Huge Shocker — 3D TVs Not Selling

itwbennett writes "It comes as no surprise to the vast majority of us who haven't rushed out to buy a 3D TV, but according to a DisplaySearch report consumers aren't doing their part to make 2010 the year of 3D TV, says blogger Peter Smith. And the stats are even worse than Smith imagined they'd be: 'DisplaySearch estimates that 3.2 million 3D TVs will be shipped in 2010. Note, that's shipped, not sold. 3.2 million equates to 2% of all flat panel displays shipped (as far as I can ascertain, that's worldwide shipments). So yeah, there are not many 3D TVs being shipped this year. But wait, that's not the end of the bad news. In Western Europe (the only region where they offered this data point) sales of 3D glasses are less than 1 per 3D set sold. In other words, a lot of Western Europeans who buy a TV with 3D capability don't even bother to buy the glasses to use that feature.'"

Comments

I know why.. lack of standardization

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe it's because there's no 3d standard yet.
I know I'm holding off until I don't have to choose from eighteen different technologies ranging from shutter to active to glasses free to holding flash cards infront of my head.

Make a 'standardized' 3d format, and I'll dive in.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[WrongSizeGlass]

Actually, it's just how you look at the sales numbers. If you're wearing your 3-D glasses they look much better.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[delinear]

I doubt most buyers even understand the different formats, they probably just think 3D TV is all the same. No, it's more likely higher cost plus lack of a real need just yet that's behind this - sales of HDTV were similarly low when sets first started appearing on the consumer market, due to both the high cost and the lack of content. It's way too early to say 3D TV has failed as TFS seems to be suggesting - let's wait until 3D movies are widespread and prices of sets have dropped a little before making blanket statements (although from a geek perspective I'm totally with you - I wouldn't buy into 3D until I knew which format was going to win, I just don't think the average consumer thinks that way, which is why some people got burned by HD-DVD).

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[jra]

> But wait, that's not the end of the good news.

There. FTFY.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Scrameustache]

maybe it's because there's no 3d standard yet.

Maybe it's because its an expensive device that delivers a sub-par viewing experience in exchange for a gimmick that people are already fed up with.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Defenestrar]

Or perhaps because it's not really worth the sticker shock for all 4 movies out there you want to watch in 3D. Wait - let me correct that. Don't want to pay the sticker shock price for a 2D stereoscopic projection.

Heck - I'm not even willing to pay that percentage of my annual income for a regular HD TV. Then again, I have different hobbies and fairly limited free time, so I probably don't spend more than two hours a week in front of a TV. So my comments should be taken with a whole spoon of salt since this I'm not the targeted demographic.

Slightly off topic, but where do they get off calling something HD (both regular 2D and 2D stereo) that computer monitors in the early 90's were doing in a fraction of the physical viewing space?

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[AlecC]

I don't think they are saying that 3D TV has failed, merely that this is not "The year of 3D TV". Which doesn't surprise me. Leaving aside the format problem, which is serious, the consumer needs to have much more awareness of the products and much more available material in order to put out that amount of money. I think they are not totally stupid - they know that the home TV experience will not match the experience that the got watching big movies - not to mention that while some moves have looked brilliant in 3D, others have less satisfactory. It does not at all surprise me that consumers are playing wait-and-see.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[digitalunity]

You've got it all wrong.

HD isn't "High Definition", it's "Higher Definition". That is to say that it is higher definition than the really abysmal NTSC specification called out.

On another note, I just got rid of my old 21" Viewsonic CRT. I think it was close to 18 years old and still had higher resolution than my new widescreen LCD monitor.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[interval1066]

Or maybe its because when asked by their children to take them to see a 3d film in the theaters most adults, the ones with the money, release a groan of apathy and annoyance?

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[LordSnooty]

I'm holding off because I don't like the idea of wearing glasses just to watch the television. Also I cannot bear the micro-adjustments your eyes have to make for any significant length of time.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[mlts]

We will see a standardized format when we see a new version of HDCP and another DRM stack coming our way.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[EdZ]

As far as I know, there are only two methods of encoding 3D that are actually in use for consumer products (ignoring proprietary and bespoke systems, For That Way Madness Lies): page-flipped, and side-by-side. Page flipped is basically stored at twice the normal framerate, with one eye image then the other. Uses double the bandwidth/bitrate, but as it's storing two full frames there is no loss in quality. Side-by-side encodes the images side-by-side anamorphically in a regular frame. Easy to broadcase because it uses exactly the same bandwidth (and same broadcast equipment) as a 2D signal would, but with half the horizontal resolution (not too noticeable with stereo). You can probably guess that page-flipped is used for Blu-Ray,and side-by-side for broadcast.
Displaying 3D is not standardised (horizontal or circular polarisation, active shutter, funky-multi-layer-dichroic-anaglyph, etc), but this makes no difference whatsoever. There are multiple methods of displaying a HD image (LCD, plasma, CRT, DLP projection, etc), but thatdoesn;t mean HD isn't standardised.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Rasperin]

And have been fed up with since the mid 80's

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[mlush]

Actually, it's just how you look at the sales numbers. If you're wearing your 3-D glasses they look much better.

