The good news for 3D TV proponents, in spite of the technical, business and creative challenges that lie ahead, is that they won’t have to worry about holographic technologies as a competitor for quite some time. Judging by the world’s first public demonstration at NAB by Japan’s NCIT (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology) of its electronic holograph, we will be lucky to see any consumer implementations of holographs in my lifetime, and possibly in my children’s as well. The demonstration involved an installation of multiple beams and reflectors across an area the size of a small room, the results of which bleeding edge technology were to produce a tiny holographic image of perhaps a couple of inches across. The image was a poorly defined representation of a revolving cube, and was only visible within a carefully designated viewing angle; any slight deviation meant that it disappeared from view. This is not intended to diminish the efforts of the Japanese researchers, who clearly have a very long term perspective as they evolve advanced technologies for the century ahead. But the NCIT spokesmen were happy to admit that holographs were unlikely to become commercially viable within the next ten years, and then only for limited applications. A major challenge for this technology, as well as for other advanced display techniques, appears to be the lack of ultra high resolution display technologies. It looks like the flat panel display, whether 2D or 3D, is here to stay for many years to come. Twitter: twitter.com/DavidMercer_SA Client Reading: Western Europe Digital Television Forecast: 1H'09