The 2011 Consumer Technology Winner - Fascinate

A pub on Tottenham Court Road in London is one of many in Britain that shows football matches from Sky Sports in 3D.

The sight of adults wearing stereoscopic 3D glasses and staring at a screen is quite disconcerting but lots of people do it. Importantly, they are prepared to pay the landlord of the Rising Sun for the privilege of watching their team play in 3D.

This viewing phenomenon is just one of a host of advances that have heightened the TV-watching experience. HD, On Demand services and the ability to pause TV shows demonstrate how consumers are increasingly being given control of how they use TV.

Consumers are set to become more involved in their television viewing thanks to the FascinatE (a tortuous acronym for Format-Agnostic SCript-based INterACTive Experience) project, a €9.35m (£9m) scheme funded by the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme.

With 11 partners across the EU, the FascinatE team is developing a system that allows consumers to view and navigate around an ultra-high-resolution video panorama showing a live event, with the accompanying audio automatically changing to match the selected view.