The Masters Golf Tournament in 3D
Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at 12:38PM 
My overworked TiVo DVR recently displayed a message indicating that there was a new addition to my Comcast cable channel lineup named COM3DTV - Comcast's temporary 3D test channel. Comcast's first broadcast on this new channel will be the Par 3 contest at the 2010 Masters Golf Tournament, and approximately two hours of 3D coverage will be provided per day throughout the Tournament.
This televised 3D experiment is being offered in select markets on one of two channels depending on where you live:
Channel 897: San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Denver, and Twin Cities
Channel 986: Philadelphia, Boston, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Miami and Indianapolis
The requirements to view this 3D spectacle according to the FAQ include:
- a 3D TV
- compatible 3D glasses for each viewer
- Comcast HD service
- HD set-top box (including Moxi and TiVo HD DVRs)
- HDMI cable connecting the set-top box to the 3D TV
The FAQ also mentions how this 3D broadcast will not automatically trigger a TV's 3D function due to the side-by-side frame format of the video stream compared to the stacked frame format used in 3D Blu-ray movies. 3D TV owners will need to manually enable the 3D function on their sets in order to experience the Tournament in 3D. On non-3D televisions, the broadcast looks like this:
Notice how the view in each half of the frame is horizontally squeezed - my TiVo reported the signal as a 1080i30 broadcast. If full resolution is maintained along the vertical axis of this frame, then each eye will be presented with an image with an effective resolution of 960 by 1080 (pixels) that would be scaled (horizontally stretched) for view on a 1080p 3D screen.
The schedule for 3D Masters coverage is:
Wednesday, April 7th 3-5pm EST
Thursday, April 8th 4-6pm EST
Friday, April 9th 4-6pm EST
Saturday April 10th 5-7pm EST
Sunday April 11th 5-7pm EST
Reader Comments (2)
Hi Robert,
Did you get a chance to test or play with a 3D Television? Also, optoma released a 3D projector, so did many other companies like ViewSonic. Have you seen one of the projectors in the wild? It would be cool if there would educational content presented in 3D, like molecules in chemistry, and how to perform functions on them like chiral and point groups. Anyways, I look forward to the next epsoide of HD Nation.
Regards,
Kush
I got to try out the 3D tv the other day at sams club. Pretty cool. I just don't understand if it automatically converts to 3D or if you have to have special DVD's etc for it to run correctly.