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Movie Theaters Aim for Live 3D Sports
teutonic_leech writes "ZDNet has an article claiming that movie theater operators plan to be screening live 3D sports events by 2007 in a bid to lure sports fans away from their home theater systems and bolster sagging mid-week ticket sales." From the article: "Other chains are looking to much-improved digital three-dimensional projection for an experience theatergoers can't get at home. But while the projection has greatly advanced from the early 3D days, special glasses must still be worn to achieve the full effect."
Why hasn't "3D" technology advanced in the last 15 years?
It's severely lagging behind all the other technologies. Where are holograms?
So they are actually going to be selling beer in the movie theater for sports?
The cinemas brought in vendors to stroll the aisles with hot dogs, peanuts and beer
Will the prices be the same as at the ball park?
If so, I would reckon that it won't be a big hit. The main reason I do not go to the movies is the price, and not just of the tickets. I would pay $8 or so a ticket if I could get a 42oz Coke for under $2 or so.
Who needs 3D glasses when I have my beer goggles !!
Let the commencement BEGINULATE!
I already wear special glasses!! When is the screening?? :)
i can imagine watching ice capades this way (dark room, stadium seating) but not competitive sports.
how are you supposed to watch sport in a movie theatre? are you supposed to be loud? order drinks? heckle the other fans? get up to the bathroom, step on someone's toes and block their view? it seems very awkward, formal, and not very relaxing.
The appeal to watch a sports game on a huge screen is very appealing.
The appeal to watch sports in 3d is nonexistant.
When people get together to watch a game they are always cheering booing, having fun, being noisy.. This is what you would find at a sports bar where it is acceptable.
I can't imagine this going over very well inside a theater where you are confined to your small seat.. the atmosphere is a lot different and I can see a lot of people getting annoyed at other people for being loud.
I've got 1 word
PORN
It built the net
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Kif: The Holoshed's on the fritz again -- the characters turned real!
Zapp: Damn! The last time that happened, I got slapped with three paternity suits!
...when Janet Jackson's boob flopped out at the Superbowl?
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.
...at a cinema in St Kilda (Melbourne) at 4am with 400-500 other people. The atmosphere was absolutely fantastic. People were standing up, cheering, waving flags (no firecrackers or flares, at least). I'd definitely do it again. In fact, I did. I organised about six games to be shown live in the University cinema where I was working. Even though it wasn't brilliantly advertised, the cinema was pretty much full each time and people really enjoyed the group atmosphere and got into the swing of it.
Trust me, a sports telecast in a cinema is very different from seeing a normal film, at which people are expected to be quiet (unless it's a 1950s b-grade, I suppose). It's a lot more like being at a stadium than watching a television.
If I could go to a cinema on a Sunday night and see a live Formula One race (no waiting around for a delayed telecast), I'd be there every race.
I heard that your library burnt down and destroyed your only two books - and one was not even coloured in yet.
They've got the 3d part right but it's not 20th century sports we want to watch. It's 21st century video games. I would seriously love to go watch Counterstrike or Doom3 in a theater in 3d. The games don't have to be played live but if they wanted to go the extra mile, there's a lot of potential. For example, supply wireless controllers, create games that use them cleverly and the theater could turn into an amazing 3d interactive environment.
I've been a long-time proponent, that HD wasn't the next logical step in video, but stereo vision. Our eyes use 2D with lighting coming from different angles at two receptors to build three dimensional images using our mind. We don't truly see in 3D. Portble movie players like the video ipod will not take off with a 2" screen... but with a special pair of glasses that use a 1/4" lcd projection onto the lenses to create a 3D stereo effect with the device(s) connected via bluetooth broadcast... now we are taking advantage of technology. Super-low power consumption, 3d video, share the experience with your friends... it's how portable video was meant to be. Add a charging pad similar to many digital cameras for the glasses.. no wires.. you've got the ipod video killer. Now if only i could patent a stereo-video encoding format...
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
Mmmmm... Katerina Witt or Michelle Kwan in 3D on the big screen... I'd be a regular theater patron for that.
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A company I was contracting for flew me down to L.A. two summers ago to pick the minds of Hollywood 3-D talent before engaging in the production of a complex 3-D corporate production up here in Canada.
(The experts I talked to were mostly Canadians themselves. L.A. seems to have more Canadians than Canada.)
At any rate, that's when I heard all about James Cameron's new manga-derived massively budgeted 3-D feature ("Battle Angel", if memory serves), George Lucas' plans to 3-D invigoroate all six of his Star Wars picturers, and learned that Fox has been recording Superbowls and other big, big sporting events in 3-D for a couple of years now, in order to create a library of games for 3-D viewing.
The company I consulted had even developed a high-definition 3-D Steadicam-like unit, and I got to see the test footage they'd shot at a recent football match. The cameraman could literally wander right into the field, with somebody tapping his shoulder whenever he needed to get out of the way of play.
To repeat a 3-D cliche, IT WAS LIKE YOU WERE ACTUALLY THERE, ON THE FIELD.