That only applies if the figures were made in 3D, if they were converted from 2D you may as well rub mud in your eyes.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Joce640k]

Don't forget the lack of 3D movies/programming available to the purchaser...basically you'd be buying it so your kids can watch cartoons in 3D - hardly a big incentive for the average gadget freak to buy one.

(and does anybody know what hours of watching 3D might do to young, unformed brains?)

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[sammyF70]

or worse, they take their kids to see a movie, which happens to be only running in 3D, and the kids just refuse to wear the glasses and have to watch 2 hours of blurriness, for which their parents paid premium prices.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Sulphur]

That only applies if the figures were made in 3D, if they were converted from 2D you may as well rub mud in your eyes.

Sheds some light on the expression "here's mud in your eye."

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Firethorn]

Displaying 3D is not standardised (horizontal or circular polarisation, active shutter, funky-multi-layer-dichroic-anaglyph, etc), but this makes no difference whatsoever.

Depending on the technology used, it DOES matter though. Why? Because with all the HD image techs you listed, nobody needs special glasses to see the image.

With most existing 3D techs, you need the glasses. What happens when you get friends over? When you break a set, or they just fail? Right now you can't just order generic glasses, your friends, assuming they have 3D, would likely have different 3D and would thus have different glasses.

They aren't even standardized as far as blink rate synchronization goes, so many glasses, even if the sets of different makers use the same basic tech, aren't inter-compatible.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Stupid McStupidson]

I can't look at the numbers. I'm at a friends house, and he only has one pair of glasses. He refused to buy a set for his family, since it would have cost him more than a new BluRay player and a half dozen movies.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Scrameustache]

They aren't even standardized as far as blink rate synchronization goes, so many glasses, even if the sets of different makers use the same basic tech, aren't inter-compatible.

Everyone wants THEIR patent portfolio to be the standard, so it's a fight.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I must admit I didn't know there were different 3D formats until now when you just told me and I'm usually "in the know" to some extent. I was in the market for a new TV just a few months ago when 3D TV's were just hitting the shelves, but I opted not to buy one because of the stupid glasses you have to wear, I ALSO opted not to buy a LED because, while they're very thin the update frequency was lacking compared to good LCD's (some months ago) and the built-in sound system sucked something awful, not to mention there were reports of bleeding/clouding or whatever. The thing is, everyone who was in the marked for a shiny new TV has already bought one. First came the plasma's, then came the LCD's, then came LED's and now 3D?! Come on! As long as it's flat and the picture is good then who cares? There are excellent LCD's being sold now very cheap, so why pay three times as much to get 3D which will not only make you look silly watching it but also give you a headache after a while. I suspected the novelty of 3D also wears off pretty quickly so I decided not to even bother considering one when I made my purchase.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[adisakp]

maybe it's because there's no 3d standard yet. I know I'm holding off until I don't have to choose from eighteen different technologies ranging from shutter to active to glasses free to holding flash cards infront of my head.

Make a 'standardized' 3d format, and I'll dive in.

There's a standard format for connectivity and media - HDMI 1.4a, 3D BluRay - there are also 3D file formats for digital files.

There are just multiple ways to implement the physical display and these do use different technology (including glasses). So if you buy one brand of TV you will have to buy glasses that match that TV (if glasses are required).

But the consumer commercially available 3D digital videos and media as well as the hardware to play the media are already standardized all the way out to the final display technology. There isn't going to be a format war on 3D. The content you buy today will work on all the devices sold today.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps because it's not really worth the sticker shock for all 4 movies out there you want to watch in 3D.

4 movies? That's nice. A friend of mine went to a place where they sold 3D TVs. They weren't selling any 3D movies. Not a single one. The next shop had one and said "we'll have two more by Christmas".
BluRays and HD-DVDs had a slow start but at least you knew that you could actually buy movies, not just the player.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[hairyfeet]

You jest but I'd say those stupid glasses are part of the reason stereovision TV (real 3D you can walk around, this is stereovision) will bomb hard. The glasses ARE expensive, which means to have enough so friends and family can all watch will be $$$, they just aren't comfortable or easy to deal with if you wear glasses, and even though my vision is good I've found wearing those things more than an hour gives me a headaches, and from talking to friends I'm FAR from alone on that. Then you add to that the fact that even though we have had Stereovision since the 50s most directors just can't figure out what to do with it so you end up with movies on par with "Dr Tongue's 3D house of Pancakes" (Man I miss John Candy, he would have cranked up the funny with this crap) and you end up with an expensive solution to a problem nobody really has.

The problem is the TV industry hasn't accepted what the PC manufacturers are finding out the hard way: We passed "good enough" a long time back and many folks just ain't interested in the latest whizz bang. Hell we have had dual core for...what? 6 years or so now? yet the majority of machines I see cross my desk or are in people's homes are late P4 era, why? Because paired up with a 19-22in flat panel the stuff folks are doing with their PCs, watching videos, going on FB, surfing the web, etc, just ain't taxing even these 7+ year old machines. Hell I have a damned nice AMD Quad for gaming but I'm typing this on a circa 2003 AMD Sempron I use for a Nettop. For the above uses it is whisper quiet and ultra low power and even though I like the toys there just isn't anything I do with it that even needs dual cores. Most of the homes I go into doing service calls have a nice 32-46in TV and you know what? They are happy with it. They see NO reason to change it, it works, they can plug all their consoles and gadgets into it, and everyone can pile around WITHOUT needing a bunch of expensive glasses just to watch a movie or the game.

