A true three dimensional TV that does not depend on wearing strange glasses could be demonstrated within five years. Scientists have at last started to catch up with the 3D holographic displays that have become commonplace in science fiction films. The Princess Leia figure projected by R2-D2 in Star Wars is one example of moving holograms that have been shown in a wide range of films over the decades since the invention of holography in the 1960s.

But the reality has lagged far behind and for decades relied on using glasses to feed a slightly different image to the right and left eyes, using different colored lenses or polaroid, for instance in the first film of the “golden era” of 3D movies, Bwana Devils. Now a new material that will allow an updateable palm sized 3D holographic display is described in Nature by Dr Savas Tay, Prof Nasser Peyghambarian and colleagues at the University of Arizona, Tucson, in work that raises hopes for applications in the home, defence, medicine and industry. The problem is that individual still holograms contain so much information that they require a special medium to record them and vast computing power.

Computer power is becoming cheaper all the time and there is now a way to record them digitally, using a sheet of laser light crafted by computer. The key to today’s advance is a new medium to record the holograms which is based on specially designed “photo refractive” polymers that respond to light and can be overwritten with a device called a “spatial light modulator”, unlike the media traditionally used for holography which worked like an old fashioned photographic film.

As for when he expects the first 3D TVs based on this technology to appear, he says “within two to three years.”

Of course the inevitable question is, how will this affect the pr0n industry? In a big way, to be sure. And here I am, just getting used to the idea of HDTV.