Many of the top television manufacturers have already begun work on bringing the 3D experience to the home market, and now some of the major television networks and content producers are jumping in too.
Last month’s International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas featured many, if not all, of the top television manufacturers rolling out televisions with 3D capabilities.

One of the highlights was Panasonic’s TC-PVT25, an HD television that may be the first available TV with 3-D capabilities. Panasonic has made some serious noise about a spring release for their newest set, and are also the only major manufacturer of 3D televisions besides Sony to commit in writing to the nagging problem of 3D glasses. The Japanese company included in its launch a pair of nifty space-aged glasses.

Panasonic may be the first 3D TV to hit the consumer market, but the set that attracted the eyes of Jeffery Katzenberg, the K from Dreamworks SKG, is Samsung’s new 9000 series. Samsung is looking to produce their TVs in a range of sizes from 19 inches to 65 inches, and have staked the success of their product on the fact that it is barely a third of an inch thick.

One of the major features of the 9000 series is a proprietary device in the TV that has the power to turn run-of-the-mill 2D fare into state-of-the-art 3D entertainment. Toshiba, like Samsung, also has a new TV with similar technology, and when the time comes for 3D TVs to be loosed on the public, because of the limited amount of 3D content available, it’s likely Samsung and Toshiba will have an early lead over the rest of the field.

But it’s content that will drive the 3D TV market, more 3D TV shows means more 3D TVs sold for everyone, and that’s one reason Katzenberg has attached himself to Samsung’s ultra-thin 9000. Dreamworks, Technicolor, and Samsung have teamed up to help bring more 3D content to their TVs, and they aren’t the only producers of content with an eye on the 3D market.

Although Avatar has helped bolster the market for 3D films, 2010 is going to be a banner year for 3D films with such blockbusters as Sherk Forever After, Toy Story 3, and the highly anticipated Piranha 3-D, it’s sports broadcasters that are making the first big push into the 3D television market.

ESPN is hoping to launch a network in the third dimension sometime in the next calendar year, which would broadcast, among other things, the 2011 BCS Championship Game, the Summer x-Games, and up to 25 of this summer’s World Cup matches.

The 2010 World Cup in South Africa may be the big proving ground for 3D content. Britain’s SkyTV has their sights on a sports-based 3D network, and have already premiered the service on January 31st in pubs in the UK, giving soccer, or football, fans a chance to see Manchester United take on Arsenal in full 3D.

Like ESPN, Sky is making a big push for 3D broadcasts of the World Cup, one of the globes most watched sporting events. Sony is planning to film all 64 matches in 3D, and if Sky can work out a deal with the BBC and FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, there is a chance that people in the UK will be enjoying their opening match against the United States in three dimensions without having the inconvenience of flying to South Africa.

As with all new technology, the first wave of 3D televisions will be expensive, very expensive, but like all new technology after a little while, the price will go down. If sports in 3D catches on, and people like Jeffery Katzenberg and companies like Sony and Dreamworks continue to invest millions upon millions of dollars, there is a good chance that in the next decade everything from American Idol to reruns of Mork and Mindy will be available in 3D, now if only we could find a way to make our ponytails synch up with animals what a wonderful world it would be.

1888: The Telautograph

Morse code is hard. All of those dots and dashes and the unfriendly user interface. Back in 1888 Elisha Gray must have said to himself “How can I take this current technology and make it more like writing a letter at my desk?” To deal with this, he invented the telautograph, a machine that would allow him to sit at his desk and write like he always did, except that his scribblings would be transmitted over the wires and reproduced at a receiving station, where another, similarly rigged pen would draw them out.

Gray took technical language and turned it into conventional technology, which is the essence of what a tablet PC does. Instead of navigating command lines, the average user organizes their computer like they would a desk. The tablet PC seeks to take this simplification even further, allowing one to use a computer as if it were a book or notepad, sometimes with a stylus. All of the gears and particulars of technology are hidden away, and using a computer is as easy as picking up a pen.

1968: The Dynabook

Computer scientist Alan Kaye is famous for saying “the best way to predict the future is to invent it,” and in 1968 he actually did that. Sort of. Kaye made plans for a computer that he thought would be used primarily in education and would be “a personal computer for children of all ages.”

Kaye’s design led directly to the Xerox Alto in 1973. The Alto was considered something of a “prototype Dynabook,” and even though Kaye’s original design has been a long time coming, the Alto itself was immensely influential, using the desktop-metaphor interface that we’ve all come to know and love.

Kaye, by the way, did not let go of his dream of using small computers as educational devices. While he still thinks that the Dynabook hasn’t been completely invented yet, he’s actively involved in One Laptop Per Child, which brings inexpensive computers to disadvantaged children throughout the world.

1989: The GRiDPad

The first commercially available tablet PC was a black and green eighties affair made by the Tandy Corporation (remember them?). The GRiDPad ran MS DOS and weighed just under five pounds, which was a big deal in the late eighties. There was no keyboard- the whole thing was controlled with a stylus. That’s right- it ran MS DOS with a stylus. Hey, it was the first one.

1989: The Apple Newton

1989 was a big year for people who wanted to poke computers with stylus’. The Newton was Apple’s first attempt at making a tablet PC, but plans were scaled back and it became a PDA instead. (Remember PDAs?) Apple had high hopes for the plucky little device, but the touted handwriting recognition software never really caught on and was notoriously error-ridden. The Newton sold too well to be written off as a failed system, but it didn’t meet Apple’s Olympian expectations of putting a stylus into everyone’s hand, either. The system ceased production in 1998, and is now known as something of a grandfather to the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

1991: PenPoint OS

Apparently a whole generation of programmers were possessed by the ghost of Elisha Gray, because a lot of people really, really wanted to get away from the keyboard. The people at the GO Corporation were so seized by the idea that writing was better than typing, that an entire operating system was constructed in an attempt to drive the QWERTY into obsolescence. The OS was primarily made for IBM’s ThinkPad, but ran on a handful of other systems as well. Microsoft followed suit later that year, and released Windows for Pen Computing in response. A legal dispute followed, with the GO Corporation alleging that Microsoft had infringed on their patent.

2001: Bill Gates gets excited about the tablet PC

After ten years of poking small green screens with plastic sticks, Bill Gates got up on stage at Comdex and unveiled a new prototype of a tablet PC. Gates declared the new type of computer to be the wave of the future, and then proceeded to prod it with a stylus in exactly the same way one would poke a Newton.

2001-2009: Bill Gates is disappointed by the tablet PC

Companies such as HP and Asus continued to design and release tablet PCs, but none of them threaten to change computing as we know it. Gate’s predictions in 2001 begin to look stale, and very few people bother to replace their laptops or netbooks with tablets. The smartphone market, though, remains steady. Speaking of which…

2007: The iPhone

The iPhone broke through the clouds and changed everything. It occurred to several people that Apple’s superphone was basically a tiny computer. A tiny computer that you carry around with you, and is convenient to use, and doesn’t have a keyboard. Thanks to technology developed by Fingerworks, the iPhone didn’t bother with a stylus, jettisoning one of the signature pieces of hardware of tablet PCs. It was a rousing success, and in 2010, Apple has released an even larger one.

We’re all a little closer to Alan Kaye’s Dynabook, and somewhere Elisha Gray’s ghost is probably smiling.