Both Sky and Hollywood see 3D as a new source of profits, but customers don't have 3D TV sets and may not be keen to wear 3D glasses.

Sky "says it has successfully tested the delivery of 3D programming to a domestic television, via a high-definition set-top box," says the BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones.

Such broadcasts would require the use of 3D televisions, not yet available in UK stores, and viewers would need to wear 3D polarising glasses.

Earlier this year BBC engineers broadcast a Six Nations rugby union international in 3D to an audience at a theatre in London.

Sky says it has gone further by showing that 3D could be delivered into homes, straight to its Sky+HD set-top box, without much difficulty.

In Media Guardian, Owen Gibson says:



Gerry O'Sullivan, Sky head of strategic product development, added: "It's using the whole existing HD infrastructure. We haven't had to develop a whole new set-top box. We haven't had to invest in new cameras and set-top boxes, we've done it using the existing architecture."

But companies have been showing 3D TV sets at CES and other shows for a few years, and it's not clear whether the idea will ever take off.

One thing in 3D's favour is that Hollywood is now keen on the idea, including Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation. A recent story, Top Hollywood exec says 3-D is the industry's next big thing, says:

"I think 3-D is an opportunity to re-energize in a very big way what it means to go to the cinema" and in a way that home systems can't yet duplicate, Katzenberg said. "All of our films now are being created from the very beginning for the 3-D process."

His studio is not alone. The concert film Hannah Montana, as well as Meet the Robinsons, Chicken Little and The Nightmare Before Christmas, have come from Walt Disney Studios' Motion Pictures Group, and the studio will make more than 15 3-D movies between now and 2011, according to published reports.

But the idea that people will go to the cinema because they can't watch 3D movies at home may not survive the arrival of Sky 3D and similar services

Is 3D TV something you're keen to buy?