Two major cable networks – ESPN and Discovery – said Tuesday they plan to start beaming 3-D entertainment into peoples’ homes for the first time. Riding what could be one of the next big waves in consumer electronics, ESPN said it will have a 3-D channel for broadcasting live sports events in time for the FIFA World Cup soccer match on June 11. The channel will not operate 24 hours a day, but plans at least 85 live events in its first year.

Separately, Discovery Communications Inc., which owns Discovery, TLC and other cable channels, said it will partner with Imax Corp. and Sony Corp. to bring out its own full-time 3-D network in 2011.It’s yet to be seen whether 3-D can make inroads in the home. For viewers it will likely mean buying new TV sets and wearing 3-D glasses.

But enthusiasm for the new technology has been building across the industry, with electronics makers, cable and satellite companies and content providers betting that they can get consumers to shell out for new TVs and channels. They hope 3-D blockbusters such as James Cameron’s “Avatar,” still strong in its third week in theaters, can get enough people excited about characters popping off the screen.

Last year, 3-D films took in more than $1 billion at box offices worldwide. And major electronics makers such as Sony Corp. and Panasonic Corp. are planning to market 3-D-capable TVs this year. “The trouble is going to be, how do you take the enthusiasm about what’s happening in movie theaters and bring it into the home,” said Greg Ireland, an analyst with the market research firm IDC. Aside from getting people to wear funny-looking glasses in their living rooms, Ireland said the big challenge will be providing enough 3-D material to justify asking consumers to buy new sets.

Another hurdle could be the inevitable wrangling over the fees that cable networks such as Discovery charge the cable TV and satellite operators that pipe their shows to peoples’ homes. Such disputes already led Scripps Networks Interactive Inc. to pull its HGTV and the Food Network from Cablevision Systems Corp. lineups this year. Neither ESPN, which is owned by The Walt Disney Co., nor Discovery had any deals with cable or satellite operators lined up.

Discovery’s effort is still clearly in the early stages. The channel does not yet have a name or a CEO to lead it. Discovery said it has technology for converting regular programming into 3-D, which could allow it to tap its existing catalog of shows, but the company didn’t say exactly what programming the new channel will run.

Still, the company said it expects to see about 5 million early adopters of 3-D in the home over the next two years or so, out of about 100 million U.S. households with subscription-television service. And five or ten years out, it expects the technology to reach a mass audience. “There’s no question that for the right experience, consumers are going to put on the glasses,” Imax CEO Richard Gelfond said on a conference call. “And we intend to create the right experience.”

In an interview, ESPN’s vice president for technology, Chuck Pagano, said the network is preparing for a “3-D tsunami” in the TV industry, beginning this week with the annual International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. “It brings a sense of ‘wow’ when you watch a football game,” he said. “It’s just a new universe for watching TV coming down the pipeline.”

Chile will adopt the Japanese digital television standard ISDB-T, which is high-definition capable, joining neighboring Peru and Argentina, President Michelle Bachelet said Monday. “Following a rigorous study and consulting with several universities, we have decided to adopt the ISDB-T standard,” Bachelet told reporters at the presidential palace.

Santiago’s decision came after it had also considered US and European standards. Peru adopted the standard in April and Argentina did so in August. In Brazil, it was been adapted for high definition in 2006.

The Japanese standard “suits Chile the best, allows for better quality digital television reception, given the characteristics of our country,” Chile’s telecommunications regulator Subtel said in a statement.

The undersecretariat said the transition to high definition was “the biggest change in television of the past 30 years.” In Chile, which underwent its first television revolution 30 years ago when it switched from black and white to color, more than 65 percent of households only have access to terrestrial television and not cable.

“By establishing digital television, households will see a major improvement in the quality of sound and image, and eventually the possibility to gradually access new services and interactive applications,” Subtel said.

The Japanese standard will be applied in Chile in 2010, but Chileans will be given several years before analog television is phased out, so that they can exchange their sets for new ones equipped with the necessary technology.

Analysts agreed the decision is good from a technological point of view. “It’s a proven technology that is suited to Chile’s mountainous terrain…now we have to see how the purchasing power of South American countries could impact prices,” said Lucas Sierra, a researcher at the independent think-tank Centro de Estudios Publicos.

