THE GIZMO: The selling of 3-D.

SEEING IS BELIEVING: Product creators can blab all night about how "exciting" their new entertainment technology is. But until you see and hear it for yourself, the thrill just ain't gonna be there.

And if proponents try to simulate the experience in less than full-fledged fashion, then suspicion, doubt and confusion will leave potential customers with a "who needs that?" feeling.

At the moment, I'm worrying that a new generation of three-dimensional movie (and TV) technology won't take off as quickly as it could because the impact of depth-creating, stereoscopic films isn't easily communicated outside theaters.

BAD IDEA GENES: Consider two cases in point, both linked to the Dreamworks Animation 3-D film "Monsters vs. Aliens."

Dreamworks spent a fortune on a 3-D commercial for the movie during the Super Bowl. The idea was to wow viewers with the family-friendly flick's ultra-cute, "scary" characters and special effects - appreciable to a degree if you'd gotten hold of appropriate 3-D glasses. (SoBe Lifewater distributed some and ran its own 3-D commercial during the game.)

So how'd the promotion go over?

Respondents to an online, "Hot or Not" poll at TechCrunch.com voted 2 to 1 that the "Monsters" spot was a flop.

I'm guessing a similar reaction is resonating throughout the land from readers of Entertainment Weekly, People, Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated and their ad-supported sections touting "The 3-D Explosion."

The spreads plug upcoming 3-D films, including "Monsters," using stereoscopic images viewable through 3-D glasses included in the magazines.

Problem is, the TV and print commercials use the same old 3-D technology that's been around since the 1950s - "anaglyph" glasses with blue and red cellophane lenses that make your brain re-focus blurry images to lend an impression of depth.

Sadly, the reasons anaglyph technology went away are still true today. Those lenses distort an image's colors, darken the picture and often leave you with a headache. What a deal!

BRINGING 3-D INTO FOCUS: The 3-D technology used today in movies is quantum leaps ahead of all that and worth seeing for yourself.

The clear, polarizing glasses viewers now wear are reasonably comfortable and don't mess with the colors.

The digital technology (identified as RealD 3-D and Disney Digital 3-D) used in most 3-D theaters smoothly alternates a movie's left and right eye images, encoded on a hard drive. The differently polarized lenses in the viewing glasses "see" one side, then the other.

While also using a variation of polarized glasses, the analog IMAX 3-D process employed in some theaters works with two side-by-side projectors running large-format film prints in sync. The IMAX screen is bigger and the images a tad brighter than those with the RealD/Disney Digital process. You'll feel like you're falling into the picture!

A titanic "Monsters vs. Aliens" battle scene with the Golden Gate Bridge wobbling and crumbling under assault proved particularly amazing in an IMAX 3-D theater.

But on the down side, the IMAX process suffers from the occasional motion artifact and can cause eye fatigue or headaches not experienced in RealD/Disney Digital.

THE BETTER MOUSE TRAP: Nobody's been beating the drum for 3-D as the "future of the movie business" like Dreamworks chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, who plans to use the process in all future animated projects.

So does Disney, his former employer.

In a recent chat, Katzenberg argued that 3-D is "the most exciting thing" that's happened to the film business in ages. "It's not a gimmick any more - it's a new artistic tool."

He said that 3-D movies have the potential to enlarge the theater-going base, since it will be years, he believes, before 3-D is available to the home video market.

A 3-D movie is "a bootlegger's nightmare," he continued. Also, 3-D movie exhibitors can "charge more per ticket without viewer resistance."

GAINING CONVERTS: Like many businesses' nowadays, Dreamworks and other movie makers are really aiming their futuristic pronouncements at the financial community.

Putting a 3-D screen or three into a cineplex ain't cheap. It costs $70,000 to upgrade a theater with a digital projector, another $25,000 to add the 3-D enhancements.

Katzenberg told me that when "Monsters vs. Aliens" went into production, he anticipated at least 2,500 screens would be ready to show it in 3-D. "But because of the economy and the banking crisis, a lot of movie exhibitors haven't been able to finance their scheduled upgrades," he said.

Depending on the source, the 3-D screen count is between 1,500 and 2,000. As a result, the dozen or so 3-D movie releases coming this year will be staggered and will probably bump a predecessor off the map, as "Monsters" did to the critically acclaimed "Coraline."

So if you wanna check out our 3-D future, there's no time like the present. And don't look in the magazines. See it for real.