This week, Samsung is making 3D televisions available for purchase in Canada. They will quickly be followed by other major manufacturers with their own 3D displays. Does this mark a new shift in how we experience entertainment, or just a neat concept that lacks the content to make it tangible?

Our culture seems obsessed with what's new, and what's innovative. There's always a need to push forward, and the TV/Entertainment industry still remains a powerful force when it comes to pushing new technology into the marketplace and convincing us that we need it.

When done right, 3D TV is phenomenal, as anyone who saw Avatar can tell you. Yet it's not always done right, and Alice in Wonderland is a great example of this.

Is the imperative of first pushing HD and now pushing 3D partly a response to the internet and the larger phenomena of sharing content? If you keep innovating, if you keep evolving, it makes it harder for the barbarian hordes on the internet to undermine your business model. Which is not to say they won't catch up, rather this might be the new way of doing business. Make money by getting people to keep buying into new technologies and platforms.

For example while the initial Samsung models start at $2,500 for the TV, the glasses start at $250 each, and those are just entry level. When I first heard of 3D TV I imagined them being a hit at sports bars, but not if you have to give drunk patrons goggles that cost a few hundred bucks each.

It's also not possible to go without the glasses, or use the cheap pair your grandfather passed down from the films he watched in the 50s. These new 3D display systems require the compatible goggles in order to work. It all comes back to how 3D is made possible.

There are two primary means of capturing or creating 3D content, one is stereoscopic, which involves using two cameras separated at the same distance as your eyes, and the other is multi-view, in which you use as many cameras as possible.

In either case the footage captured are both combined into two channels, one that provides the traditional 2D, and the other that provides depth, which when combined and used with appropriate glasses recreates a 3D like experience.

When you see 3D content without the glasses you can see the two channels blending into each other, as your eyes are not conditioned to process them accordingly. For example there used to be 3D posters that people had that in order to see the object you had to stare at them for a while and relax your focus (I could never do it).

The new glasses make that process easier, as they're connected to the TV which tells them when to show what to your eyes. So the "shutter glasses" literally turn off one side then the other at such a fast rate that the two channels are interpreted by your brain in the way they are meant to be, i.e. reproducing the 3D effect.

Yet the problem is not with the technology but rather with the lack of content.

Initially there will be movies, like Avatar or Alice in Wonderland, that you'll be able to watch via 3D enabled Blu-Ray players. There are also sports like this year's Masters or the upcoming World Cup. Cable or satellite companies will have to enable 3D channels to carry this content, though there's no reason why they wouldn't. Comcast and Direct TV in the US have committed to this for example.

Video games will follow, Sony plans to upgrade their PS3s to support 3D in June when their own 3D TV comes out. There's also already tons of 3D content on the web, that can be easily married with a 3D TV, whether via your PS3, or Google's recent announcement that they're working with Intel and Sony on software to connect the web to TV. YouTube already has a ton of 3D content, and so does the NFB here in Canada.

So while the content is out there, I question whether there is enough to justify the outlay. I do see quite a bit of potential with the medium however.

Imagine surfing the web in 3D. Remember "virtual reality"? Well maybe this is the interface that can make it happen.

We'd need to get rid of the glasses though. I find them to be a real disincentive.

It may also take a long time for the technology to become cheap enough that people can afford it, whether that be the displays or the equipment needed to create 3D content. It seems like only yesterday that HD came out and there are still lots of broadcasters who don't have the resources to upgrade the HD let alone 3D.

So in that regard this technology may remain at the level of potential for a long time, or it may just be a playground for the rich and big business? Time will tell.