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Our good friends over at eCoustics.com offered “10 Reasons 3D Might Fail.”
I was a little surprised to see such a forward-looking A/V news source predicting such blasphemy. It’s been a long time since a tech trend has generated as much buzz as 3D, and theater hits like “Avatar” and “Alice In Wonderland” have heightened consumer interest in 3D.
Here are my counter points as to why 3D TV will find an important niche in the home theater experience.
Glasses - Consumers have shown they’ll don 3D glasses in large public venues (i.e. theaters and theme parks). Why wouldn’t they do so in the privacy of their own home. Glasses are also a stop-gap as auto-stereoscopic technologies develop and the associated price tag softens.
TV Watching is Social - While 3D viewing may alter the social atmosphere, it also heightens immersion. The times 3D will be most interesting are the times you’re so immersed in the content that you won’t want to talk to the person next to you. It’s not for the news, SportsCenter, or AMC.
Compatibility - Nearly every major upgrade in home theater content has had associated hardware upgrades. Dolby Digital? DVD? HDTV? Blu-ray? All required new hardware to varying degrees. Some early adopters will abandon perfectly good equipment for the latest and greatest, while others upgrade through attrition. It’s all happened before and will happen again.
Lack of Content - Hardware and software are like the chicken and the egg. But in the A/V world, hardware almost always comes first and languishes a bit until some killer app (like “The Matrix” on DVD) pushes people to invest. Once the seal is broken, the trickle gains momentum and becomes a flood.
Confusion - The launch of HDTV in the U.S. caused more consumer confusion than any other technology roll-out of all time. While HDTV was slow to ramp-up and had a big government push behind it, it’s a success regardless of the confusion, and not every Joe Six Pack even saw the benefit of HDTV’s resolution, aspect ratio, and digital video/sound. It’s hard for anyone to say they physically don’t see what 3D offers.
Health Risks - It’s true that some people can’t see stereoscopic 3D effects. Another small minority can experience some discomfort or eye strain from extended viewing. The percentages of people affected by both categories vary wildly based on who you ask. Some warnings have been issued by electronics manufacturers, but you can find similar warnings for everything from cell phones to supermarket plastic bags. Until there is some substantial evidence to actual risks, these kinds of allegations are best left to Fox News.
Unwatchable 3D Footage - 3D content can easily be viewed in 2D. While it’s an either-or proposition (either everyone watches 3D or 2D), displays and content devices offer the ability to “flatten” 3D content to 2D. Since the 3D effect is generated by separate 2D images for each eye, showing only the left or right image effectively renders 3D content in 2D.
Just Good-enough Syndrome - While HDTV content and Blu-ray content haven’t replaced SD or DVD as de facto standards, saying they haven’t “taken off” is disingenuous at best. 3D isn’t meant to replace 2D, but augment it. Every major new technology has early adopters and those who hold back. 3D won’t be any different, but that doesn’t mean it will fail. DVD didn’t, surround sound didn’t, HDTV didn’t, and 3D won’t.
Discs are Dying - While 3D can require more storage space or bandwidth, it’s not reliant on a physical medium much, if any, more than HD video.
History Lessons - While the term “HDTV” may have been around 20 years before it reached market saturation, the digital HDTV broadcast in the U.S. occurred in the summer of 1996, and the ATSC standard wasn’t finalized until the fall of 1998. By 2001, HDTVs were becoming common place in big-box retailers. Twenty years is a huge stretch. Consumers have a short memory, and far more people are likely to remember their 3D theater experience and become interested in replicating it in their home (unless they see “Clash of the Titans”).
Man, dissing all my stuff. SACD, my 2d Kuro….I am going to have to take out a loan and start spending to get out of my depression!!
JK
I see the world in 3D….I can’t imagine needing to see TV in 3D all the time. BUT in those cases where a production nails it, like Avatar or so I hear about U2 3D, I’d like to see it in 3D.
I’ll agree, deniers know no bounds. For me, I hope to go to projected 3d in the future, even if it’s in the little room I have available (that can be made dark).
Why would you wear the glasses for every hour that your TV is on when only a limited amount of 3D content requires the glasses? Man, these 3D dissenters come up with the oddest reasons to justify their position. I suspect it’s because their position is really only justified by the fact that they’re PO’d that their previously top of the line TV is now obsolete…
Wow, ... Can I say I disagree 100%. SACD died, Beta died. HDCD is dead. HDTV has lost its legs and arms with those substandard 720P sets, and two audio channels versus 5.1 or 7.1 that was supposed to be in HDTV. Yes., 90+% just don’t have a center speaker or rears.
We tend to have sub-standard implementations of archeciture designs win almost solely due to cost. Taking a step step back, I bet more movies are upscaled from DVDs than Blus in the now and 5-10 years future.
And its different wearing glasses in a movie 15-18x per year than fixing dinner or readng a book with those glasses every hour thst your TV is on.
So, yea, lets start the 18 month clock and see if we acknowledged that 3D tech fior the home is dead,
Me: Pioneer Elite Kuro, Krell, and vintage Infinity IRS Betas
Okay, bait taken. I am not particularly expert but I am not easily taken by emotional hysteria. I have an engineering - think mathematical background, and I seem to be very good at pulling the ‘obvious’ out of the chaotic stuff the media throughs at us. But, key is listening to facts. I have spent lots of time listening to both sides and listened to the right enough that I though the war against Iraq was legit. Then the reality hit me, all the right was parroting the same thing. It felt three dimensional, felt like cross supported truths. But in the end, it was managed lies, by a a pack of whores who would say anything for audience share.
And I say that in particular not because I am smart, or they are stupid, but LONG, very LONG after it clearly has been proven the war was a fraud, and we discovered that the people involved were life long governmental grifters - Bushs, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and that they were utterly incompetent at everything, and lied at everything….their media dogs just went slavisly down the same path.
And it was hateful - argument mostly by insult.
So via XM and regular radio, I went left. Air America and similar, New York Times, Rachel Maddow, Oberman. LA Times is my local paper so I get a dose of all sides and I disucss with everyone I can.
Now I don’t know SS. I don’t give a rats behind if it was intented to be a retirement program and considering in LA the $1800 ?? I would get would allow me to live under a bridge, I hardly think of it as one - but if my company screws me on their retirement as MANY have gotten away with, I can rely on SS - as long as we have an economy, we will have SS. No economy and nothing will really matter anyway as things will be murderously bad.
So I can’t defend SS, but I absolutely believe it will be there because it is funded by the people. As long as we can keep this a government for the people we will work it out.
As for the Tea baggers, I am sure there are a few good people. But the pictures, the numbers, and the voice that is heard it is clearly white, rigid, republican and supremely rascist. After all, simply, where was it for the last 30 years of theivery and war crimes? No, it came out with a black president and tried to blame him from the first moment.
No, sorry dude, but the Tea movement is empty, a simple mob program brought to you by republican operatives, the party of No.
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Haha, me too. I wouldn’t like to see every movie in 3D. From the previews I saw during IronMan2 it looks like a bunch of shovelware (to borrow a gaming term) is on it’s way to 3D. I don’t know if 3D will survive this go-around, but at least it doesn’t have competing formats like SACD, Beta, DVD-Audio, etc. had to contend with. It will be a while before it reaches critical mass though, as I would think most people really are distraught over the fact that they’d have to buy another TV, after they probably just got one recently. I think most people (like myself) are used to buying a TV, and having it last for 15-20 years. There is going to have to be some compelling content, and the price of glasses is going to have to come way down, so you can invite friends over to watch something, before it catches on.