We haven’t traditionally reported much from BenQ’s line of products but their newest product did much to catch our eyes. They’ve just introduced a 1080p 3D projector called the W7000 at CES this year. The catch? The product will cost almost $4,000 – making it an enemy of your pocketbook. However, there are some features about the projector that may make you think twice before putting the pocketbook away.

The W7000 boasts 2,000 lumens of brightness, a 50,000:1 contrast ratio (which we’ll have to see to believe), frame interpolation, and support for the newest HDMI video standard called 1.4a. This means the projector can playback 3D content. The projector is also compliant to the Rec. 709 color gamut which should make RED shooters happy and can do lens shift adjustments of up to 125 percent vertical and 40 percent horizontal without any vertical offset. Lastly, the projector comes with a Panamorph lens capability that allows viewers to watch 2.35:1 aspect-format video at maximum resolution with no image distortion or letterboxing.

I, for one, am still holding out for a set of projectors that have polarized lenses for passive 3D viewing (honestly, who really enjoys having powered active shutter glasses), but if  you can’t wait to have all the benefits and drawbacks of 3D HD in your  home, then you can get your hands on this piece of hardware for just $4,000.

Just recently, a team at the University of Tokyo found that using titanium oxide could allow optical disks to store 5,000 gigabytes of information. Honestly, that’s astounding. At the same time, a lot of people’s minds began buzzing with the implications. With these discs, Hollywood studios could release entire television series such as Lost and 24 plus bonus content all on one disc. Video games could finally fit huge engines and graphics all on one disk. Finally, studios could include super high resolution video on their discs so that people could see the movie in its fully rendered glory. However, let’s stop for a moment to take a quick poll. How many of you even own a Blu-ray player? If more than one of you out of 10 raised your hand, congratulate yourselves on being ahead of the curve. Though a majority of people still get their movies and television series delivered to them by optical media, it seems as if new media such as Blu-ray simply can’t pick up steam. A Harris poll taken last year showed that only 7 percent of Americans owned a Blu-ray player. Even though Blu-ray offers more than twice the resolution of standard definition DVDs and a higher quality sound, Americans still aren’t sold on the idea. Of course, this begs the question: why?

Popular reasons include the extra price of Blu-ray discs and that some people are happy with things just the way they are. However, there seems to be an even bigger reason behind all of this. Let’s take one last poll. How many of you watch movies or television online? If more than half of you raised your hand, then you would fall in line with research recently done by shopping site Retrevo. The study found that 51% of people in all age groups watched at least some of their television online. With these facts, the question becomes this: when the internet offers both free and cheap high quality video content all without having to leave your La-Z-Boy, why would anyone want to invest in a Blu-ray player or a Blu-ray disc? The answer might be that for most people there are no better alternatives for watching high-definition content on their internet-free TVs. However, with products such as the Apple TV, the new Google TV, Roku, and of course, the HD rich cable set top boxes, it is evident that hardware manufacturers and cable providers are betting that pretty soon, you won’t have an excuse not to.

The only real problem I can foresee with Internet TV is the fact that bandwidth is notoriously spotty with many internet providers. Also, no software or hardware provider has yet mastered the user experience with Internet TV. Often, they’ll make the experience too much like the internet itself (and no one wants to type on a keyboard), or they’ll make it too much like a TV which is very limited in its function. However, one day when a company finally gets the balance of TV and internet just right, Internet TV could be the biggest revolution since cable.

Ever since The Power of Love, which premiered at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in 1922, 3D film has been a reality. The film was shown in red and green anaglyph which meant that the viewer could see the effect by wearing glasses with different colored filters for each eye. Since that time, 3D has had various success. From 1952 to 1955, a string of 3-D movies known as the “golden era” of 3-D began with the release of Bwana Devil. Then, after three decades of decline, 3-D movies came back into the mainstream with IMAX and Disney Theme Parks making several successful 3-D films such as Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, Into the Deep, and Wings of Courage. Inevitably though, the technology declined again until 2004 when the animated film The Polar Express made 14 times as much money in 3-D than it did in 2D. Numbers like that couldn’t be ignored by theaters which started fitting their theaters for 3-D. With the success of Avatar, which became the highest grossing film of all time over 15,000 screens are expected to be 3-D ready by the end of 2010.

As much money as 3-D movies were making in theaters, home television and electronic companies started to wonder if consumers would also buy into the hype with their products at home. By 2010, many of the major manufacturers such as Sony, Toshiba, Samsung, Panasonic, and LG had made plans to introduce high definition televisions with 3-D capabilities by year’s end. At the same time, popular camera companies such as ARRI, Panasonic, Sony, RED, and Canon started releasing consumer and professional level camcorders and cameras that could shoot in 3-D. Even network television got in on the craze by introducing broadcasts of events in HD such as this year’s PGA Sony Open in Hawaii to viewers around the world. Read the rest of this entry »

According to a recent report from the good folks over at Nielsen, the number of households with an HD television has doubled over the previous year, to 23.3%. They predict with now almost one quarter of TV’s in the USA as HD, the demand for HD content will continue to expand dramatically.

What does this mean for independent video producers? Well, if you’re still shooting in SD, you may want to be looking at upgrading your equipment, not just as a future proofing idea, but in a 25% of my viewers will want to watch this in HD today idea. Even if you’re already shooting in HD, the picture is not so rosy when it comes to distribution. Blu-ray disc penetration is still at a paltry 8-9% and a large majority of those are Playstation 3′s. Standard definition DVD’s still are found in 91% of all US households, so you end up with the awkward situation of having an beautiful HDTV connected to a plain old DVD player in many homes.

Perhaps the future of HD distribution is not to be found on shiny plastic discs, but delivered at home directly via the internet? Openfilm, Vimeo, and now even YouTube have gotten into the HD distribution  game, it will be interesting to see how the direct line into the home plays out.

One thing is for sure: twice as many people as last year are bringing HDTV’s into their homes, and they’re going to want to watch something pretty on it.