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The Joke Known As 3D TV
harrymcc writes "I'm at IFA in Berlin — Europe's equivalent of the Consumer Electronics Show — and the massive halls are dominated by 3D TVs made by everyone from Sony, Samsung, and Panasonic to companies you've never heard of. The manufacturers seem pretty excited, but 3D has so many downsides — most of all the lousy image quality and unimpressive dimensionality effect — that I can't imagine consumers are going to go for this. 'As a medium, 3D remains remarkably self-trivializing. Virtually nobody who works with it can resist thrusting stuff at the camera, just to make clear to viewers that they’re experiencing the miracle of the third dimension. When Lang Lang banged away at his piano during Sony’s event, a cameraman zoomed in and out on the musical instrument for no apparent reason, and one of the company’s representatives kept robotically shoving his hands forward. Hey, it’s 3D — watch this!'"
I was in Fry's Electronics a few weeks ago, and they had a 3D TV demo set up. I tried it, and was blown away by how bad the quality was. It flickered, gave me a headache, and didn't have much of a 3D effect at all. I assumed that they guys at Fry's didn't know what they were doing and had set it up wrong, but from this article it sounds like they might have.
Even if they can tell, obviously, that these 1st-gen 3DTVs are a bust, they can't afford to risk missing out on carving out market share right now. Now is the time to make their brand synonymous with 3D TV. The trick will be avoiding being the brand associated with the failings of the first generation.
3D TV reminds me of BluRay or HDTV. They're all marketed as the next big thing but all they do is make
it a bit prettier. What about spending more money on making it a better story? Making it prettier does
not make it better, it makes it prettier. Its only a distraction from the plot not an enhancement
and its only the stupid who fall for it but then they are just as likely to be impressed by a piece of
shiny foil.
Its worse than PhysX for games. At least that could be used to enhance gameplay but all they seem to do is try to
make things look a bit prettier.
.
When you add another dimension to a playback medium, the first temptation is to exploit that new dimension to the point of exaggeration. That is where 3-D TV is now.
Give the creative types a few years and 3D TV will look very differently. Heck, it may even work without those awful glasses........
With the prices dropping on HD TV's, they need to find something with a high markup that the chumps^H^H^H^H^H^H videophiles will buy. There are only so many $500 ethernet cables you can sell.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
3DTV itself, or rather stereoscopic display technology, is perfectly fine. The problem lies in pants-on-head-retard directors who wouldn't know convergence depth interocular distance from their own anus. Creating stereoscopic video that doesn't cause headaches is HARD. You can;t justtape two cameras together and carry on as usual, and you sure as hell can't expect a 2D movie retrofitted to 3D to look even half decent.
Imagine if colour TV had started of with everything in bright block primary colours only.
I agree. I think we are looking at a Laser Disk or BetaMax situation here. Either it's going to establish an under-served dedicated niche market that will be viewed in the future as cutting edge pioneering technology, or it's going to establish an under-served dedicated niche market that is going become a laughing stock despite being cutting edge pioneering technology. Either way, this generation of 3D is never going to go mainstream.
+0 Meh
When color TVs became affordable for the consumer market and television programs started broadcasting in color the amount of garish costumes and set designs and other "look ma, its in color" gaucherie was lampooned mercilessly. The technology was refined and eventually turned out alright, even though it went through a stage at the advent of color when it verged on the psychedelic.
Discounting 3D at this stage of the technology is a patently absurd prognostication given the history of the TV.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Thrusting is right. ( Though I usually refer to 3-D as "throwing shit at your face")
You can spot a commercial for almost every 3-D movie right away, even watching in 2D with no foreknowledge. You'll see spears, birds, balls anything that moves rapidly moving towards you, stopping just short of hitting the screen.
As with B&W movies, or even silent films, that survive and entertain today, it's about the content, not the technology. New features can possibly enhance the experience, but a crap show is a crap show, regardless if it's in HD, surround sound and 3-D.
Absolutely amazing. The amount of effort that people are putting out in order to bash a completely optional technology is staggering. No one is being forced to watch anything in 3D; no one is being forced to purchase 3D technology. Yet, so many people do anything they can to degrade a technology that they're not required to use with phrases like "goofy glasses" and "gimmick". Now "joke" can be added to that list. Might as well start calling the upsizing of fast-food value meals a "joke" and a "gimmick" considering that they're available, they're more expensive, and you're under no obligation to purchase those - just like 3D TV. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that the efforts of those who looks to denigrate this technology, which in its current form is clearly in its infancy, amount to nothing more than trolling.
