My number one issue: wearing glasses sucks. It did in 1950. It did in 1980s. Virtual reality took it to an extreme in the 90s, and it failed there, and it's gonna fail in the '10s.
The whole reason for the initial resurgence of 3D was for an experience in the theater that differentiated itself from the kind of improved experience people were getting at home with HD sets and DVD's. The multiplex owners clamored for an innovation that would give viewers a reason to make that first pass viewing in the theater (because in today's society the joy of a night out was no longer enough).
3D makes some sense in the movie theater environment, I can even see it working nicely for some arcade machines, but at home, its just too cumbersome to want to deal with 24/7, and as you point out there are definite trade offs.
I saw Journey to the Center of the earth in 3D at the theater, and on FIOS in HD recently, the HD presentation definitely looked more lively, more colorful. Even if they could get the tech mastered to the point where you loose nothing, dealing with the glasses, and the constant distraction of the "gee wiz" theme park effects is not something everyone is going to want. Its fun for an occasional diversion, two hours a couple times of year at a theater, I think that makes all the sense in the world, perhaps when your at the beach arcade, or a theme park, but at home, I just don't see it being successful.
That R&D money could be better spent on paying writers and directors to make films and TV shows that don't suck.
Agreed - I don't like where 3D tech is going either. It's a neat technology when it's used in, say, an IMAX theatre, but it really does take an enormous display in order to make the tech enjoyable. The glasses aren't honestly that comfortable, either - if it weren't for the fact that the picture doesn't look right without them, I might not have worn them at all when I watched Avatar. I really can't see this tech being viable for the home.
Remember shop class in junior high. The teacher always made the kid with glasses put on goggles OVER THEIR GLASSES so you'd be even dorkier and super-uncomfortable all for the sake of "safety." 3D makes me feel like that. When I put on shutter glasses or, God forbid, the those horrible RealD I-wanna-be-Ray-Ban-Wayfarers shades, I feel like a tool. I know I look like a tool. Why would I spend money on that feeling?
People with glasses (roughly 48 percent of the population) get screwed by the tech. We can't wear the glasses in the proper location so we've gotta resort to jamming or prescription lenses INTO OUR EYES or letting the 3D glasses slip off the tips of our noses. And then the image gets screwed up and you see a wonderful HD 1080P ghost to the left of EVERYTHING. WOW LOOK HOW FAR WE'VE COME! WE CROSSED THE UNCANNY VALLEY.
I think that 3D tech is cool, but it's not ready for my living room. I'm fine with putting on ze goggles at the theater or for the psuedo-science I do at school, but the usage scenario is a lot different in those spaces.
Getting this kind of 3D-at-home is a waste of time, and im sure it will be a waste of money for those who bet on that to be the next "best thing to own" , like samsung.
The caption of the AVATAR image had me LOL'ing so hard that I completely missed the point of the rest of the article. (thought I did notice that I'm a dick, lul)
10/10. Best article of the decade (so far).
Great job. Also, 'OMG HOLY CRAP THE FUTURE' is official canon, the new tagline of 3D at home.
I don't mind the idea of 3D at home, but I'll wait for holodeck technology to be consumer-level affordable.
should current Blu-ray owners re-buy their movies a third time?
Some movie buffs have already bought their favorite movies three or even four times. If I had a Blu-Ray player, I would be buying my two favorite movies each on their third medium already.
3D stuff is like monorail train systems. I've heard of cities wanting to start a monorail system that would cost X millions of dollars, then it eventually got way more expensive and was then never even built.
3D is like that. A bunch of unnecessary crap that no one really needs. It may improve something in some small way, but the cost isn't worth it. And if you have to buy new players and DVDs and monitors all over again, few people will.
Here is a viewpoint that some may find interesting.
3D sucks for me and a lot of other sufferers of eye conditions. I have amblyopia (also known as lazy eye/squint). I had surgery to correct a little of this when I was a child but you can't actually realign the eyes to be 100% forwards. This mean I don't have 3D vision. I see out of either one eye or the other. This means no depth of perception. I cannot see 3D. I have done eye exercises, had some eye therapy. This has helped to a degree but the fact remains that the 3D spatial vision that people take for granted is something I will never have. My brain simply isn't wired for it.
This resurgance in 3D while wonderful is (politely) fucking horrendous. Congratulations for successfully ruining the visual experience for those of who can't see it. Movies are being constantly released ONLY in 3D. I sit with slightly darkened glasses watching the movie as flat as a pancake. It's not like I am in a minority here either.
