If you're one of the nation's 5 million BBC iPlayer users (or perhaps, for our US friends, one of 40 million Hulu users) the murky boundaries between 'using the internet' and 'watching TV' will be familiar. From enjoying shows online to - in the near future - reading news and catching up on e-mails on our plasma TVs, the magical process of 'convergence' is charging its way into the new decade. When you can sit on the bus and watch live TV with the rather spiffing TVCatchup, you know the days of bluntly differentiating between computing devices and TVs are numbered.

Technology firms hoping to catch such disruptive waves of change meet annually at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, boasting the wares they hope will enter our homes in coming years. It's a veritable trend-seekers paradise, and one particular trend at this year's event leapt out (almost literally). 3D TVs, capable of showing the new breed of 3D films like James Cameron's Avatar in all their splendour, will eventually find their way into our living rooms. That alone is revelatory, but in parallel with the convergence stampede presents one huge floating 3D question mark for interface design.

Experiments with 3D interfaces are not new, but have begun gaining traction with the emergence of gesture-based devices, particularly multi-touch devices like the all-conquering iPhone and Microsoft's Surface. One approach I've been watching with interest is BumpTop, revealed with an eye-opening TED talk (listen to the oohs and aahs) and now available to the public.

Other experiments are happening at Apple, if you believe their patent application, and at Sun with their 'Project Looking Glass'. What is really exciting is the thought that such interfaces will not only be modelled in 3D, but displayed on 3D devices like the new generation of TVs. What gestures should accompany such immersive interfaces remain to be seen (see Microsoft's controller-less Project Natal for one utopian idea). Also, the question remains as to whether pushing the desktop metaphor to its logical conclusion - as in the above examples - is a liberating breakthrough or an artificial constraint.

What is certain is that these challenges begin to make our existing 2D devices, with those archaic mice and keyboards, a little more dull. The greater affordability and impending adoption of such technology also presents thrilling opportunities for content-producers beyond TV and film studios. Museums, for example, could take their online collections to the next level - their invaluable artefacts may be hovering their way into your living room, in breath-taking high definition, before you know it.