If you don't want it, then DON'T BUY IT! Why is this so difficult for these anti-3D trolls to undertstand?
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
The trick will be avoiding being the brand associated with the failings of the first generation.
So there's going to be a generation of 3DTV which doesn't suck?
Yes there are crowds other than than sports fanatics that are actually to spend time glued to the tv for hours on end wearing these glasses. But I think the time when this is status quo, at least in the US, is long past.
Many would say that the going to movies is in decline because TV is catching up to major budget movie quality and because the experience is not what it used to be. I would say the reason for this is that people are less willing to sit idly for an hour or so and passively consume entertainment. The 3D tv is part of that passive consumption, and if we won't do it theaters, why would we do it at home, where are not prohibited for texting on our phones or loading up a video game on our portable player, simply because so relic for the 20th century thinks it is rude.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I love 3 Dimensional TV done well. We have two eyes and see in 3D in the real world ... without having things shoved in our faces. Calm down content producers ... we get the point. 3DTV is here to stay - so start doing it right ...
Film like its a window into the world your watching - not like its a threshold for all sorts of stuff to poke out of.
Regardless of bells and whistles technique can still be refined.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Just don't buy a 3D TV. The manufacturers will get the hint.
I'm at the Premium Buyer's Exhibition in New York — the 1950's equivalent of the Consumer Electronics Show — and the massive halls are dominated by color TVs made by everyone from RCA to GE and Honeywell to companies you've never heard of. The manufacturers seem pretty excited, but color has so many downsides — most of all the lousy image quality and unimpressive color effect — that I can't imagine consumers are going to go for this. 'As a medium, color remains remarkably self-trivializing. Virtually nobody who works with it can resist flaunting garish stuff at the camera, just to make clear to viewers that they’re experiencing the miracle of color. When Elvis banged away at his piano during RCA’s event, a cameraman zoomed in and out on his ridiculous shoes for no apparent reason, and one of the company’s representatives kept robotically flicking his tie forward. Hey, it’s color — watch this!
bite my glorious golden ass.
We're in the "blue LED phase" of 3D right now, where everyone is using it just because it's new. Once the novelty wears off it will start to be used more sensibly. Although I'd argue that we still haven't reached that point with blue LEDs either :)
Let's hear lots of comments by people who haven't seen 3D TV. And then let's have poorly-woorded descriptions of a visual medium than can only really be appreciated by experiencing it.
This is the Internet at it's most Internet-like.
"Clearly, 3D TV sucks because it's expensive and I haven't purchased one yet. If I decide to buy one, it is because it has improved and no longer sucks."
New technologies are -always- annoying to show that they can do it. Stereo audio is one main point. Listen to recordings from when stereo was just coming out and you will hear sound shift from left to right over and over again just so they can say they did it. Look at some of the programs when color TV first came out, they used hideous color schemes to show that you could have color. Look at the the early Nintendo DS games which were all "draw something with the stylus" games before they started to get better. Etc.
.gif images -everywhere- on the web in the 90s?). 3-D is the same way, it will be annoying at first but when the technology improves and directors make things work, things get a lot better.
Early "new" technologies show the worst at the beginning (anyone else remember the age of animated
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
3D has been around since at least the 70s or 80s IIRC. If not earlier. It's just a bit more cost effective to produce. Although not much. They've had plenty of time to try and learn to use it sensibly. The trouble is that 3D adds little to no value at all to the movie to begin with (aside from the fact that it's actually bad for your brains (esp. children's brains) when it comes to processing depth in the real world.
They've been putting 3D in crappy B movies since the 80s. They just picked the 'trend' back up like all trends do.
We saw the same discussion here a few years ago with HD TVs. "Nobody cares about HD gaming". "Nobody can even see a difference". "Nobody will buy a $4000 TV".
This is a technology site. It really surprises me people can't see how this is going to go.
OK: first, likely there will be a successor technology that delivers 3d without glasses - and probably not that far off. But even if there isn't, what do you need to implement 3d as it is now? A fast enough refresh rate and shutter glasses. Eventually, that refresh rate will just be standard. Why wouldn't it be? Again, think back to HD. Yeah it was expensive once. Now it's just standard, whether people need or really want it or not. And shutter glasses. I predict these will be under $20 within 3 years - there's no tech in there that necessitates an expensive product. So 3d will essentially be free on a new TV.
