September 14 - The number of commercially released 3D movies has increased dramatically in the last year or two, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that you’ll soon be able to enter the third dimension at home.

Texas Instruments introduced a 3D system for its DLP technology, which was demonstrated using a rear-projection TV in its own booth as well as Mitsubishi’s and Samsung’s. All of Samsung’s new RPTVs are 3D-capable, as are those in Mitsubishi’s high-end Diamond series.

  Diagram of 3D HDTV courtesy TI DLP

To see the 3D effect, you must wear special LCD glasses with lenses that alternately open and close in sync with the alternating images for the right and left eye on the screen. The TI demo included specially encoded clips from Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones, which was amazing in its depth, and the Mitsubishi demo had a snake that came right out of the screen and stared me down mere inches from my face.

Some shots were a bit gimmicky and the 3D illusion wasn’t always completely convincing, but it was pretty cool nonetheless, and certainly far better than the red-and-blue 3D glasses of yesteryear.

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