Jonathan Takiff: Sellers claim 3-D is here to stay

The Gizmo: 3-D Television, Round Two.

TUNNEL VISION AIN'T A VIRTUE: Naysayers are always ready to pounce when a new technology is introduced. The CD? Didn't sound as good as vinyl. HDTV? Who needs to see the news in high definition? The iPad? Steve Jobs' folly. 3-D TV? You'll never get me to put those goofy glasses on.

Adding to that last conversation, "only" about a million "3-D-ready" high definition TVs were sold in the U.S. this past "launch" year. That figure was half of some analysts' stab-in-the-dark estimates. Yet how soon we forget that only 35,000 CD players were sold in that format's first year. And it took three years for HDTV sales to hit the million mark.

Also fueling the "forget it, it's a fad" argument, the organizers of the Consumer Electronics Show let it be known a couple of months ago that the "big stories" at this January's CES would be Internet-connected TVs and tablet computers, not 3-D.

ESPN WATCH: Why even Bryan Burns, point person for ESPN's pioneering 3-D TV sports channel, started to take "all the adverse commentary, the 'too much hype' business" to heart." Then he arrived at CES, first to discover the Sony booth was all about 3-D, "with the most amazing theater-sized screen" and a "full array of 3-D products ready for the home market." Not just TVs and Blu-ray players, but also laptop computers and digital still and video cameras, even a relatively inexpensive (like $200) 3-D Bloggie boasting a "glasses-free" (auto-stereoscopic) 3-D viewing screen.

Burns started making the rounds of other booths and saw 3-D TVs everywhere, not just from big companies (Panasonic, LG, Toshiba) but also smaller players like RCA (a once massive American brand newly licensed to a Korean TV maker), Hisense and Coby. The latter group hints of major 3-D price drops to come.

"And these companies weren't just doing 3-D on one or three screens," noted Burns. "Some have 16 or 20 models that are 3-D-ready. It'll be a feature across the board and that will seed the market."

Burns also judged Sony and Toshiba technical demonstrations of auto-stereoscopic sets - "naked" 3-D TVs that don't require the wearing of glasses - farther along than he anticipated.