ESPN to Launch 3D Station

ESPN will kick off the first-ever 3D television station in June with a live World Cup match. After that, ESPN 3D will broadcast 85 other events this year, including the Summer X Games, and assorted NBA and college basketball and football games, all of them live. But the channel won’t run any other programming, so it’ll be dark much of the time.

But even the part-time channel should be a huge boost for the nascent 3DTV technology, analysts tell USA Today. Still, questions remain. ESPN doesn’t yet have a deal with distributors, so it’s unclear if the channel will cost extra, but it will definitely require a special TV, glasses, and cable box. Will consumers pay? “We don’t have all the answers,” says an ESPN exec. “We asked the same questions back in the HD days.”
(More 3D HDTV stories.)