If you like gaming and 3-D, Nvidia is currently offering the cheapest way into the 3-D world with its 3-D Vision GeForce graphics card enhancement package ($200 and up), which with a fast enough monitor (such as the 120 hertz, 22-inch Samsung SyncMaster 2233RZ at $300) would still bring your budget 3-D setup in at well under four figures. With recent model GeForce cards (details on Nvidia's Website), a 3-D Vision's Infrared emitter modules plugs into a USB por tand chirps its "left-eye, right-eye" syncing signal to Nvidia's active 3-D glasses while its pipes 3-D signals to the monitor. And unlike Sony's PlayStation 3, which boasts only a handful of full HD 3 games, there are more than a hundred Nvidia 3-D Vision-enabled games for the PC. Some streaming noninteractive content-such as this past spring's golf Masters Tournament-is also 3-D Vision-ready. Of course, whatever desktops can do, laptops will be doing soon. In November, Asus announced the first Nvidia 3-D Vision gaming laptop.

With one downloadable firmware upgrade. Sony's PlayStation 3 (US $300) will support 3-D video game titles. As of mid-May, neither Microsoft nor Nintendo had announced upgrades of their Xbox 360 ($200( and Wii ($200) systems to do 3-D gaming on this year's new line of HD 3-D television. Of course, old-fashioned red-blue anaglyph glasses-the king used for 1950s horror movies-can be used for a 3-D effect with any console and any television. In fact, Majesco Entertainment's new shooter Attact of the MOvies 3-D ($30 Xbox, Wii) draws inspiration from the 3-D creature features of yesteryear-and gives its users four pairs of kitschy plastic gel glasses for the full dimensional experience.

The world of 3-D video games, any gamer will tell you, is almost as old as video games in color: Nintendo titles in the late 1980s like Rad Racer and 3-D WorldRunner each had 3-D modes that used red and blue passive eyeglasses to produce images that jumped off the screen just like 1950s era movie monsters.

What's new in 2010 is the prospect of 3-D games running on the new 3-D television sets coming onto the market place. Sony is promoting 3-D video games on its PlayStation 3-firmware upgradable to run on 3-D TVs.

With the exception of LG's anomalous LD950 LCD panel-which requires merely the same cheap polarized glasses found in most 3-D movie theaters today-every consumer 3-D television in the market place uses active LCD glasses to achieve the optical illusion of depth. Turning each eye's lens dark and transparent again 60 or so times per second-and alternating that with another 60 or so "winks" per second in the other eye-active 3-D glasses give the relatively slow brain the impression of depth form the flat screen. You'll know that 3-D TV has really caught on when high-end eyewear designers start making frames for active 3-D glasses that look as flattering on the face as they make the television's frame look to you.

Belkin HDMI cable

The cable connecting your 3-D TV to the source of 3-D programming-whether it's a 3-D-enabled Blu-ray player or cable set-top or satellite box- should be a high-speed (1.4) HDMI cable, says Brian Markwalter of the Consumer Electronics Association. Watch out for stores that are still stocking the lower-speed standard (1.3) cables, which should have faded from the market after the new cables came out in the second half of last year. The older cables may not be able to handle the increased data rate of full HD 3-D video.

The bad news: For at least the next few years, cable and satellite set-top boxes won't match the full HD resolution to each eye that 3-D Blu-ray discs do(1080p). The good news: This bit of hardware probably doesn't need replacing, just a (typically free) firmware upgrade.

Box makers have for the moment pushed to keep their 3-D and 2-D content the same size image with the same number of frames per second. Inevitably, it's 3-D's resolution that suffers. "Side-by-side 3-D" (which DirectTV uses) squishes the images seen by the left and right eye into a standard high-def frame (makeing the iamge that each eye sees 960 by 1080 instead of the full-HD 1920 by 1080), while "top/bottom 3-D" does the same trick in the vertical dimension. In both cases, the set-top box splits up the image being transmitted and fills the whole of your TV screen with the left eye's image while syncing with the active glasses to darken the right eye, and then  vice versa.

Panasonic DMP-BPT350

In December, with the promise of an HDMI cable that would carry as much data as the highest- definition 3-D would require, the Blue-ray Disc. Association announced its 3-D specs. That means any 3-D HD Blue-ray player on the market today that sports the 3-D Blue-ray logo will support the highest standard definition for 3-D content-1080p 3-D to both eyes at 240 frames per second-and will also spin regular Blu-ray discs and those stacks of DVDs and CDs in your media cabinet. In addition, some late-model Blu-ray players can upgrade to full HD 3-D in firmware.

Sony Bravia KDL-HX800

The consumer electronics industry has so far lined up behind a single 3-D TV methodology-a regular HD screen with an inexpensive infrared-signal emitter on top, though other types of synchronization emitters, including Bluetooth and RF, can also be found. The signal emitter sends out chirps every 8.3 milliseconds that tell "active" 3-D LCD glasses to successively darken the right lens and then the left, and so no. This keeps down the cost of adding 3-D for manufactures. Make sure your glasses and TV use the same type of signal.