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Hot Or Not — 3D TV
Several sources have written to tell us that in terms of hype at this year's CES show, there is none bigger than that surrounding 3D TV. Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, and Toshiba all have their own flavors of hardware and ESPN announced a 3D sports channel, but Microsoft seems to be bucking the trend with their apparent lack of 3D interest surrounding the Xbox product. "We're yet to see any major brand at CES pushing a 3D TV that doesn't require them. In most cases these aren't the basic Ray Ban style you might have worn to watch Avatar. In many cases they'll actually require power. For example, Sony's 3D TVs use a 'frame sequential' display method, which involves active-shutter glasses that turn on and off in sync with the images. Some TVs come with the glasses and have the transmitter built in, but again, in some cases you'll need to buy the transmitter and glasses separately."
don't you know why this is done? TV manufacturers are running out of ways for being able to insulate the price barrier.
This has nothing to do with 3d being good or bad, it has to do with how every manufacturer has an agreement on artificially insulating price with a new technology. Same was done with flat panel, then LCD, then high def, then hz wars(120! 240!).
All marginal technologies that should normal drive the price down. Instead they'll be able to have 52" TV's be in the many thousands of dollars amount for years to come due to raising it back up for 3d.
Think of it like apple's feature creep, it's the same idea and same reasons, to force price to an arbitrary amount before it eats into their margins.
Who wants to wear an extra pair of glasses just to watch TV?
This whole 3D video thing smacks of a industry money grab disguised as a fad...
Exec: "Well everyone and their gramma has a 'flatscreen' jumbotron at home, what do we do now?"
R&D: "Gentlemen, we've reached the limits of this plane of entertainment, we must go to the next dimension"
*dramatic music*
crazy dynamite monkey
We finally get a display technology with zero flicker, the LCD, and the 3D crowd has to put it back. Yuck.
You just explained why colour TV and colour movies are useless. Watch a black and white and within a couple minutes you'll forget you're watching black and white.
The short answer is "because we can". It won't be too long before 3D technology brings prices down so that it's as cheap as 2D is now. Just like when colour first came out, people were initially using it for whiz-bang "look what we can do" effect and it took a few years before it just became nothing special. So it will go with 3D.
30 years ago, you could hardly buy a television that wasn't a CRT, and if you wanted something over 30", you had to be very prepared to bust out your wallet. Today, a 30" LCD costs $750 (or whatever, I'm probably within $250, which is fine when you consider that the 30 year old television probably cost $2,500, and those numbers don't bother to account for inflation).
You are delusional.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.