Hardware isn’t something that we’ve focused on too much here at HeyUGuys but it’s something that interests me greatly and you may well see more coming in the near future. Before working on HeyUGuys, I  had helped to spec around £250 000’s worth of audio visual equipment for a very large UK investment house in London. After it was all installed, it was then my job to manage and run the AV which I did for a couple of years. Then HeyUGuys came along and the rest is history.

Why the pre-amble? I guess it’s just to get you all used to the fact that we might start doing the odd hardware review. In that vein, today I got invited along to Pinewood Studios where Panasonic now have a showroom with all their latest gizmos that I can’t afford to buy! The event today was to specifically focus on their new 3D technology of which there is plenty to talk about.

The morning started with a presentation about how Panasonic are placed in the 3D market and there’s no denying that they’re pretty much at the top of the game. When it comes to the technology, they are at the forefront, creating everything from the actual content with their bespoke 3D cameras to the media and even the glasses that we end up using in our homes. They have a laboratory (Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory) in the US where the discs themselves are manufactured to eventually get sent around the world for movies like Avatar.

And Avatar was the casing point for today’s event as Panasonic announced that they would be the only company to be bundling the highest grossing movie of all time with their Viera products. You can find out much more about the products on offer here. We got to see 5 minutes of Avatar in 3d including the ‘First Flight’ sequence which was just stunning on their new 65″ Plasma TV (TX-P65VT20B) and a bass pumping 1000 watt surround system (SC-BTT755) and the best thing about the whole theatre system – wireless rear speakers! Although the 65″ plasma was rather nice and I’d love to have one in my house (hint hint Panasonic!), you, like me may not be able to afford the  £4000 65″ version but fear not as they also have 50″, 45″ and 42″ versions with the 42″ version (TX-P42VT20B) costing around £1500.

We also got to see a range of the new 3d cameras which they had to offer and by far the most impressing device for me was the consumer version of their 3d camera (HDC-SDT750). Some of the footage we saw was just incredible. We got to see a Komodo dragon running back and forth in front of the camera while fruit was given to it and the quality of the picture and the interaction was simply amazing. Watching footage that had been collected a week earlier by a camera slightly bigger than a normal handy cam was great to see. From what I can tell, the camera costs around £1300 which sounds a lot but this is all progress and the price is hopefully only going to come down, especially when you bear in mind that the camera on which it’s based costs around £15 000!

The final stage of our visit was to look at what graphics card giants, Nvidia, were up to when it comes to 3d gaming. This is an area I too know a little something about after working for Electronic Arts for 18 months after I finished university. I used to spend 8 hours per day as part of the customer support team telling people they needed to upgrade their graphics card drivers or that the game was too advanced for their computer which had an on-board graphics card! They could never understand why when their computer was ‘brand new!’ All that was done while playing games for ‘product knowledge’ which was, of course the best part of the job!

Today, Nvidia showed us a new 3D game which they have coming out called Mafia II which you can get a copy of free with a new graphics card at the moment if you follow this link.  Since I’ve been out of the gaming loop for quite a while now, it had never really occurred to me that games could come in 3d just like a movie or TV programme could. Watching Mafia II in 3D opened my eyes (literally) to a whole new world that 3d can bring to our homes. Nvidia made the point that PCs will always be at the forefront of gaming because when it comes to 3d consoles will be out of date a month or two after they’re bought and then superseded 5 years later. But for those 5 years, PCs can be upgraded in almost every way meaning that games can keep pushing forward along with them.

Today was a real eye opener for me. I know 3D is big but Panasonic showed us that it really is the future and as much as people complain about the glasses or extra equipment they may need, this is progress and no doubt some clever individuals will bring out TVs / computer monitors which will rid the world of the 3D glasses and 3D will be a happier place! Until then, I guess you either embrace it, or steer clear. I’ll definitely be embracing it!