Joe Downtown: The Atomic to host demo for 3D TV, minus the glasses

By Joe Schoenmann

Tuesday, April 1, 2014 | 7:20 p.m.

Customers expect the typical fare of beer and booze to help them make it through the night in downtown Las Vegas at one of the oldest bars in the city.

But The Atomic, 917 Fremont St., an independent business — meaning, not owned by Downtown Project — will this week bring something to its customers that is at the forefront of visual technologies.

Wednesday from 4-8 p.m. the bar will showcase 3D-without-glasses television from Swedish company WizzCom 3D Inc., which has a Las Vegas office on Pecos Road.

Tech companies like WizzCom are just starting to come out with products incorporating the nanotech involved in nonglasses 3D, even though a form of the technology was developed as far back as 1985 in Berlin.

Television retailers, though, are demanding something new because TV sales have fallen dramatically over the past few years.

It has been reported that TV shipments reached 39.9 million in 2011 — many consumers were said to be switching to flat-screen TVs — then fell to 37.6 million in 2012 and 36.6 million in 2013.

3D TV that requires glasses has been around for a few years, but viewers didn’t seem to fully embrace it; in 2013, Disney even ended its ESPN 3D TV network.

Kent Johns, co-owner of The Atomic, said he just wants to give customers a chance to see how nonglasses 3D feels.

“I like the technology and would like to see it down here before everybody else gets it,” he said. “It’s a good fit for downtown.”

Johns isn’t sure if The Atomic will get one of the TVs, but added it would be “better suited for tourists on the Fremont Street Experience,” which is several blocks west.

Joe Schoenmann doesn’t just cover downtown; he lives and works there. Schoenmann is Greenspun Media Group’s embedded downtown journalist, working from an office in the Emergency Arts building.