I think Stereovision TV is gonna bomb and bomb hard, simply because it is too expensive and too much hassle for too little. I've asked customers thinking about getting a new set about Stereovision and down almost to the last one they'd rather have a bigger cheap screen than a Stereovision smaller one. Hell even the gamer customers I talked to just didn't seem that fired up by Stereovision, and gamers are usually first adopters. I'd say it'll probably bombs hard.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[mdielmann]

Next, you'll be complaining that movie theatres should do more to cater to blind people. If a parent pays more than once (and you can usually get a refund if you leave within 30 minutes of the movie starting) for their kids to not watch the show with the required glasses, they have only themselves to blame.
Personally, I like 3D (with polarized glasses), and preferentially watch movies in that format. My kids do, too, and have no trouble wearing the glasses. If I have the option of seeing a drama in 3D, I'll skip it, because there's nothing to be gained there. Of course, there's nothing to be gained watching a drama on a 30-foot screen vs. watching it at home, either, and I will probably wait for the DVD.
I'm sure there were people who complained about the "talkies" when they came out, and those who thought that color movies ruined the ambiance when they came out, and they had some reason to. A lot of the initial movies with new features over-emphasized those new features, rather than telling a story. I expect nothing less from 3D. I'd also be unsurprised if, in 20 years, people raised their eyebrows if someone said they were only releasing a movie in 2D, just like you would now if someone released a movie in black-and-white.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[spitzak]

I would think another advantage of side-by-side is that existing video compression would work. Page flipped means that parts of the image are, in effect, vibrating at the frame rate, with the annoyance that any compression must not remove or distort this vibration. Surely the page-flipped versions must also have some alteration of how the video is compressed as well?

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Devout_IPUite]

A year ago I was planning on buying a 3D TV this summer. What happened? I looked before I jumped and decided I would wait until the glasses were all inter compatible. I told Sony, Samsung, and Panasonic that until their TVs worked with Toshiba glasses, I would wait to buy. I'm sure some other people told them too.

Myself as a 3D enthusiast, and a prime early adopter, I feel that Sony failed to sell me on a technology that I was really looking forward too. And the truth is that you need early adopters for this kind of technology to ever take off.

I hope the TV companies get their act together and get a pan-company team of engineers together to create and implement a standard. If they don't do it next year, and Hollywood continues to produce terrible 2D->3D abominations, the 3D momentum is likely to fall below sustainable levels.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[An ominous Cow art]

"The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from."

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Devout_IPUite]

Wrong, the standards on the glasses make all the difference. I'm not willing to buy a 3D TV until my glasses work on my friend's TV set without worrying about who bought which brand. That's 100% of the reason I didn't buy a 3D TV this summer.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[EdZ]

There is no vibration. Both images are loaded into the buffer and displayed at the frame rate. There is no alteration to how the video is compressed other than encoding at twice the freamrate (no new encoding software, you just need extra flags when muxing). For example: you have 24fps 1080p 3D video. It is stored at 48 full frames per second, and played back at 24 stereo frames per second (i.e. 24 pairs of full frames), with one full frame per eye.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[EdZ]

That's a hardware implementation issue, nothing to do with the encoding or transmission standard. Your Panasonic TV remote won't control your Sony TV, and vice versa. Yes, it sucks that there isn't a single standardised IR or RF protocol for synchronising shutterglasses. I'm sure it won't be long before universal glasses are sold similar to universal remotes.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Gilmoure]

Yup, haven't even moved from the 27" 720P tv we picked up back in '05. Maybe next year, we'll move up to a 42" 1080p next year but that depends on a promotion coming through (lousy 1% yearly raise for being 'star performer' sucks ass). Don't see any real reason to pull cash from savings at this point.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Dogtanian]

You missed the point he was making. You have to wear annoying glasses to watch 3D- you don't have to do anything extra to enjoy the benefits of sound or of colour, so the two situations aren't comparable.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[fizzup]

All good points for why stereovision sucks, but you missed one. You can't lie down on your side and watch television. Even if you lean to one side a bit, that's bound to give you a headache.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Maxo-Texas]

That issue (losing resolution) is starting to seriously bug me.

Looks like I may have to drop about $1100 to get the resolution I want.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Mister Whirly]

Something tells me "The Year of 3D TV" will be the same year as "The Year of Linux on Desktops". Both will occur after Duke Nukem Forever is released.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Mister Whirly]

Ever since Jaws 3 in 3D and Friday the 13th in 3D. If you want to see 3D used as purely a gimmick, watch either of those movies.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[mcgrew]

I think Stereovision TV is gonna bomb and bomb hard

If you look at stereovision movies, history agrees with you. 3D is a fad that repeats every few decades. It's only new to the young.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[camperslo]

We're ready for you to be an early adopter!

It's really quite simple. Skip the glasses and get our new contact lenses. Depending on the design, they might need alignment pegs, but drilling the holes for that won't take long at all. That approach has the added advantage of working as you view billboards when driving, and for ads running on LCD treated windows everywhere.
(Like many PCs, many new cars include adware driven windows, perhaps your eyes haven't yet been updated to see it.

