Sony Announces 3DTVs, Playstation 3's, and Laptops by End of 2010

Michael here. Sony is set to leap into the 3D-at-home market with guns blazing. The Times Online reports that Sony chairman Sir Howard Stringer announced today in Germany that it plans on having 3D Bravia TV's, 3D-enabled PS3's and other blu-ray players, and even 3D-enabled Vaio laptops on shelves by the end of 2010.

Like Panasonic, Sony will use active shutter glasses with its systems. In my opinion an active solution is definitely the way to go for 3DTV. Sony had demonstrated polarized 3DTVs playing 3D PS3 games at CES 2009, and while they looked good, the polarization screens cut the resolution to well below 1080P.

I am curious to find out what the refresh rates of the Sony 3DTV's will be. My guess is that they will not want anything lower than the 1080p/60 per eye solution that Panasonic is employing. So 120hz will be the minimum.

However, in order to smoothly display 24P sourced 3D movies without pulldown artifacts (as well as 30P 3D programming), I believe that a faster refresh rate would be required. If I am wrong about this, please let me know in the comments below.

In any event, it looks like Panasonic now has competition in the 3DTV market space. Panasonic has the support of James Cameron and the Avatar team, but Cameron used Sony cameras on the Avatar shoot as well. Both companies have absolutely top-of-the-line products.

It will be fascinating to watch how this all plays out, and I am very happy to hear that more players are backing 3D in the home. This will be the next big thing in home entertainment, and we the customers are the beneficiaries of all this competition. Bring on the Avatar 3D blu-ray!