It Will Last This Long

I wondered 6 months ago how long BluRay and HTDV at 1080 lines of resolution would last, with 2000-line ("2K"), 4000-line ("4K") resolution (and higher) digital programs being available for broadcast in places like movie theaters.

It took about this long.

In the coming months and years, Sony hopes to change the way we experience 3D video. The prototypes displayed today at CES are all still a long way from production, but they do give us a possible glimpse into the future of 3D.

The first is fairly obvious in design, but difficult in practice. At CES today, Sony showed off a new 56 inch 4K LCD, a 46 inch 2K, and a 24.5 inch 2K TV, all feature 3D, and all do so without glasses.

But the technology is not easy or cheap to produce, and the sets can still run into the thousands of dollars for even a basic model. Another issue is that the special screen on the TV that makes the 3D possible needs a much higher resolution to match the output of the current generation of 3D, so you need the super HD quality of a 4K TV, four times the resolution of current HD TVs. Again, the cost becomes wildly prohibitive, and 4K TVs are still running several tens of thousands of dollars.

So, what shall we peg it at, in today's fast moving technological universe? 5 years? 7 years? How about: Riiiiight about the time you're thinking about replacing your old 40-inch HDTV that you bought in 2010?