CaptainEO
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Captain EO is coming back to Disney World's EPCOT
As any child of the 1980s can tell you, Disney's Captain EO ride -- starring the "King of Pop", Michael Jackson himself -- was one of the best attractions to ever grace the park. EO debuted at Disney World in Florida back in 1986 and ran for eight years before closing in 1994. Now, Captain EO is back (and not just temporarily like they did after he died). The ride has reopened at Disney World's EPCOT in all of its hokey, 3D glory. Michael Jackson's ragtag team of freedom fighters are set to "bring freedom to countless worlds of despair" -- and keep you entertained for 17 minutes with a mix of '80s futurism and 30-year-old nostalgia.
Telefnica and Philips testing no-glasses-necessary 3D IPTV, got ???18,000 we can borrow?
São Paulo, Brazil stand up, you're first in line for auto-stereoscopic (read: no glasses) 3D IPTV broadcasts courtesy of Telefónica/TVA and, we assume, that swank WOWvx-powered 1080p 52-inch Philips 3D HDTV promised to hit shelves by year end. Fortunately it now has a price, unfortunately, that price is €18,000 and requires you live in the Jardins neighborhood, hooked up to its fiber network in order to have the capacity to suck down all that 3D. Consumer accessibility is pegged at "inside three or four years", so you start saving, the SMPTE will figure out how to make it all work, and we'll sit back and remember how awesome Captain EO was that one time at Epcot Center. Everyone has to do their part.
SMPTE working out how to bring 3D home
One of the many reasons our killer Captain EO home theater setup hasn't become a reality yet is because even with more than a few kinds of 3D HDTV equipment on shelves, there's no standard that guarantees that next Hannah Montana Blu-ray disc will be able to take advantage of it. The SMPTE hopes to change all of that, establishing a task force (has anyone asked the 3D@Home Consortium how they feel about it?) with the mandate of creating a standard for 3D "content distributed via broadcast, cable, satellite, packaged media and the Internet and played-out on televisions, computer screens and other tethered displays". The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers are the fine people behind nearly every way you currently experience AV at home, so after the inaugural meeting August 19 and six months to create a report (EE Times notes actually setting a standard could take 18-30 months, so don't move the furniture yet), really all that's left is to explain our Michael Jackson infatuation.[Via EE Times]