To help with interoperability, IR-visible bar code has been added to your forehead. That will supplement the interface with the RFID/GPS cookie-cache chip that was in your last flu shot. Display hardware senses all viewers and can output a signal compatible with both shutter and polarization based stream separators, but shutter users do get a slight decrease in brightness due to the lower duty-cycle. As an added convenience, your cable box can now automatically charge you for each person in the room.

Thanks to the millimeter microwaves from our low-altitude satellites we'll know when you got up to go to the fridge, so don't worry about missing any ads. They've been buffered and will be inserted later (some through program time-compression, others as low duty cycle bursts during programming for best subliminal retention.

Our products really are tuned to you. Don't worry about the cost. They'll soon be free (actually you'll have to pay not to use them!)

So sit back and enjoy our latest spring-break show with the overly drunk kids puking in 3D. Thanks to our new .15 micron selenium-methane chip technology, even the scent is included.
It's so real, you'll feel like joining in! The pegs on your contact lenses double as oxytocin injector ports to insure that your mood is in compliance with entertainment ministry specifications.

Don't worry about violent 3D games or movies causing you to act out in unacceptable ways. When you reach a certain rage threshold, you're automatically enlisted in the armed forces. Thanks for doing your part.

We've managed to plug the organic hole. You will be injected with substances to insure that you have no unauthorized copies of flagged material in your brain later, but you'll remember how great it was and want to see it again and again!

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[digitalunity]

I bought a new monitor for better contrast and energy savings. I think the viewsonic used like 300 watts or something and weighed 70 pounds. It got so warm my cat would sleep on it in the winter.

I miss the high resolution, but the LCD has excellent contrast and is very compact in comparison.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the main reason that 3D hasn't sold.....there isn't any content to purchase yet.

Hell.....3D HDTVs are very affordable (see Mitsubishi DLP line)......I have one with the 3DC-1000 3D Starter Kit.....

The problem is....THERE IS NO 3D CONTENT available to purchase or watch....yet.

Given that the PS3 supports 3D gaming and was just enabled to view 3D Blu-Ray Discs....you figure that there would be more 3D Blu-Ray discs on the market.

The content will come in time....so its stupid to say 3D is dead as it does enhance gaming and movies.

As every major movie coming out has a 3D conversion or is being made with 3D in mind........this seems like a no brainer.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[yuna49]

I doubt most buyers even understand the different formats, they probably just think 3D TV is all the same. No, it's more likely higher cost plus lack of a real need just yet that's behind this - sales of HDTV were similarly low when sets first started appearing on the consumer market, due to both the high cost and the lack of content.

I don't think the two are comparable at all. HDTV provided larger screens with better resolution without any change in how viewers relate to the television. 3D offers nothing like that.

3D makes some sense in theaters where a large screen makes the experience more "immersive." 3D in my living room would mean silly things like Brett Favre standing on my carpet to throw a pass to Randy Moss somewhere in the nether reaches of my TV.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[TheGeneration]

When I was a kid KTTV in LA broadcast the 1989 Rose Parade on New Years Day in 3D. All you needed was a cheap pair of glasses from 7-11 with one shaded lens (not colored.) They weren't electronic, they didn't have shutters, but the 3D worked. Whatever happened with that technology?

In fact I found it on youtube. Wish I still had the cheapo glasses haha.

Anyway, point is, it seems to me that if the affect can be produced using input rather than special TV/Players that studios interested in 3-D releases should just use that simplified distribution model. (ie, it is embedded into the movie, and the disc comes with a couple payers of cheap glasses.)

3dcompany.com had some info about the rose parade broadcast.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Scrameustache]

When I was a kid KTTV in LA broadcast the 1989 Rose Parade on New Years Day in 3D. All you needed was a cheap pair of glasses from 7-11 with one shaded lens (not colored.) They weren't electronic, they didn't have shutters, but the 3D worked. Whatever happened with that technology?

It went to Canada: Incorporating spectacular footage from Royal Review and through the magic of 3D you will be transported back in time and space to re-live the Coronation experience. You will see the Queen as the young, beautiful woman she was – so real and so close, it’s almost like being there.

As well as the spectacular 3D Coronation footage, our 3D camera crew was invited to film Her Majesty at a very exclusive garden party at Buckingham Palace. Our 3D cameras were also there with Her Majesty to capture the magical moments on the recent royal tour. We were there as she reviewed an international flotilla in Bedford Basin to commemorate the centennial of the Canadian Navy.

We were there on Parliament Hill for Canada Day celebrations. And we were there for the glamour and excitement of the running of the Queen’s Plate at Woodbine Racetrack - all in fabulous 3D.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[spitzak]

What I meant is that normal video compression relies on encoding differences in frames and throwing away differences that are considered invisible to the end user. They are not designed to correctly encode an image that is really two alternating images, where the objects are in slightly different positions in the alternating images.

So it would seem the actual video data stream is two interlaced video compressions, or a new type of compression with the ability to efficiently encode the differences between left and right images. There is certainly nothing wrong with this but I would think it would require modifications to hardware decoders, and therefore another reason for the side-by-side encoding is that existing hardware can be reused.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[WuphonsReach]

We passed "good enough" a long time back and many folks just ain't interested in the latest whizz bang. Hell we have had dual core for...what? 6 years or so now?