The lack of full pheriphal vision is very hard to grasp and can make day to day tasks like driving, parking and reaching for items difficult (especially when tired). I absolutely do not want to be forced to wear stupid, pointless tinted glasses at home. Get bent.
The absolute arrogance astounds me. Over 10% of the GLOBAL population suffer variances of this condition. That is not an insignificant number.
So yes, PISS OFF with your stupid glasses and don't limit peoples experiences. YOU BASTARDS.
Don't like it much either. My downloaded movie was 75% ruined in 3D. It would have been 100% but I still had last years super bowl paper 3D glasses near the TV. Paper glasses suck! Dark blue tinting sucks! Fuzzy picture sucks! 3D glasses that don't work suck! 3D is okay sometimes, but it annoys me. I'll choose "projected 3D," as in the picture actually looks like it's 'in' the room, like some old sci-fi stuff portrays it.
I agree 100%! Take a minute and appreciate how long good old analog PAL / NTSC TV provided us all with great service. Here in Germany, analog color TV based on PAL was put into service in 1967. And then, it lasted for decades.
Then, at the end of the 90's / beginning of the 00's, "digital" television was introduced. You had to buy a digital terrestrial receiver (or digital satellite / cable receiver) to watch that stuff. Quality-wise not much better, it at least allowed 25+ stations to be broadcast digitally and terrestrial where in the analog age, it was only about 6. Via satellite, of course, you could now get hundreds of channels instead of only about 50 before.
So digital television was introduced, and it#s decades again, right? Well - no! Only about ten years later (for people who didn't adopt digital TV very early on even less than ten years later), HDTV is introduced. HDTV became "officially" available in Germany in 2009.
And now ... two, three or even five years after that, HDTV is supposed to be "old news" once again, as they are trying to sell us 3DTV? When's that going to be obsolete? In another year? Do they want us to completely replace our equipment every two months in the future or what?
Nope, first of all, as others have already pointed out, I don't see 3DTV making any sense in the home. Never. Then, I'm just as worried about how "revolutionary new" technologies come along all of the time and then become obsolte at a ridiculous rate, as I've tried to explain above.
If you ask me, 3DTV is nothing more than a "gimmick". Of course, manufacturers and content producers would love you to buy into it, but I'm fairly sure that it'll fail. Customers ain't totally stupid and won't buy just "anything".
Personally, I would very much appreciate it if movies would once again be based on a good plot instead of all those pointless special effects. In fact, I'd much rather watch such a quality movie in black and white than the latest 3D special effects shit...
Digital television was necessary. Broadcast stations had been stuck in the stoneage for FAR too long because everyone was afraid to push the industry into a need to upgrade. Now, the argument for HD content isn't quite so compelling. Of course, Televisions became 16:9 everywhere you looked, and viewers naturally wanted to fill that screen with picture and not have black bars on the sides. For that reason, I can see why they pushed for HD content. As for the additional HD detail in the images, it's really not necessary for broadcast news.
I didn't know that HDTV's were still emerging in Germany, so that's quite unfortunate.
Also, I'm glad this thread got bumped. This Op/ed is one of my favorites. That cat with the glasses makes me laugh every time.
Unfortunate, or ideal? If the HDTV market hasn't been recently saturated, they can jump straight to 3D and cut out the middle cost of an HDTV in the meantime.
Who knows, but if you knew something new was coming, would you waste your cash on an HDTV set? They have the time and the ability to wait, see what's coming in terms of programming and hardware, and make an educated decision whether they want to stick with their TV, go to HD, or go to 3D.
Can't believe some people actually think 3D is the future (especially when it comes to wearing glasses to see it.)
Enjoy all the kids crap Hollywood churns out 3D fanboys!
Thrax
🐌Austin, TX Icrontian
Comments
Nobody wants to wear shit.
3D makes some sense in the movie theater environment, I can even see it working nicely for some arcade machines, but at home, its just too cumbersome to want to deal with 24/7, and as you point out there are definite trade offs.
I saw Journey to the Center of the earth in 3D at the theater, and on FIOS in HD recently, the HD presentation definitely looked more lively, more colorful. Even if they could get the tech mastered to the point where you loose nothing, dealing with the glasses, and the constant distraction of the "gee wiz" theme park effects is not something everyone is going to want. Its fun for an occasional diversion, two hours a couple times of year at a theater, I think that makes all the sense in the world, perhaps when your at the beach arcade, or a theme park, but at home, I just don't see it being successful.
That R&D money could be better spent on paying writers and directors to make films and TV shows that don't suck.
