ON THE CUTTING EDGE: 3-D Yule Log
The venerable Yule log on WPIX (Channel 11 in NYC) has a high-tech rival this year, reports The New York Times, but there’s a catch - reporter Alessandra Stanley had to go to the Manhattan headquarters of In Demand Networks to see it:
This season it’s probably easier to commandeer a real fireplace - or light a sidewalk bonfire - than to find a friend or neighbor with a working 3-D TV set. (Approximately 38 million homes have working fireplaces in the United States; and while industry projections for 3-D TV sales over the next few years are in the millions, the research firm SNL Kagan estimates that only about 400,000 sets have been bought so far.) But it does exist and it can be seen, albeit only through special 3-D glasses. …
I was a little dismayed when I finally sat in front of a top-of-the-line 3-D monitor in the In Demand screening room with snazzy $150 3-D glasses and viewed what looked like a pleasantly toasty and sharp two-dimensional image of burning logs.
I couldn’t really tell it was in 3-D except when I took off the 3-D glasses and saw two images instead of one. …
If you watch the 3-D yule log on an HD television without the special glasses, what appears after all the warnings are two identical images of the fire, one over the other, which at best make viewers think they have had way too much to drink.
When viewed properly, the 3-D yule log is quite good, the flames vivid but not quite as alarmingly feverish as those in the WPIX yule log in HD. It’s a cozy fire, not a conflagration. The background music, which can be muted, is an inoffensive offering of standards, from a jazz trio rendition of “O Tannenbaum” to a full orchestral version of “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.”
After a while the yule log in 3-D is quite hypnotic. Until, of course, you turn to say as much to the person next to you and discover that you are both wearing dark glasses indoors, and then the spell is broken.
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