While multi-core was available back in '05 and '06 - it wasn't affordable until about mid-year in 2007. That's when the first AMD Athlon X2 CPUs dropped below $200. Once that happened, Intel was forced to hurry up their multi-core offerings and get the price below $200.

I remember it fairly well, because that was the kick-off point for a major round of PC upgrades at the office. We specifically delayed roll-out until we could get inexpensive dual-core machines with 2GB RAM.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[hairyfeet]

Actually you just proved my point, thanks. you are in an office where I'm betting there is actually enough work being done to justify multicores. But at home? Where the average user is going to Youtube, messing with FB, playing Farmville, and checking their email? Even a 2.2GHz P4 spends most of its time twiddling its thumbs waiting for something to do. I'd say a good 80% of the machines that walk through the only "hardware" work I do on them is talk them into a bump up in RAM, which then has them amazed, "It is like a brand new PC!" they say. The ONLY problem I have found for Nettops from the P4 era is RAM was higher, and thus you are more likely to have 512Mb of RAM, which is starving the machine. Just like this 1.8Ghz Sempron I'm typing this on once I added a Gb of RAM to give it 1.5Gb? The thing purrs like a kitten for the above jobs, hell even flash plays nice on XP Sp3.

So my point still stands, both PCs and TVs passed "good enough" at 720p for most folks and they just don't see a point in the new whiz bang. Hell my dad is the world's worst for early adopter syndrome, even his home box is a quad he had me build, yet he is happy as a clam with his 46in widescreen and has NO desire for a 3D TV at all. Now if you can't get my dad, who just loves having new toys to play with, to buy your tech? you're in trouble.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Jafafa Hots]

Or, maybe it's because it that consumers, whether through intelligence or the current economy, are no longer buying into the "you have to repurchase everything you own every 4 to 5 years and get the latest format" scheme.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[OptimusPaul]

or maybe it's because 3D TV is a stupid idea. 3D movies are fun in the theater for about 10 minutes.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the Pulfrich effect. Basically, your visual system processes bright images faster than dim images, so one eye is seeing the broadcast a frame ahead of the other, giving a 3D effect.

It's not in general use because it requires constant predictable motion (eg. a parade).

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[mabhatter654]

the issue is that LCD manufacturing companies are having a hard time selling 75MHz 30" cinema displays at 2500+ resolution. Even the biggest "retail" HDTVs are still "only" 1920x1080... which is why they've become so cheap... you can get a more complex screen in a laptop. 3D is an attempt to make "expensive" TVs now that Broadcast is pinned to 1080i there's really no great need for more for another 20 years at least. Ultimately, nobody is really using all of their 1080p TVs anyway... Cable's and Satellite "HD" is only about 1/2 Broadcast quality due to compression. The only true "HD" is Broadcast and Blu-Ray. Frankly nobody has the storage space for very many movies at 15-19 Mb per second but that's "real HDTV", hence 90% of content people are going for isn't going to tax their 720p sets, let alone 1080p @ 120 MHz+. People also don't have the pipes for that kind of stuff to download.... you'd get about 10 hours of "real" HD for your Cable's 250GB download limit. The people willing to pay $100+ for high speed pipes and buy a $2000+ TV are pretty slim pickings... let alone have the skills to actually get 1080p content beyond blu-ray.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[interval1066]

As shown, not really difficult to understand.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[mattack2]

All you needed was a cheap pair of glasses from 7-11 with one shaded lens (not colored.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulfrich_effect

It only works for horizontal motion.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[the_bard17]

and does anybody know what hours of watching 3D might do to young, unformed brains?

Yeah... it might just cause lazy eye, which compromises depth perception. See the prior Slashdot article.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[theshowmecanuck]

There was a couple news reports on TV in Canada today saying that all flat panel TVs are going to be coming down in price before the holidays because, given the tough economic times, people just aren't buying. It's not just the 3D TVs.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Idiomatick]

Circular polarization, Anaglyph(Red-Green), Interference, and shutter glasses allow you to lie down. Only linear polarization and parallax/lenticular barrier types fail there.

For the uninitiated:

Polarization: Good image. Cheap Glasses Required. Expensive Screen.
Anaglyph (Red-Green): Shitty image. Cheap Glasses Required. No special screen.
Interference: Good image. Really expensive glasses required. Good screen reqd (nothing special though).
Shutter: Good image. If improperly done it makes people sick. Expensive Glasses. Medium price screen required.
Parralax: Medium priced screen. No glasses. Small viewing angle. Face tracking can auto adjust the viewing angle to your head so you get free range. One person only.
Lenticular: Expensive screen. No glasses. Small viewing angle(s) (up to 50 or so available positions). Face tracking can auto adjust the viewing angle to your head so you get free range. One person works best, i believe they have systems supporting up to 8 with tracking (no idea how).
Crossing your eyes: Gives headaches. People find it hard to do.

Disclaimer: I didn't fact check anything I typed out. So I'm probably wrong on at least one thing.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Idiomatick]

Colour is a gimmick.

Seriously guys. Every time 3d comes up on /. like 50people post something that would have me revoke their nerd cards. Its 3d! What kind of nerd hates new tech.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[toddestan]

You have to keep in mind that those 20" high-end CRTs cost like $1000 or more back in the day. High resolution monitors will still cost you about the same, it's just that now you have a wide selection of cheap monitors that you didn't have before.