People with glasses (roughly 48 percent of the population) get screwed by the tech. We can't wear the glasses in the proper location so we've gotta resort to jamming or prescription lenses INTO OUR EYES or letting the 3D glasses slip off the tips of our noses. And then the image gets screwed up and you see a wonderful HD 1080P ghost to the left of EVERYTHING. WOW LOOK HOW FAR WE'VE COME! WE CROSSED THE UNCANNY VALLEY.
3D: Don't need it.
Getting this kind of 3D-at-home is a waste of time, and im sure it will be a waste of money for those who bet on that to be the next "best thing to own" , like samsung.
10/10. Best article of the decade (so far).
Great job. Also, 'OMG HOLY CRAP THE FUTURE' is official canon, the new tagline of 3D at home.
Some movie buffs have already bought their favorite movies three or even four times. If I had a Blu-Ray player, I would be buying my two favorite movies each on their third medium already.
It would be if taking a family to the movies didn't cost half a month's salary.
3D is like that. A bunch of unnecessary crap that no one really needs. It may improve something in some small way, but the cost isn't worth it. And if you have to buy new players and DVDs and monitors all over again, few people will.
3D sucks for me and a lot of other sufferers of eye conditions. I have amblyopia (also known as lazy eye/squint). I had surgery to correct a little of this when I was a child but you can't actually realign the eyes to be 100% forwards. This mean I don't have 3D vision. I see out of either one eye or the other. This means no depth of perception. I cannot see 3D. I have done eye exercises, had some eye therapy. This has helped to a degree but the fact remains that the 3D spatial vision that people take for granted is something I will never have. My brain simply isn't wired for it.
This resurgance in 3D while wonderful is (politely) fucking horrendous. Congratulations for successfully ruining the visual experience for those of who can't see it. Movies are being constantly released ONLY in 3D. I sit with slightly darkened glasses watching the movie as flat as a pancake. It's not like I am in a minority here either.
The lack of full pheriphal vision is very hard to grasp and can make day to day tasks like driving, parking and reaching for items difficult (especially when tired). I absolutely do not want to be forced to wear stupid, pointless tinted glasses at home. Get bent.
The absolute arrogance astounds me. Over 10% of the GLOBAL population suffer variances of this condition. That is not an insignificant number.
So yes, PISS OFF with your stupid glasses and don't limit peoples experiences. YOU BASTARDS.
For the post or for the comment on Tims comment
WATCH IT KIDDO :mad2:
Then, at the end of the 90's / beginning of the 00's, "digital" television was introduced. You had to buy a digital terrestrial receiver (or digital satellite / cable receiver) to watch that stuff. Quality-wise not much better, it at least allowed 25+ stations to be broadcast digitally and terrestrial where in the analog age, it was only about 6. Via satellite, of course, you could now get hundreds of channels instead of only about 50 before.
So digital television was introduced, and it#s decades again, right? Well - no! Only about ten years later (for people who didn't adopt digital TV very early on even less than ten years later), HDTV is introduced. HDTV became "officially" available in Germany in 2009.
And now ... two, three or even five years after that, HDTV is supposed to be "old news" once again, as they are trying to sell us 3DTV? When's that going to be obsolete? In another year? Do they want us to completely replace our equipment every two months in the future or what?
Nope, first of all, as others have already pointed out, I don't see 3DTV making any sense in the home. Never. Then, I'm just as worried about how "revolutionary new" technologies come along all of the time and then become obsolte at a ridiculous rate, as I've tried to explain above.
If you ask me, 3DTV is nothing more than a "gimmick". Of course, manufacturers and content producers would love you to buy into it, but I'm fairly sure that it'll fail. Customers ain't totally stupid and won't buy just "anything".
Personally, I would very much appreciate it if movies would once again be based on a good plot instead of all those pointless special effects. In fact, I'd much rather watch such a quality movie in black and white than the latest 3D special effects shit...
Digital television was necessary. Broadcast stations had been stuck in the stoneage for FAR too long because everyone was afraid to push the industry into a need to upgrade. Now, the argument for HD content isn't quite so compelling. Of course, Televisions became 16:9 everywhere you looked, and viewers naturally wanted to fill that screen with picture and not have black bars on the sides. For that reason, I can see why they pushed for HD content. As for the additional HD detail in the images, it's really not necessary for broadcast news.
I didn't know that HDTV's were still emerging in Germany, so that's quite unfortunate.
Also, I'm glad this thread got bumped. This Op/ed is one of my favorites. That cat with the glasses makes me laugh every time.
Enjoy all the kids crap Hollywood churns out 3D fanboys!