In addition to lower prices, a key factor in the decision was the capability of the Japanese standard to broadcast television to mobile devices, Transport and Telecommunications Minister Rene Cortazar told reporters after Bachelet’s announcement.

This is important for a country like Chile with more than 15 million mobile phones, or almost one per inhabitant. “Given the high level of penetration of mobile phones in Chile, this was an important factor to consider,” Cortazar said.

The North American and European norms also offer mobile reception and high-definition quality, but the Japanese government – in partnership with Brazil – stepped up its lobbying efforts in recent months with diplomatic visits and high-level meetings.

Senators Carlos Cantero and Guido Girardi visited Japan in August to study the Japanese norm and, after meeting with officials and telecommunications companies, both came out in favor of the standard. On Monday, Cantero told a local radio station that the decision is “very positive” since “all the tests show the clear advantages of the technology for Chile’s geography.”

Moreover, Japan has offered to help Chile to ensure “the correct and successful implementation of ISDB-T as the Chilean standard,” Chile’s Japanese embassy said in a press release Monday. “For Japan, it brings us great joy that ISDB-T has been adopted as the digital TV standard in Brazil, Peru, Argentina and Chile,” the statement said.

For broadcasters, digital TV offers the possibility of transmitting four standard channels – or one high-definition channel – in the bandwidth currently required for just one standard channel, freeing up spectrum space for other uses.

The extra room – known as the digital dividend – could be used by regional television channels to reach a more viewers than they can currently access though paid cable TV.

But before channels can start broadcasting digital television, Congress must pass a bill currently before the lower house to govern how concessions for broadcasting digital television over the airwaves are awarded.

Sometimes a remark can really make a lot of difference! It can ruin you and can make you! Nearly dozen companies have withdrawn their commercials from “Glenn Beck,” the Fox News Channel program, after Glenn Beck, the person, said late last month that President Obama was a racist with a “deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

The companies that have moved their ads elsewhere in recent days included ConAgra, Geico, Procter & Gamble and the insurance company Progressive. In a statement that echoed the comments of other companies, ConAgra said on Thursday that “we are firmly committed to diversity, and we would like to prevent the potential perception that advertising during this program was an endorsement of the viewpoints shared.”

The campaign against Mr. Beck is rooted in an advocacy group’s objection to the commentator’s remarks on July 28. Given the number of advertisers that have pledged to remove their spots, it appears to have been unusually successful. Its success also indicates that as commentary on cable news reaches a rhetorical boiling point, advertisers may become more skittish about being near it.

“We have TV today that’s very polarizing and controversial,” said Donny Deutsch, the advertising executive and occasional host on CNBC and MSNBC, a rival to Fox News.

Last month, Mr. Deutsch listed some of the “Glenn Beck” advertisers and told MSNBC viewers that people who objected to Mr. Beck’s remark should write to the chief executives of the companies. In an interview, he said corporate decisions about where to allot ad dollars were the “ultimate check and balance.”

The sponsors’ shifts came after a campaign by ColorOfChange.org, a black political coalition, to contact sponsors of Mr. Beck’s program. The remark by Mr. Beck, a conservative radio host and comedian who joined Fox News in January, came not on his 5 p.m. talk show but on “Fox and Friends,” a raucous morning program.

That day, Fox News appeared to distance itself quickly from Mr. Beck’s remark that Mr. Obama was a racist, telling the TVNewser blog that Mr. Beck had “expressed a personal opinion, which represented his own views, not those of the Fox News Channel.”

Two days later, ColorOfChange asked its 600,000 members to sign a petition addressed to Mr. Beck’s advertisers. It says more than 100,000 have signed.

Fox said the campaign had no financial effect. “The advertisers referenced have all moved their spots from Beck to other day parts on the network, so there has been no revenue lost,” said a spokeswoman for the channel, a unit of the News Corporation.

Still, ColorOfChange trumpeted the advertisers’ announcements as meaningful wins in news releases this month, and announced on Thursday that ConAgra, the pharmaceutical companies Roche and Sanofi-Aventis, and the electronics retailer RadioShack had pledged to remove ads from “Glenn Beck.”