Though I really wish that someone would make a high-DPI desktop screen. There really isn't anything with more than 100 DPI widely available.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a Mitsubishi 73 inch DLP a few months ago for under $1100. The newer models are very good and very affordable. There are many haters that spread FUD about DLP being dated and "junk" but ask them if they have actually watched one setup correctly made in the last 2 years. The bulbs are under $100 direct from Mitsubishi but average over 3000 hours and only take 5 minutes to replace, they are not loud, and the viewing angles are not that bad. The older ones were not as good and may have turned a lot of people away. Sure there are some plasmas and LCDs that look better in some ways but a 65-73 inch one of those will set you back +3000USD. For the $1100 I paid, I could have got a decent 47 LED-LCD. a 73 inch display in native 16:9 has 15.8sqft of screen, a 47 inch TV only has 6.5sqft of screen. That is a huge difference and awesome if you have the room for it and don't mind not having it mounted on the wall (mine has a 16in depth). Back on subject, yes, there is a very limited amount of 3D but that is not the reason I bought the DLP.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Thexare Blademoon]

It's pretty easy to not give a damn if you're one of those people 3D in any form can't work for.

If you're blind in one eye, for example.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[worx101]

Oh I love the mental imagery, Dora the Explorer in 3d and right after that 3d Mickey Mouse Clubhouse :|

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Anonymous Coward]

ROTFLMAO!!

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Namarrgon]

You're wrong in that you can't lie down and get a stereo effect, regardless of the method used. This is because the left & right viewpoints are created assuming the eyes are horizontally aligned. You'd have to shoot (or render) with over/under camera lenses to get footage suitable for sideways viewing (and then it wouldn't work for sitting up).

Your method summary is about right, except that I'd say that in my experience, Polarization often gives a blurrier image (more ghosting) than e.g. Shutter glasses, and that all methods equally can make people sick, when misused. Oh, and Lenticular doesn't work with tracking, though Parallax potentially can, and neither of the two tend to scale up well.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Idiomatick]

Are you blind in one eye?

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Idiomatick]

True about the shooting. The screen types make it possible though. So it works for video games.

And true that all methods CAN make people sick. But that is only when misused. When talking about the technologies you can't really blame them for directors sucking horribly and making everyone sick.

And ty for the correction on lenticular tracking or the lack thereof. I guess I mixed up with the term autostereoscopic referring to the lack of necessity of goggles. Still with a few dozen viewing angles it probably isn't TOO bad. Parallax is the obvious winner though so it doesn't really matter how lenticular screens work. :P

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[sznupi]

Oh I think technologies can be easily blamed. For a more extreme example in another field: dental drill. Sure, one can argue that a good implementation, in the hands of a very skilled person, will only hurt slightly or even almost not at all; and how the pain depends mostly on the "consumer", but...

Ultimately local anesthesia is your best bet against what is a very inherent part of the technology. Well, I guess people could always use painkillers when watching TV.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[sznupi]

Cats generally sleep on any suitably shaped CRTs, also smaller & more frugal with energy ones. In the summer, too.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[jesset77]

the issue is that LCD manufacturing companies are having a hard time selling 75MHz 30" cinema displays at 2500+ resolution.

The other major issue is the content side of the equation. Studios want control over content, and they are losing it. On one face this means stopping "piracy" and "copyright infringement" because they don't want people to view their content without first paying the right (set of) toll(s). They're a bit hamstrung on this point because they have to pay their tolls for music, footage and clearance within their own content so they need us to pay ours.

The other face of this is stopping all competing content. Studios can't make payroll if you watch their stuff without paying, but turned on it's head that really means they can't make payroll unless you pay to watch their stuff. Watch pirated content or watch independent content or public domain or creative commons content, and it's all the same blow to big media. So it's not even about making you pay to watch *their* stuff, it's about making you pay to watch *anything* at all.

They look at 3D as the next battleground which may help to plug the analog hole. If everyone is magically hooked on 3D content (that's the step 3 ??? part) then independent creators have a harder time crafting said content to compete with them, rippers have a harder time pirating the content, etc etc.

Yes, it will bomb. While this this rendition of Stereovision is marginally superior to the Anaglyph offerings of the 20th century, they are still messy and complicated for the end user. This is nothing like the radio to video, black and white to color, or analog to digital transitions. Color never gave anyone a headache or forced you to keep your head still at an uncomfortable angle nor required expensive glasses which interfere with your prescription ones, took batteries or had to be tethered to the set. Also, color offers a much richer addition to a black and white image than stereovision does to monovision.

Even if you compare stereovision to a mounted set of binoculars, the binoculars at least come with a "focus" knob that let you alter the depth of field, like the human eye does naturally when encountering an actually 3d scene. Stereovision media puts you at the director's mercy for depth of field, which in turn gives you a headache whenever your eyes try to focus on the blurry foreground or background objects (cued by having to cross or uncross to see them without doublevision) and naturally fail. I first noticed this watching Bolt in 3D at the theater, when the camera was looking down a tall wall. Depth of field was first at the dog, at the bottom of the wall, and then refocused to the top of the wall. In Monovision my eyes don't care, as they're not being prompted to cross and uncross at someone else's whim. in Stereovision, I just about barfed.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[sznupi]

Or is it B&W, 405-line, vulnerable to interference pre-ww2 system?

