with slightly different images and your brain with enough information to build a 3D image. The advantage is that the glasses are cheap, making them perfect for Sky’s initial intended audience of pub-goers. Dollin also says that the 3D image can be received by all of Sky’s 1.6 million Sky HD subscribers without the need for a new decoder box.

The second approach is more accessible for PC users. It doesn’t require a polarised screen – just a monitor or a TV capable of running at 120Hz or faster. Instead of showing two perspectives at once, the display flickers between them. Light is filtered out by a pair of active shutter glasses that have LCD crystals for lenses. When a charge is applied to each lens, it blacks out for a fraction of a second, perfectly in sync with the image that the screen is showing thanks to a transmitter connected to the display. This means the screen is a little cheaper – ViewSonic’s 22in 120Hz VX2268wm display costs just over £200. However, the glasses are far more complex than Sky’s passive solution. Nvidia’s 3D Vision set – which comprises just one pair of glasses and a wireless transmitter – costs just over £100.

Kitting up for 3D

The introduction of 3D into your home means one thing to hardware manufacturers: the opportunity to sell more kit. The first thing you’ll need is a new screen, and if 120Hz or faster displays seem costly, you should hold your breath when looking at the price of a passive 3D display. The 46in JVC TV that Sky used to demonstrate its 3D content might be capable of 1080p and come with a pair of 3D glasses, but the £8,000 price tag is positively mouth-drying. Not only are you likely to need a new screen, but you might also need a new graphics card if your PC is looking a little long in the tooth. All 3D games are rendered twice, thanks to the need for distinct left and right images. “It’s quite handy for us that people want to play in this 3D environment,” says Richard Huddy, ATI’s Senior Developer Relations Manager. “The gaming situation clearly requires a great deal more horsepower, because essentially [the video card] is doing twice as much work.”

There’s even worse news if you’re a console owner. Huddy says that while Sony and Microsoft are in the process of giving their PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles longevity by releasing new motion-sensitive controllers, neither has a future in 3D. “The truth is, doubling the memory demand and the fill rate [would] overwhelm both an Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 at any respectable resolution,” he says. If Microsoft or Sony released 3D games for either console, Huddy says that it would be a “token effort”. “You couldn’t take any of the high-end games of the moment – Killzone, Halo 3 or anything like that – and run them in full 3D on those consoles. They don’t have the horsepower,” he warns. However, a Sony spokesperson revealed to PC Plus that “technological investigation” into 3D on the PlayStation 3 is underway, with a view to allowing gamers to play 3D games on the existing hardware.

For the time being, the best way to play 3D games is on a PC. Doug McConkey, a product manager at EA, claims that the PC is the best medium for dragging 3D into the consumer’s consciousness. “The more platforms [3D] is on the better, but the PC has the potential to make it mainstream,” he told us.

Leading the pack

For now, PC users are at the forefront of the 3D revolution. Upgrading a monitor is cheaper than upgrading a TV set and, similarly, a graphics card can be replaced without the need for an entirely new system.

3D is even available on laptops. The Acer Aspire 5738G, for instance, looks like any other mid-range laptop, but its bright 15.6in screen has a polarised filter that’s similar to Sky’s 3D system. Pop on a pair of polarised 3D specs and the ATI Radeon HD 4750 can render videos or games in 3D.

If anything, however, the Aspire underlines how new 3D really is, as well as how far it has to go before it becomes, in the words of an Nvidia spokesperson, “just there” – included by default in all consumer screens. The demo material included with the laptop has an undeniable sense of depth, but vertical lines appear jagged and the laptop screen’s viewing angles are so restricted that tilting the screen just slightly too far towards or away from you ruins the image.

Fujifilm’s FinePix W1 3D camera captures a scene from two viewpoints simultaneously.

3D isn’t restricted to computers. Fujifilm raised eyebrows in July last year when it announced its twin lens, dual-CCD camera, the FinePix W1 3D. Like Sky’s 3D cameras, the set-apart lenses capture the same picture from slightly different angles. Unlike the polarised 3D effects of Nvidia or Acer’s solutions, however, the W1 relies on lenticular technology to trick you into seeing a 3D image. Lenticular technology places a ridged coating on top of an image to feed you different pictures, much like the apparently moving images occasionally found on the back of cereal packets. The W1’s 2.8in screen displays two images at once, so depending on where you stand you’ll either see a 3D image or a mishmash of two separate ones. The upside is that you don’t need a pair of glasses to see a 3D image, but, as with Acer’s 3D laptop, the technology currently feels a little rough and ready. Lenticular technology’s major downfall is that it’s heavily dependent on your viewing angle, so you need to be almost exactly the right distance away from the screen, and viewing it at almost exactly the right angle, which can be difficult with a handheld device. The W1’s price also smacks of early-adopter pocket-squeezing: at £400 it’s more expensive than the far more luxurious – but 2D – Canon G11.

