Panasonic PT-AT5000E 3D, HD LCD projector is three kinds of D

Fancy filling your domicile with eye-melting, brain-exploding, high-definition 3D, but for some reason hate televisions? Then Panasonic's PT-AT5000E might be for you. It's an LCD projector that spits out 1080p HD video, but it's also capable of firing a 3D picture onto your living room wall. That's three kinds of D!

This potent projector offers a 300,000:1 contrast ratio and 2,000 lumens of brightness. Happily, you can adjust the 3D effect, and the PT-AT5000E is capable of converting boring old 2D video into 3D.

We've never found this sort of conversion feature to work particularly well, though -- often perfectly pleasant 2D scenes are turned into lumpen, cardboard-cut-out monstrosities. Fingers crossed the weird robot algorithms employed in this projector are slightly better than usual.

The projector comes with a built-in infrared transmitter for communicating with the active-shutter specs you'll need to see the 3D effect. The glasses are sold separately, but, if you've got a Panasonic Viera 3D telly, the same goggles that work with that will also work with this projector. We would question, though, why you'd need both a 3D projector and telly -- it's possible to have too much 3D tech, you know.

Also available is an optional infrared transmitter for extending the transmission distance, and the PT-AT5000E comes loaded with three HDMI inputs. There's no word on pricing yet, but What Hi-Fi? reckons it'll retail for perhaps a little under £3,000. Ouch.

What we really want is a projector that shoots out holograms, like that one in Minority Report or the one inside R2-D2. But, seeing as we could be waiting for a while, the PT-AT5000E could hold our attention in the meantime.

Would you be interested in a 3D projector? Or do you think 3D is a despicable gimmick? Let us know in the comments section below, or on our Facebook wall.