I’ve been a guest on Tech News Today a couple of times, but always via Skype. This week I got to make my first in-person appearance on the show at the TWiT booth at the Consumer Electronics Show 2012. It was awesome to hang out with Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane and Iyaz Akhtar in the flesh. We discussed gaming consoles, Google TV, Intel-based smartphones and bunch of other stuff.

With mixed emotions Ben Kelly, Simon Dingle and Samantha Beckbessinger discuss memories of Steve Jobs who passed away this week, the iPhone 4S breaking pre-order records, Windows 8 and the future of Nokia, the BlackBerry and Seacom outages, India’s $35 Aakash tablet, debunking the BBM rumour, and much more – including our picks of the week.

Is there still hope for BlackBerry? Can Lenovo make a dent in the tablet market? We don’t know the answers to these questions, but are willing to speculate wildly. This week Andy Hadfield, Simon Dingle and Steven Ambrose discuss the Lenovo K1 tablet, Samsung pulling the Tab 7.7 from its stand at IFA, the Amazon tablet, app stores and operators, iOS 5, the launch of Telkom Business Mobile, Evernote acquiring Skitch, Google shutting down old projects, and more…

The guys over at TWiT.tv invited me onto episode 320 of Tech News Today last week. With regular host Tom Merritt away, the lovely Sarah Lane hosted the show. We discussed the Amazon tablet, Netflix, Samsung, WebOS and a bunch of other stuff. TNT is an awesome show and it’s always fun to Skype into the studio

For the past week I have been testing a 3D home entertainment setup in my lounge thanks to the guys at LG that sent me some equipment to combine with my own system. The picture above is of the wall in my lounge. Before we talk about the realities of 3D television, let’s take a look at the bits and pieces and their prices.

1. LG LX9500 47” LED LCD TV - This is the heart of the system: a beautiful 47″ monitor with 4 HDMI inputs that handles five different ways of producing 3D imagery. This is honestly the most ridiculously thin television I’ve ever seen and does a great job of rendering 1080p high definition visuals and, of course, 3D. More about that later. Price: R42000
2. LG AG-S100 3D glasses - The LX9500 television comes with two pairs of glasses and additional pairs can be bought separately. The glasses are charged using included USB cables and a micro USB port. A 2 hour charge and they’re good to go for at least a week of moderate viewing. Price: R1000 per pair.
3. Microsoft Xbox 360 - The Xbox 360 with HDMI port is 3D compatible, but older XBox 360 units without HDMI don’t cut the cheese. The only game I had to test with the Xbox is Avatar, which was provided by LG. The Korean company has allied with Microsoft for the development of 3D gaming. Price: R3000
4. Sony PS3 Slim - The Sony Playstation 3 is also 3D compatible, but I don’t have any 3D games to test it with. Time will bring them though. Price: R3300
5. LG BX580 Blu-ray player - LG’s latest model of Blu-ray player handles 3D and also has n-class wireless for accessing network media silos and online services like YouTube. That said, the n-class settings are curiously missing from the menu. It did produce the goods in 3D, however, with a disc of demo 3D footage provided by LG. Price: R3500
6. Sony HT-CT150 - This is a compact sound system that makes use of a speaker-bar and woofer to produce 3.1 sound. It also does a great job of playing 5.1 surround sound audio. Most importantly, it has 3D-passthrough for compatible devices. Price: R3000
7. Logitech Harmony 1100 - A universal remote is a must when you’re dealing with this many components. The 1100 is overpriced but does the job fantastically and is programmed via Logitech’s online Harmony service where just about every device known to man is catalogued. Price: R2500
8. Dude with a camera - That’s me. For 3D effects to work properly I need to be at least two meters away from the TV with powered-up glasses on my face. Price: Name it.

Now my only problem is that all I can watch in 3D is the demo Blu-ray disc that LG sent me to play with and the Avatar game for Xbox 360. But it is early days. If I was in the USA and signed up with a compatible pay-television company I’d be able to watch live sport in 3D on ESPN. Japan has also commenced live 3D broadcasts. In South Africa none of our pay-television providers have plans to do that just yet but we should have 3D movies on Blu-ray and console games arriving soon.