And really, 3d is pretty good sometimes. Ever play a good racing game in 3d? It's way better - way more sense of speed. Did you see Avatar? Up? How to Train Your Dragon? Despite being essentially first generation titles, they were all great - and all better because of 3d. Content will just get better, and eventually 2d TV will start to look like it's missing something. Now sure lots of content won't benefit much - but that's the same with HD. Or color.
All of this is obvious.
The only reasons I can see behind the doomsaying are sour grapes (I don't want to buy a new TV), elitism (I enjoy films at a deeper level than visual gimmickry), or just plain lack of imagination. I want to go back sometime and dredge up some anti-HD posts... but it'd be easier to just do a text replace on this thread.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
The "edge problem" isn't much of a problem.
Instead of cropping both images to a 2D rectangle (the screen) you crop them both to a 3D pyramid(ish), so both eyes stop seeing things at the same time. Because of the parallax issue (or as you call it, "sweet spot problem"), cropping to a single pyramid-like shape (precisely, the intersection of the two pyramids based on the screen with vertices at each of the viewer's eyes) will eliminate this problem for viewers anywhere -- the cropping pyramid skews and scales to match each viewer's location. In fact, while it's technically less natural, extending the same cropping volume "into the screen" is also possible, and I suspect would further reduce optical confusion.
And while the skewing effect from off-axis viewing is plainly an issue, I think lens issues (and reasonable distance variations on-axis) are practically non-issues -- after all binoculars wreak havoc with focal length, but they work out ok.
It's not new. It's over 50 years old.
StereoScopic 3d is way over 50 years old, but the tools to create compelling experiences + the market demand is brand-spanking in your face new.
However, I'd argue that 3D movies have already gotten past the blue LED phase. Certainly Cameron's Avatar was a highly engrossing (both to the viewer and the bottom line) film even without the 3D, and without throwing somebody's yo-yo in your face ...
I've been telling people that Cameron got Avatar "right" in terms of 3D exactly for this reason. There is such a stark contrast between it and other 3D movies in that there were only a couple scenes where it was clear they were showing off the 3D. Even those had reasons where the scene kind of made sense (like refocusing on near/far during the diary videos). I think Avatar will be a real benchmark in 3D strictly because it shows you can do well with 3D without being an eye-poker movie. It will be interesting to see how many other directors learn from Cameron's willingness to try to do it right.
In theory you may be correct, but in reality 3D TV has some major technological hurdles to overcome before it becomes practical. Stereo sound, color vision, and high definition were incremental improvements that didn't change the fundamental nature of television; none of them faced the real technical challenges that 3D TV does.
I'd throw all my mod points at you, if I had or could. Already the next commenter knows close to nothing about stereoscopy, but argues as if he did. You are right from a number of viewpoints (pun!, héhé):
1. At real 3D, when you move your head laterally, you can 'circle' around an object.
2. At real 3D, when you move your head laterally, objects hidden behind other objects become visible.
3. [You didn't mention this one:] Depth perception of the human eyes is done by a combination of biological effects:
- convergence of the eyeballs (like when you watch your finger and bring it closer to your own face, the eyes turn 'inward'
- adaptation of the lenses for a specific distance
The so-called '3D' that can be achieved by two cameras only fulfills one of these features: convergence of the eyeballs (by introducing a lateral offset of the two images on the projection screen).
This is why this so-called '3D' gives you some '3D-feeling', but mostly headaches; as the "3D-detection algorithm" in your brain cannot accommodate the incoming information properly; it defeats and contradicts what it has learned throughout your lifespan.
Keep on truckin', tin-foil-hatter. I'd bet money that in ten years you'd be embarrassed you ever posted this. I know DRM just busts your nuts, but it won't eat the media industry alive to the point of making any kind of video obscenely expensive to watch, no corp is stupid enough to pull that kind of move. They will continue to make it hard for people to make illegal copies of copyrighted material, but there is zero chance the home video market will be shut down this half the century, and even if it did, it sure as shit wouldn't be over Montgomery Burns style scheming.
I will be modded down for this because Slashdotters like to tell each other that they're oppressed and marginalized revolutionaries.
If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention.
