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The first live-by-satellite 3D sports broadcast - of Scotland versus England from Murrayfield on Saturday afternoon - was a small but significant critical triumph in the history of moving pictures with rugby players in them. I have seen the future of big-event sports broadcasting and it wears funny plastic glasses and sits in the dark with its mouth wide open.

BBC Resources, in collaboration with a consortium including Axis Films, chose last weekend to trial a televisual experience intended to be several notches more immersive than you might get at home over a mug of tea and a hazelnut Boaster.

Two high-definition signals from Murrayfield, shot with twin-lensed cameras, were cunningly uplinked, downcoded and projected on to a screen at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, West London. There, our hosts had put in place the technical resources essential to the three-dimensional rugby-watching experience - beefburgers and a limitless supply of lager in plastic cups.

Oh, and those 3D glasses, of course, making the audience look as though it had gathered to witness a nuclear testing”.
The Times Tuesday 12th March - Giles Smith