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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!'"
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.
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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........
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.
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.
Just don't buy a 3D TV. The manufacturers will get the hint.
If Sony can pour millions into telling everyone that 3D is the bee's knees then I can take 2 minutes to voice my opinion that no, it ain't.
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 :)
Color TV had an obvious and significant benefit and didn't require you to wear silly glasses all the time. 3D is a gimmick that only works well in a limited amount of footage that I've seen, and does require you to wear silly glasses all the time.
Until you can make 3D TVs which don't require glasses and do allow you to show objects which go outside the screen, it will always be a gimmick.
Because if current 3D technology didn't get bashed about like the piece of excrement that it is, it would become standard technology. Companies will sell the masses polished turds all day, telling them it's the latest and greatest, and unless people challenge their bullshit, they'll phase out the old tech and you will have to buy the new tech because there's nothing else to buy. Even if you just use the 2D portion, that's that much more you have to spend on a TV and that much more you have to spend on 3D only movies that will look asstastic in 2D. 3D will be great when it's ready, but lots of people seem to agree it's not and I for one don't think that it will be for another decade.
Also, it takes a lot of people screaming DO NOT WANT to get manufacturer's attentions.
I've got bad news for you... most of us don't care at all, and will take immediate delivery over resolution any day.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
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.
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.
1920x1080p Blu-Ray Discs are incredible. I would never want to watch 720x486 NTSC SD interlaced footage EVER again. I work in post production/special fx, so i'm a videophile.
That's one of the troubles with the world of today. Some people get their kicks just from the resolution of the image. Go to any TV-electronics parlor. People will be excited about the crisp picture, the brilliant colours. Whenever I go there, I am infinitely bored with the crappy movies. And then I go home, and watch 720x486 NTSC SD interlaced with an enormous pleasure; Bunuel, Hitchcock, Marx Brothers. Even Kubrick's 2001 is great fun, in PAL. Murnau's Nosferatu (I guess, not more than 300x200 effective resolution) sends more shivers down my spine than Kinski's remake, even if it were in 1080p.
Because it is the art; not the resolution that counts.
YMMV, though.
Of course you are right if you take my words literally, and to that extent.
However, if you care to infer the message, it is about the focus with which movies are shot. There is only that much of funding, and in these days, I'm afraid, the average investor is more concerned about resolution and brilliance (of the shots), than in the artistic quality of the undertaking. And all this 'over-technisised' appreciation of the audience will actually lead to movies being shunned because of a perceived lower technical quality, despite of potentially higher artistic quality.
I personally have overheard people who refuse to buy any non-BlueRay movie, because "Blue Ray is the future". Content seems to disappear behind technicalities, including for the consumer.
And if you please read the message of the OP, I would never want to watch 720x486 NTSC SD interlaced footage EVER again., you might understand my urge to point out what a nonsense this implies. And that one was modded +5, Informative. I was only trying to say, that my primary argument for selecting a movie is its artistic content; not its resolution.
Direct streaming is death for film ownership.
Why would anyone want Blu-Ray to die? I can understand the DRM concerns, but if Direct streaming takes over, you will have lost the right to own a copy.
The worst part of direct streaming, as it is now, and on fios (I'm a very early FIOS subscriber)... is that HD streamed content is heavily compressed when compared to Blu-ray video streams.
By heavily compressed, i mean that fast motion breaks down into compression artifacts. Resolution and temporal quality is lost by overly compressing the footage to fit within the bandwidth allocated for streaming. Blu-Rays all stand out as far better quality when compared.
Just turn on HBO. many of their films are overly compressed in HD. Put on discovery channel's how its made... and watch jelly beans racing across the screen by the millions in a factory and you will see the break down of resolution and temporal compression. The jelly beans will become pixelated as they move fast. The video compression blocks become obvious, because the bit rate is too low.
Now where this lowering of bitrate takes place is another issue. On TV, it can be compressed THREE TIMES before it gets to you. First the production company delivers the TV show to the TV channel, this is compressed, usually a very nice quality version (if they know what they're doing)... Then the TV network sends out their feed to cable providers... and that feed may be recompressed to fit their bandwidth. When the cable / Sat TV providers get it, they then recompress the video again to fit their band width allocation needs. Often the lessor channels get more compressed than others, but overall you can see compression very clear from program to program. Direct TV is notorious for having terrible compression even on their SD content. So much that even negated the entire idea of a digital signal.
So a disc based delivery format is still higher quality because the only bandwidth they have to wory about is disc space. They arent trying to squeeze 500 other channels of video along side your movie... Which is what happens on cable/sat and the net.
I can see how DRM is a concern... but again... digital delivery isnt going to get any friendlier in terms of ownership rights. But atleast you'll have a high resolution, high bitrate version on a disc... which you can easily remove the DRM if you so choose and store on a media server at home.
Digital delivery will always side with bandwidth over quality.... and control over freedom. A Blu-Ray disc with all its DRM, provides more freedom than any digital delivery. They want full control over your media.... So what do you think will happen when you no longer have a high quality version of the media in your possession?
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.