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[jesset77]

Its 3d! What kind of nerd hates new tech.

It's really not that hard to grok, "new tech" is not always "good tech". "Expensive and complex" does not always mean "worthwhile or interesting". 3D (but I'm on board with the more accurate term Stereovision) as it is sold today is really just the tech industry selectively forgetting the lessons learned from Virtual Boy/VR32, and really the whole VR hype train from the 90's.

We want our TV's to have good brightness at an angle because we're not always sitting right in front of them. We want our game controllers wireless and our laptops and tablets to have wireless internet and good battery life because we want to pick them up and take them places. We want to lay down or sit or sprawl in odd positions.

We want our electronics to accommodate how we feel comfortable using them.

The current generation of Stereovision fails on that point. It makes us strap shit to our heads. Many geeks already wear glasses, and those almost never stack comfortably. It makes us sit at a certain angle from the screen, and we cannot tilt our head more than a few degrees. Our eyes are forced to refocus on the binocular (cross, uncross) while remaining at a fixed focus on the monocular (depth of field) which induces the same headaches as stereograms do.

So as far as "new tech" goes, it's barely even a novelty. The basics of Stereovision are nearly a hundred years old, and we've all ridden this train before. It's expensive and inconvenient. And probably the worst bit for geek involvement is, it's not really hackable or malleable in any way.

Part of the goal for media's stereovision push it to create a content walled garden. 3d is expensive to produce, more difficult to pirate, and gives them an excuse to charge for another premium. Independents can't compete. Geeks have no easy way to generate or record their own 3d content to display on these devices.

But if tech only has to be complex or new to turn you on, then there is this great inmate ankle band you've got to hear about. Delivers shocks on par with a tazer when the inmate leaves their itinerary. It's all proprietary so I can't really tell you how it works this magic, and it costs a mint, but I can certainly put one on you and charge it to your nerd card! :D

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[xploraiswakco]

Because every true "nerd" knows the current version of "3D" or stereovision is a waste of time, and what they really want is true holographic 3D.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[markxz]

Next, you'll be complaining that movie theatres should do more to cater to blind people.

Some cinemas do have (optional) audio description in some screens.

A lot of the initial movies with new features over-emphasized those new features, rather than telling a story. I expect nothing less from 3D. I'd also be unsurprised if, in 20 years, people raised their eyebrows if someone said they were only releasing a movie in 2D, just like you would now if someone released a movie in black-and-white.

I would expect 2D films to continue to be produced. Whilst some films benefit from 3D, most do not. Also customers will refuse to pay the surcharge to see a lot of films in 3D if it does not enhance their experience.

For TV, a lot of the time it is on in the background, so most viewers would not want to have to wear the glasses. Other shows, such as news programmes, will only be in 3D for the studio shots, not the field footage.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[atrimtab]

Let me guess. The "inmate ankle band" is made by Microsoft or Apple, right?

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Firethorn]

"Won't be long" - fairly true, though I think it'll be delayed until there's a certain amount of market penetration and therefore demand.

I specified 'right now' because 'right now' is what's holding back adoptors.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[aix tom]

Yep, glasses need to be compatible. That way people with a 3D TV won't have to buy dozens of glasses when they have people over, everybody just has to bring their own glasses. Then it would also be possible to have "prescription" ones fitted, or have some sort of clip-ons, so that people don't have to wear two glasses at once.

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[aix tom]

HA!!! Another interesting fact:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Logie_Baird

....
In his laboratory on 2 October 1925, Baird successfully transmitted the first television picture with a greyscale image: the head of a ventriloquist's dummy nicknamed "Stooky Bill" in a 30-line vertically scanned image, at five pictures per second ....
On 26 January 1926, Baird repeated the transmission for members of the Royal Institution and a reporter from The Times in his laboratory at 22 Frith Street in the Soho district of London.[11] By this time, he had improved the scan rate to 12.5 pictures per second. It was the first demonstration of a television system that could broadcast live moving images with tone graduation.

He demonstrated the world's first colour transmission on 3 July 1928, using scanning discs at the transmitting and receiving ends with three spirals of apertures, each spiral with a filter of a different primary colour; and three light sources at the receiving end, with a commutator to alternate their illumination. That same year he also demonstrated stereoscopic television.

"3D TV" "New Tech"? *ROFL* They even did stereoscopic television in the day and age of the 30-scanline mechanical Nipcow disk. ;-P

Re:I know why.. lack of standardization

[Fumus]

Crossing your eyes: Gives headaches. People find it hard to do.

Recently, I've rediscovered the "cross your eyes" double pictures and I wonder: does it really give any kind of 3D impression, or is it just all imagination? I can do quite well at crossing my eyes and getting a sharp image out of two identical side-by-side, and it did feel kind of 3D-ish, but logic tells me if they are both identical, I shouldn't see any 3D at all.

Price and glasses, most likely

[Pojut]

I'd imagine that the price of entry (not to mention expensive and PITA glasses) are likely what's holding back a faster adoption. I've checked out a couple of 3DTVs on display at my local Bad Buy, and I gotta say the effect is extremely impressive. Were it not for a lack of content and finances, I would probably buy one.