The content question

For 3D to succeed, it will take much more than a token effort. According to Sky’s Dollin, part of the reason previous generations of 3D have failed to capture the imagination of the gaming and film-going public is that 3D was treated as a “fairground ride” – a gimmick. Unsuccessful efforts at 3D tried too hard, he says, exhausting audiences by providing a constant stream of 3D trickery designed to make as much of the technology as possible. Modern producers “are trying to be a lot more sympathetic to the medium, and trying to make it more real,” he says.

Andrew Pulver, Film Editor at The Guardian, agrees. Past attempts to bring 3D into the mainstream resulted in “low-rent, exploitative [films],” he says. New films such as Avatar – which is reported to have cost as much as £300million – could prompt an explosion of 3D films. Pulver says the 3D “works really well” in Avatar and that, for the first time, a studio has financed a “serious, major [3D] blockbuster by the biggest director in town”. There’s little arguing with the list of upcoming 3D releases, either: director Tim Burton features heavily, with releases such as Alice in Wonderland and The Nightmare Before Christmas due in the next 12 months.

Games are easier to convert. Depth information is already programmed in, so the only major added cost is the hardware needed to play the result. “In development time, the costs are minimal,” says EA’s Doug McConkey. Hopefully this should mean a proliferation of 3D games – and soon.

Controlling 3D

Even if the future of entertainment isn’t 3D screens, the world of the controller is expanding in every direction. Nintendo’s Wii Remote is the most famous example – a controller that knows where it is in relation to the screen. Richard Huddy describes the Wii Remote as “immensely attractive” to gamers. And the figures seem to prove him right: the Wii is by far the best-selling console, leaving Microsoft and Sony playing catch-up.

Sony’s forthcoming motion controller works in a similar way to the Wii Remote. Currently known as the Gem, it features a coloured orb on the top. This is tracked by a webcam on top of the display, while the controller itself also feeds back motion information. A spectacular demo at E3 last summer hinted at an incredibly powerful system.

There’s little extra work involved in developing games in 3D compared to 2D.

Microsoft’s Project Natal for the Xbox 360 is even more advanced, removing the controller altogether and tracking a user’s movements in real-time via a display-mounted camera. To hit an opponent, simply throw a punch in mid-air. Speaking at the technology’s launch at CES in Las Vegas back in January 2009, Steven Spielberg described Project Natal’s announcement as “a pivotal moment” that would “reach far beyond video games”.

With Sky’s 3D service set to launch later this year, 3D gaming beginning to emerge and popular blockbusters such as Avatar making great use of 3D technology, you might think that the battle is won. But the experts PC Plus spoke to were cautious. “The truth is, it’s stumbled many times before,” says ATI’s Richard Huddy, describing the longevity of the latest 3D tech as “the toughest question”.

Will 3D stick this time?

Back in September 2009, The Guardian ran a story saying that the BBC might show Olympic events in 3D in 2012. This raised the prospect of a BBC 3D channel arriving in less than two years. However, Roger Mosey, the Director of the BBC’s 2012 Olympics operation, has been quick to talk the BBC’s plans back to reality. “There won’t be a BBC 3D channel in 2012,” he told PC Plus. But that’s not to say that the BBC is shunning 3D altogether. Instead, the corporation plans to capture certain Olympic events in 3D regardless of the public’s ability to receive them at home. “It would be a shame for some of the big moments not to be captured in 3D,” he says – but for now, the BBC’s priorities lie with broadcasting the Olympics in HD rather than 3D. The BBC aren’t alone in holding off from investing in 3D technology, and The Guardian’s Pulver seemed to share the corporation’s misgivings. “I wouldn’t be surprised if [3D] did peter out,” he says, noting that Avatar is largely responsible for the medium’s future. The film’s results need to be “pretty spectacular” for studios to finance more 3D films.

Sky’s John Dollin is optimistic, though. He says that Sky isn’t releasing a 3D service “just for the sake of 3D”. ATI’s Richard Huddy sees hope for the future, too: “If the BBC, Sky, Virgin and so on roll [3D] out over the next couple of years, then it will work.”

Sky’s service is to launch this year, although the company refuses to be drawn on precisely when. “This is going to be bigger than I think people believe,” says Dollin. We just hope he’s right.