Hey, that's (almost?) feasible now.

[Derleth]

I was reading through this old thread inspired by Svengoolie’s presentation of “This Island Earth” (I love Me TV) and realized just how out-of-date this post is:

@CalMeacham

Probably never, unfortunately. After my dream, I went and surveyed the field of 3D TV. There are lots of workable proposals , most of them more complex than mine. But you have to persuade someone to broadcast in that format, and persuade someone to make the TVs. It’s too much cost for a fringe market. There’s been a market in 3D still cameras for a very long time. But, despite attempts like Nimslo to push it into the mainstream market, there hasn’t been enough interest to justify the cost.

So, let’s unpack this a bit. It assumes that, in order to have 3D TV, you’ll need the following prerequisites:
[list=#]
[li]A single broadcast standard that everyone adheres to because OTA (over-the-air) TV is controlled by the FCC and limited to a very few channels, even with the introduction of DTV (digital TV) subchannels. Broadcasting nonstandard formats means wasting a precious commodity. Cable and satellite TV aren’t subject to those precise restrictions, but they’re kept scarce by startup costs and, yes, some bandwidth concerns.[/li][li]A single TV technology everyone makes and uses because of two reasons: One, the TV technology dictates broadcast format because you can’t have substantial local processing on a TV, that’s absurd. Two, the only reason you can afford to make one TV is because you’ve just made a million TVs; economies of scale, in other words.[/li][li]Fringe markets don’t matter, by simple extrapolation from the above two points.[/li][/list]

I think all of you know which of those assumptions I’m going to challenge. First, we can stream video over the Internet now, which essentially solves the bandwidth concerns. It also solves the FCC-mandated broadcast standard concerned, because the Internet is outside of the FCC’s purview. Second, we don’t even need a single video standard for technical reasons: Any semi-modern computer can do fairly arbitrary processing on streaming video in real time. I know for a fact VLC can handle a lot of different formats on the fly. And the 3D TVs themselves can have substantial local processing power built-in, in the form of single-board computers.

The last points, about manufacturing costs and the uselessness of fringe markets, are likely still more true than not. However, don’t disdain the ability of medium-sized groups of middle-class techies to drop money on small groups of promising engineers.

So that last bit is hand-wavy and likely where it becomes infeasible. However, absolutely none of this would have been reasonable even 15 years ago. What ideas have you noticed that have recently come into feasibility or near-feasibility?

[njtt]

I think you are a bit behind the curve here. You can buy 3D TVs at your local Best Buy now, and have been able to for some time.

[Seanette]

Sheesh, I bought one at Walmart last year.

[Derleth]

You can always count on Dopers to miss the point entirely.

Did any of you even read my OP?

[drewtwo99]

Voice recognition software is getting scarily good. I remember being a kid, trying to use “Via Voice” and it was awful awful awful and SLOOOOW…

A computer winning at Jeopardy is pretty incredible.

[Ethilrist]

Railguns.

Walking, talking robots.

Commercially-successful electric cars.

Nano-assembly of useful materials.