This morning, among all its other self-promotional Super Bowl nonsense, NBC's Today show was promoting the 3D experience that fans will see during the game on Sunday. Sobe and the animated movie Monsters vs. Aliens will both have ads in 3D, and then fans can use the same glasses to watch Monday night's episode of Chuck, which is shot with the same Intel Tru3D technology as the ads. DreamWorks' co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg appeared on Today with Zachary Levi from Chuck to promote the technology and explain how different it was from the old red-and-green 3D that gave people headaches in the days of yore.

According to Levy and Katzenberg, this version of 3D is supposed to work, no matter what the delivery method. Well, NBC was kind enough to send me a preview copy of Monday's Chuck (which I sent on to Allison for her episode review), complete with glasses. I've got to tell you... it doesn't work. At least not on TV. At least not for me.

Christopher Guest had one hell of a challenge on his hands when he agreed to do commercials for some new products from Intel. The products are very "inside baseball", as they are for IT managers. Intel needed to promote its new vPro and Centrino Pro directly to IT folks. That means using a lot of words the general public doesn't understand, but words that Intel required in its advertisements.

How did Guest do it? In a song, of course. He rounded up Dan Finnerty (of The Dan Band) and rocker Rob Giles to sing the tune Guest and his collaborator, C.J. Vanston wrote about Intel's new products.

The results are two- 2 minute music video commercials that are pretty entertaining. They're both after the jump:

Having a computer/TV setup seems like a dream come true, especially for couch potatoes and geeks. You can watch TV, download music and movies, surf the web, and check e-mail from the comfort of your couch, using a remote to control the megasystem that's in one area of your house. So how come we haven't really seen that happen yet?

Slate has an interesting piece today that talks about computer/TV products that never came to be, or came to be and then quickly died (like the Viiv):

"My theory is that PC-TV hybrid products like Viiv aim for a sweet spot that doesn't exist. Very savvy consumers will hack together these setups themselves. The less savvy will just keep their TVs and computers separate. And the folks in the middle? If they're around, nobody has found them yet."

Hmmm...I consider myself in the middle. I'm a bit savvy, but I still want to keep my computers and TV separate. Not because I wouldn't necessarily want to have a computer/TV mix if a perfect setup could be created. It's more because I don't really see a need to have my computer on my TV, or vice versa. And I don't want to play games on my cellphone or watch a TV on my refrigerator or take notes on a Blackberry.

What do you think?