I have no interest in sports but it was obvious that someone who was into sports would definitely think it was the coolest thing they'd ever seen.
I am from a small, grease-loving country in the north called Ca-na-da.
well. With sports isn't that the idea? It is truly awesome, you see everybody reaching from their seats to grab items that appear right in front of their eyes, but when the motion gets to fast then it gets blurry. It happens even at their newest 3D movie Mickey's PhilharMagic. All the parks have a 3D movie and I enjoy seeing them over and over because the effects are so awesome and the air conditioning is great!
I thought they needed special theaters to show these movies but the family just saw Chicken Little in 3D at a regular theater. It is impressive. The glasses are just polarized lenses at 90 degree offset.
I don't know if this is the system they are talking about here, but Disney is typically on the cutting edge of this stuff and they have been doing 3D for years. Kodak sponsors the exhibits.
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
2D screens also suffer from this problem, but to a lesser degree, because there is another layer of abstraction there. We aren't trying to trick ourselves into thinking it's real - we just go to watch a show. I'd prefer to spend more time looking at natural objects, anyway. Mmmmm. Boobies.
... and then they built the supercollider.
At the 3D attractions at Walt Disney World, like "Honey I Shrunk the Audience," and that Muppets one and the Bug's Life one and the other one with Donald Duck, there are smells put out and wind generated to enhance the experience, along with the occasional spray of water or cascade of bubbles. Maybe they should do that with the sporting events.
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
-Will they allow you to drink beer and eat wings? Probably not
-Will they let you pause the DVR so you can take a phone call or take a piss? Definitely not
-Will you be allowed to scream obscenities at the top of your lungs when you team screws up? Most likely not
Sports viewing in public belongs in Bars. A movie theater seems like a lousy place to watch a game.
Sound waves should be free!
Won't work. Geometric distortion is the fatal flaw in all screen-and-glasses systems. The geometry of the image only looks natural from a very small number of seats, and only if the camera is photographing with a "normal" focal-length lens. Under all other conditions, the 3D image has distorted geometry. Actually this is true even with flat images, but it is much more acceptable in those situations.
3D movies work for "fantasy" movies, where Cabinet-of-Dr-Caligari-like distortions don't affect (or even enhance) the viewing experience. They work for short novelty films and roller-coaster-like "This-Is-Cinerama"-type spectacles. But when you want a sustained, realistic impression of physical presence, the distortions much more serious.
Think of it this way. Can you enjoy sports in black-and-white? Yes. Can you enjoy sports in reasonably faithful color? Yes. Could you enjoy sports in psychedelic, distorted color? I doubt it, although such distortions might not matter in a comedy or a cartoon.
Why is this distortion inevitable? It's because in a live theatre every single eyeball gets a different view of the stage, one for every eyeball in the audience. Someone sitting front left sees a stereo pair, someone sitting rear right sees a stereo pair, but they are different stereo pairs. In a 3D movie, everyone sees the same pair of images. Put a 3D camera in a live theatre, then screen the results: the only person with an undistorted view is the person sitting in the same seat the camera was in when it shot the scene.
Another way to think of it. Suppose that in a 3D movie Ann Miller is twenty feet from the camera, and suppose she pitches a handkerchief directly toward the camera and it lands ten feet away. When the results are screened, whereever you are sitting you are going to see that handkerchief come straight toward you and land halfway between you and the screen. If you're sitting ten feet from the screen at the right, that handkerchief will come toward the right and land five feet away--and all the depth in the scene will be half as deep as it should be, and every cube in the scene will be a parallelopiped skrooged toward the right.
If you're sitting forty feet from the screen at the left, that handkerchief will come toward the left and land twenty feet away. And all the depth in the scene will be exaggerated, twice as deep as it should be. And everything that's square will turn into a rhombus, skrooged toward the left.
And it gets even worse if you add wide-angle and telephoto shots. Telephoto shots flatten depth; in a baseball game, the batter seems to be standing only ten feet from the pitcher. But it's not that obvious in a 2D image. In a 3D image, you will get the same effect and you won't be able to ignore it.
Do you think this sort of thing is likely to affect your enjoyment of a sports event, which consists (in part) of appreciating the precise geometry of the playing field and the skill of the players in judging distances? I do.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I don't know if your statement about not being marketable was just a quip or not, but it's completely wrong. 3D was a huge sensation in the 1950s, so it certainly can be marketable.
The problem nowadays is that 3D production suffers from several things:
Right now, 3D is relegated to crap movies or movies to kids. Look at the titles that have been produced in 3D in the past 20 years:
Friday the 13th, part 3 - Oh, yeah. Great family film.
Jaws 3 - A 3D turd.
Spy Kids - Cheesy kid flick
and a few others, primarily for kids.
I am not including 3D IMAX movies because those are not in the same realm as traditional theatrical movies, and IMAX movies are not available in every city or town like general cinemas are.
The second problem is that the 3D method that is most often used is red/blue anaglyph, which is known to cause headaches in many people and is not a very effective means on producing 3D, although the technology for red/blue has actually improved over the past 10 years.
