I love TV innovations - so why am I a 3D refusenik?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2011/jan/19/3d-tv-sky-refusenik

3D home-viewing is a wonderful experience but unfortunately content is limited and expensive

As the Consumer Electronics Show took place in Las Vegas earlier this month I sat down with relatives to watch their new 3D-enabled 50-inch TV set. The Las Vegas show revealed an uncomfortable truth. While handheld tablets are booming off the back of the iPad, sales of 3D TV sets are slow, despite hefty marketing. There is considerable consumer resistance to the heavily engineered and expensively adapted (for TV) glasses.

As a media correspondent, I was an early adopter of the satellite dish – installed on February 4, 1989, the day before Sky Television launched – digital TV in 1998, and Sky+ in 2002. My family were also in the first wave of converts to Sky HD: insisted upon by my sports-mad son and husband.

But now I've been overtaken. We are not a 3D household. So why not? Well, there is the cost of yet another new TV set, I did not see Avatar or Alice in Wonderland, and I simply don't feel tempted.

Six of us sat down in a large drawing room, on a dark gloomy evening to watch the new 3D Sky channel on the new TV, which left little change from £2,000.

And here the problems began. Until going 3D, the household had subscribed to the basic Sky entertainment package, costing £19.50 a month, plus HD – another £10.

Having bought their new set they only belatedly realised that in order to have Sky 3D they had to double their subscription to the top-rate package, including movies and sports, which costs £62 a month. It's in the small print, but it came as a shock to them.

A BSkyB spokesman said the company added 3D to this, its top-tier Sky World package, which also includes HD, at no extra cost. The problem is that you can subscribe to HD with any of the other cheaper packages, but not 3D.

Consumer resistance to the heavy 3D TV spectacles was acknowledged at Las Vegas, and the hope is that a new range of sets will remove the need for specs. Extra pairs cost £80 each. There is also another problem. To benefit from 3D you have to sit directly in front of the TV set.

Yet the truth is that the 3D home-viewing experience was wonderful. We were entranced – until we got bored with golf. 3D content is so limited at the moment. Sky said that is why it is only offered as part of a top-tier movies and sports package, where 3D programming is concentrated. One million people have already watched a 3D broadcast in British pubs, via Sky Sports.

But the number of 3D domestic subscribers to Sky's service currently runs at tens of thousands, a drop in the ocean compared with its overall subscriber base of more than 10 million. So 3D is currently a far cry from the spread of HD, where every production is converting to the new technology.

Recently I luxuriated in a sumptuous Sky Arts HD broadcast of Swan Lake from the Royal Opera House. That's enough for the moment. I will remain a 3D refusenik, until convinced I am really missing out.