If they can give a 3D experience without the glasses, I think a lot of 3D TV complaints would fall away, especially as content creators stopped treating it as a gimmick and more as the status quo. But until the shutter glasses are gone, I don't think it matters *how* cheap the glasses and TVs get, I just don't see it gaining much ground. The glasses just cause too many issues on their own. The easiest to point out, and the most difficult to hand-wave away is: what if I have a large group of people over to watch a movie, and I don't have enough glasses to go around? I'm a bachelor, so I really only need one pair of glasses. Should I really need to buy three, four, or more pairs to have hanging around for bad movie night? And when they're not being used, they're taking up more space, and can get lost or damaged without much notice. Oh joy. Then I have to hope that the battery doesn't die since I didn't charge the glasses since the last time they were used, because my friend just tossed them where I didn't notice. Then there's every other issue with the glasses that regularly comes up, which can probably be found elsewhere in the thread.
Remember, the public, above all else, wants convenience. That's why automatic transmissions became popular while they were still less efficient than manuals, why CDs were more popular than cassettes, why you can sell a person a $120 package to set up their new laptop that consists solely of running windows update and burning recovery CDs for them, why three-colour ink tanks in printers persist, and why HDTV took off once you could sell them the "complete" HD experience of the TV, the Blu-Ray player, and the High-Def cable package all at once.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
It will be interesting to see how many other directors learn from Cameron's willingness to try to do it right.
Oh, I suspect they will. Right now they're still playing on the novelty aspect of 3D motion pictures (even though they've been around, in one form or another, for decades.)
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
"counting how many times Cameron ripped off his VASTLY superior prior movie, Aliens."
Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver in a skimpy tank top
Alien Sigourney Weaver
Alien Sigourney Weaver in a skimpy tank top
On a planet they have no fucking business being on
Looking for OMFGT3HULTIMATE *SOMETHING*
I stopped watching. I grabbed Aliens and did a thorough 5x5 pipeline cleansing of my brain.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I'll probably catch hell for this, but here it goes:
When USB actually took off (it had been around a couple of years, but there were not really any standard drivers for it), was when the first iMac came out, and you HAD to use USB. Especially to connect a 3.5" disk drive that did not come on the computer. I remember all the comments about how stupid Apple was to not include a 3.5" drive, and how stupid it was to ditch serial ports (the old type), but Apple did it anyway. Within less than a year, USB was everywhere.
First, I don't recall ever thinking HD was stupid, nor do I recall a huge Slashdot backlash against HD. And as someone who's been playing PC games for a very long time, I can say that HD gaming is very important; however, five years ago I did think that developing a videogame console to connect to televisions and produce HD content was economically questionable.
Five years later, with the HDTV penetration of US households creeping up from 1/3, and Nintendo the hands-down winner of the last console wars, it turns out that, indeed, "Not enough people cared about HD gaming" to justify the added hardware costs. Now, of course it's a different story.
Second, will people stop calling Avatar "First-generation 3D Technology?" It's absolutely idiotic, akin to calling the 787 "First-generation Jet Transport Technology", only stereoscopic viewing technology has been around for longer than airplanes have; stereoscopic movies have been around in different iterations for at least sixty years (and some would say over eighty). Avatar uses some of the better theater technology available and is very well shot and rendered, but it is not a "new" technology; just a vastly better implementation than before.
Third, the fact that it's been around so long and still has huge problems should be a warning sign: there's some basic physics and cognitive science that is standing in the way of 3D television being comfortable or viable in the long term. Let's take the Avatar standard: the dream of 3DTV makers is to produce an Avatar-like experience in the home. Something on the order of 10% of the population is unable to watch Avatar in 3D because of nausea, and at least 5% has conditions that make them unable to see the effect. The rest of us emerged from the theater groggy.
It's a huge exercise on the brain, and people don't watch TV to exercise their brains.
So no, 3DTV needs some major technological breakthrough in order to work.
I don't know where you're getting the idea it's cheaper to shoot on film than digital, but in the vast majority of cases it's much, *much*, cheaper to shoot digitally than on film.
Film is costly for several reasons, including having a finite supply of it (when shooting a film you tend to shoot between 3-4x more footage than you end up using. On digital it's much closer to 15-20x more footage), having to scan it to work on it digitally in post production (optical effects and tints being very rare today), and increasingly in today's world, a lack of people trained to handle it.
Not to mention the fact that stock itself is very expensive, and for digital you're either shooting on magnetic media or SSD.
Finally, your assertion that "depth is a known problem with filming" is nonsense. You may be used to seeing films with a shallow field, but it's entirely possible to shoot films without any depth of field at all. There was a movment in the 1930s to this effect - some really classic films such as 'The Rules of the Game' are shot almost entirely in 'deep focus', where there effectively is no depth of field, and everything is in sharp clarity.