The most effective methods are the original IMAX alternating LED glasses, but that technology is very expensive, or polarization where the glasses look like regular, clear glasses. Polarization is by far the most effective method and VERY cheap comparatively speaking. All that the theatres need is a special dual-lens adapter for the projector to project a regular frame and a polarized frame onto the same screen. (At least that's what the theatre that I once worked for used.)
What has been slowing 3D down is that it is not cheap to produce; however, with the advent of digital technology I find that this reason is growing to be more and more specious. When 3D was done on film, yes, you would need twice as much film, twice as much editing, and so forth. With digital technology, you need twice as many hard drive storage (if recorded that way) with a dual-lens camera. There are plenty of softare products out there to do red/blue, 3D conversion based on two separate images. Just apply that same technology to the frames of synchronized movie files instead of an individual picture to create a red/blue frame or to create a split frame to be used with polarizing projector lenses.
Going back to previously-made, 2D movies and converting them could probably be done with some inventive technologies, but still requires a great deal of manual work. A human will have to sit down, set the depth of field, isolate the various depths for each element in the scene, and so forth. It can be done, it's just immensely time consuming. I don't doubt that software can be written to do it, though, if it doesn't already exist. If Photoshop can isolate an section of a frame based on specified critera, like color, I'm sure that an algorithm could be written for the same thing in movies. If the isolated section gets bigger, bring the object closer, and so forth.
With today's technology, 3D movies would be *very* easy to do - much easier to do than ever before. Unfortunately, 3D has been unfairly relegated to cheesy kid flicks, pathetic "horror" flicks, or limited-interest movies for IMAX. But 3D could make a huge return if the movie makers really wanted it to.
That being said, I think that 3D sports is an excellent idea. The only drawbacks are that it's not in your own home and the extra costs. Otherwise, you've got a REALLY big screen, surround sound in most theatres, if the 3D is done properly you could have a better view of the game than the people in the stadium, you don't have to fight with stadium traffic, and you don't have to walk 1/2 mile to go to the bathroom.
The janitorial staff will deserve a huge raise, however.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Theaters should deal with the real problem. Which is that the film distributors, and film is what the theaters do, demand 90% of their box office receipts for the first two-three weeks of any new movie that shows in the theater. With this type of arrangement, there is no way in hell that any theater can make any money from showing films. Which, as mentioned eariler, is what they do. So there is all this desperate nonsense, er... explorations into alternative revenue sources like 3D sports and digital film image projection.
Problem is, these other things aren't revenue generators. Au Contraire, they are revenue burners because the theaters have to absorb the costs of this new presentation technology without any assurances that the public will be willing to pay more for film and video services that they already get from their 'home theaters'. In fact it is unlikely that the people who put up many thousands of dollars for 'home theaters' (which are just big screen televisions and loud stereos) can be brought back into the theaters by anything that the theaters offer because the people who bought the 'home theaters' don't have any money left.
So that just leaves the people who used to go to movies but don't anymore. And usually why they don't is because the films are either too expensive or too stupid. And the reason that the films are too expensive is because Hollywood has lost the ability to make high-quality reasonably priced entertainment products.
We are at the end of Hollywood cycle now; this one has been the 'BlockBuster' era that started in 1977 with the original Star Wars movie. So there is going to be a period of contraction in the industry and the same time that there will be bursts of huge amounts of money thrown at projects of truly dubious artistic and commercial merit. Huge projects with no realistic expectation generating any real profit [stuff like Peter Jackson's King Kong, Disney's Treasure Planet, and Oliver Stone's Alexander] will continue to pop out of Hollywood as the industry goes into its final crash-and-burn cycle.
This has all happened before. The most recent Hollywood down cycle started in the mid-1950s and lasted until the mid 1970s. The defining bomb movie of that era was Cleopatra(1964) staring Elizabeth Taylor, who was the Lindsay Lohan of the 1950's. Cleopatra cost about $500-$600 million in today's equivalent dollars and brought in about 1/10th of its cost in box office. Check it out on DVD or VHS if you want to get an idea of what kind of projects are being currently planned in Hollywood for the 2007-2009 season.
Anyway, the theaters are the only people who can stop the Hollywood descent in madness by demanding a much better return schedule on box office receipts and forcing Hollywood into developing higher quality, less-expensive product.
But the theaters are unlikely to take this opportunity because they are run by mediocre, narrow-minded, business and marketing majors who would be challenged should they ever have be called to operate anything as complex as a K-Mart Men's department. You know these guys; they're the ones with the white shirts, bad haircuts, and vaguely worried looks on their faces that you see when you stop at McDonald's for a MuffinBurger before going to work in the morning. These guys are not going to be generating solutions to Hollywood's basic problems.
I actually had the luxury to see some of the test footage Fox is working on in 3D on a highres projector. Trust me - you sitting up there in the nosebleed section are not seeing anything. You are basically on the field and sometimes you feel like you're gonna get tackled by one of the line backers - LOL. What can I say - you need to experience this to really form an opinion.