3-D at Super Bowl and Monday movie requires supermarket visit

1/30/2009 2:55 PM EST

In addition to the Super Bowl commercials, on Monday night NBC is broadcasting DreamWorks' "Monsters versus Aliens" in this anaglyph (color based) 3DTV format.

This newest foray into 3-D television, however, seems a bit like two steps forward and one step back. After some truly fantastic demos of real 3-D football games earlier this month, using polarized glasses that provide a near-perfect 3DTV experience, comparable to what viewers see at 3-D movie theaters, one has to wonder whether reverting back to the old trick of using different colors for each eye will do more to sour consumers on the 3-D experience.

Once consumers make up their minds about "version one" of a new technology, it can create quite a hurdle to reach version two if the public was unimpressed. (Anyone remember "quadrasonic sound" from the seventies? It took two decades to come back as "surround sound.")

So, though I like to think of myself as a cheerleader for all things 3-D, I must admit a bit of trepidation at the thought of consumers mistakenly thinking this is the new 3-D television technology that everyone has been talking about. It isn't.