I am suitably impressed with the footage on the LG demo disc. High definition 3D is a fantastic experience although there is some noticeable blurriness here and there. The only real disappointment I’ve had is with the Avatar game for Xbox 360 which doesn’t look very good at all. The 3D works, but when you start running around in the game things get blurry and unplayable. It’s also a crap game. Definitely not a shining example of what the LG television can do.

It’ll be interesting comparing 3D gaming on Xbox and PS3 in future. PC gaming is also entering the fray with 3D monitors now making their way into the market and technology from Nvidia that even converts existing titles into 3D.

3D is a nice to have, but it’s not indispensable and I would wait for prices to come down before investing in a compatible HD TV. That said, this is one of the most fantastic monitors I’ve seen and if I could I would definitely keep it attached to my wall. As I continue to use it I’ll post more reviews in the various publications I write for, and on Twitter.

On the eve of the World Cup 2010 kickoff in South Africa Leo Laporte and I discussed technology at the tournament and how South Africa has been upgraded for the biggest event in human history. We talked about 3D television, stadium bandwidth, Google StreetView, social media and gigapixel image technology, amongst other things. Check out the video above for our full discussion.

When Apple announced the iPad in January I watched live coverage of the event on my favourite online channel – TWiT. Presenter Leo Laporte and a group of US-based journalists did a better job of covering the occasion via online streaming video than any of the conventional news channels. It was raw, on-demand journalism and a clear indication of things to come.

Watching the stream in South Africa was painful at first. The standard quality stream from TWiT requires 1000Kbps for smooth viewing, and while my Telkom 4Mpbs ADSL line is capable of four times the minimum requirement I still had to switch to a 400Kbps stream to avoid buffering delays.

My ADSL line is also not the norm in South Africa where most people have to contend with choppy wireless connectivity or slower DSL speeds starting at 384kbps. At those speeds, and with the latency and packet loss of wireless, accessing Youtube is a challenge, never mind streaming live video. Whereas in most of the developed world a 1000kbps stream is peanuts – you could watch it smoothly while running bitorrent and speaking to your mother on Skype.

So while South Africa sits in the dark ages, so to speak, the rest of the world forges ahead, binging on online video. In the USA users stream movies via Netflix on their Xboxes and other devices, or watch television on online services like Hulu. Youtube now accommodates high definition video, and if you live in South Korea or Sweden you’ll be able to watch those massive, high resolution files without any buffering.

For most South Africans even a short, low resolution video file requires minutes of buffering before it can be enjoyed without hiccups.

Local video services like Zoopy have gone someway to bringing us video services on local bandwidth – which does make a positive difference. What we need is more local content producers and aggregators to make services available domestically, and to fill the gap until our bandwidth catches up with the rest of the world. But even if we did have the equivalent of a local Netflix, it would still be challenging to watch a feature film over local bandwidth, because our domestic networks are an even bigger problem than the lack of international pipes.

In January I watched high definition video streaming wirelessly to a car connected via LTE in Paris – something I can’t do with my desktop computer at home. When you experience online video or IPTV in a developed country it makes you realise just how far behind the curve we are in South Africa.

This is especially sad given the possibilities that video holds for developing countries. Video bridges the gaps created by literacy and travel constraints, allowing teachers to show pupils things without the latter having to read. The teacher can also be anywhere in the world and the content can be prepared ahead of time. It isn’t the solution to the puzzle of education in Africa, but it could be a prominent part of it.

The light at the end of the tunnel is that we are making progress in the race to catch up with the globe when it comes to broadband – and perhaps even leapfrog most of the developed world when we get there.

At the moment, however, we are falling behind even our African counterparts, like Nigeria and Kenya where domestic networks and regulations are fast progressing to unlock international bandwidth in a meaningful way.

In South Africa we still face regulatory hurdles and a hybrid industry where old meets new in a unique way, and within a chaotic, deregulated market.

It’s going to take time for the dust to settle, the regulator to process the likes of local loop unbundling and spectrum allocation, and older networks to be consolidated with up-and-coming competitors. We also need the additional international capacity, and accompanying economies of scale that will come from undersea cables like WACS and Eassy, to bolster what has begun with Seacom.

It’s happening, but not fast enough for impatient geeks like me. In the meantime I’ll have to stick to more conventional means of obtaining video, and be thankful for my 4Mbps DSL connection, limited as it is.