Sony Gives Peek At 3-D Entertainment

Sony Says New 3D Technology Will Soon Become Standard Feature Across the Industry

Las Vegas—Sony chairman and CEO Howard Stringer showed off big-screen 3-D video as part of his CES keynote address Thursday, and said the technology is “closer than you think” to becoming a standard feature of the entertainment industry.

The first 3-D clip he showed was a short from Pixar Animation Studio’s Cars, followed by highlights from last week’s Orange Bowl pitting Virginia Tech and Cincinnati. “It’s paving the way toward the national availability of 3-D,” Stringer said. “This is a lot closer than you think.”

Sony’s demo used RealD’s 3-D imaging system and glasses, and is primarily aimed a movie-theater releases for now rather than home TV viewers.

Stringer brought to the stage DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, who said 3-D is the next major technical move forward after sound and color.

“The movie industry is entering the third great revolution” with three-dimensional movies, Katzenberg said. “This is not my father’s 3-D.” Katzenberg then showed a clip of DreamWorks’ first 3-D movie, Monsters vs. Aliens, featuring a gigantic robot attacking San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.

At the start of his keynote, Stringer said that one of Sony’s guiding strategic philosophies in developing new products is that closed systems are a dead-end. “Consumers expect choice,” he said. “They expect services to work with any device.”

Sony has set a goal that by 2011, 90% of its product categories will connect wirelessly to the Internet and to each other. “Until we transform ourselves into a fully service-based industry, we are in risk of obsolescence,” Stringer said.

For the full article, check out the source:

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6627768.html