The fact that first-gen consumer flatscreen 3DTVs work as well as they do is promising for the technology.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[show me altoids]

He says that less than one set of 3D glasses are sold per set in Europe, so people aren't even using the 3D feature. I can't believe that if you buy one of these expensive ass TVs that they don't already come with at least one pair in the box.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[MozeeToby]

My question is how this rate compares to other major advances in TV technology over the years. What was the adaptation rate in the first 12 months for color, flap panel, and high definition TVs? This, to me, sounds exactly like all those articles that used to claim that Blu-ray was dead on arrival; and I seem to see not one but two isles devoted to blu-ray at my local Target these days.

I'm not saying 3D tv's are going to sell well or are worth the money (and the stupid, stupid glasses). I'm just pointing out that without some perspective the given numbers are next to meaningless. Except the lack of glasses sold, that is kind of a nail in the coffin. OTOH, are they leaving out the sets that come with the set? I find it hard to believe that people are paying twice as much for a 3D tv and never, ever using it as a 3D tv.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Anonymous Coward]

It might have something to do with the DTV switchover last year. All those schlubs who bought high-def digital TVs just over a year ago probably don't want do throw them away to get another new TV just for some mediocre 3D effects.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Anonymous Coward]

You make a good point. I think the issue is summarized in: There is not enough content and the costs are high.

Why people would buy a 3DTV when they will need to find content and buy at least 2 pairs of glasses so they don't have to watch movies by themselves.

Wait until Playboy et. al. come in 3D than people don't be worrying about watching 3D by themselves.

Now this is coming so quickly, that I bet people is just going for the under-priced old TVs, instead of the new, all waiting to see how adoption evolves.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Maxo-Texas]

If they want this feature to catch on, they need to include a pair of glasses and a couple popular 3d movies.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[jemtallon]

Exactly what I thought. And I can imagine people waiting to buy more glasses, assuming the price on glasses will eventually come down.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Fishead]

I bet if they did more research they'd find that they are also selling less then 1 over priced HDMI cable per TV sold, as well as less then 1 USB cable per printer sold. Cables and glasses are easy to order from overseas when you unpack your new toy and find they didn't include a key component.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[AvitarX]

I'm going to say 2 pairs even.

At least then you can buy them to show off.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[arivanov]

Flat panel was hugely expensive for many years. Its transition from early adoption to consumer technology took nearly 5 years. Once the prices dropped under a certain threshold the CRTs disappeared off the shelves virtually overnight.

The replacement of BW by Colour took even longer. We are talking decades here. Once again, once the price difference dropped under a certain level BW disappeared overnight.

HD TV crawled to HD through "HD Ready" for more than 4 years.

12 months are not indicative of an adoption rate. The first 12 months in consumer electronics are often the same for tech that eventually dies and for tech that becomes the de-facto standard. Will the 3D TV live or die is yet undecided. It will become clear in 3-4 years (earliest).

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[CronoCloud]

Not to mention that some folks would need a new Blu-Ray player to replace their "old" one to go along with that 3D TV.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[peragrin]

That the trick you can't show it off. The field of view and range of 3D TVs is very poor you have to sit in a certian area that is smaller than the average couch and they lose effectiveness if your too far away or too close.

Anyone outside the bounds get distortions.

On top of the fact some 10-20% of population will get headaches/sick/etc from viewing such things.or if you don't have enough glasses youhave to watch the movie in 2D anyways. 3D TV with glasses is just stupid. 3D TV without glasses is about a decade out of realistic use. Current tech can only show images to 2,3 people at a time and in a smaller area than with glasses.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[sjames]

Except that they're looking at total global sales. Those figures would reflect the cases where people buy the glasses online to go with the TV they bought in a brick and mortar. They're just not interested in the glasses.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[sznupi]

How often do you use "3D" photos? Have you ever made even one such photograph? It's quite easy and quite inexpensive for a long time, has experienced many short fascinations from time to time during the last ~150 years. But ultimately - ignored.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[AlecC]

I wonder if they think all 3-D systems are the same, and that the glasses they took home from Avatar will work on their new TV.

Plus, of course, some of the technologies are glasses-free; I don't know if any of these have reached the market yet.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Anonymous Coward]

If they want this feature to catch on, they need to include a pair of glasses and a couple popular 3d movies.

They better throw in a 3D capable bluray player too, because a standard DVD/BluRay player isn't going to do anything 3D.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Custard Horse]

"So sir, let's discuss the options list on your flying car: Wings – would you like some wings?"

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[BoogeyOfTheMan]

You have the technologies mixed up a bit. The TV's that need the active shutter glasses have a very wide viewing angle, whereas the ones such as the new Toshibas and the screen on the 3DS have the small viewing angle.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should they include everything you need to use the TV in the box? They're too cheap to include HDMI cables (probably cost them 50 cents to make) in your Blu-Ray box, why would they include glasses in your TV box?

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Sancho]

There are also probably a lot of people who decided to buy a new TV and got a 3D one so that they wouldn't be wanting to replace it 3 years down the road.

It's really a toss-up as to whether this saves you any money, since in 3 years, the prices should have plummeted, but lots of people do this kind of thing.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Moryath]

Once the prices dropped under a certain threshold the CRTs disappeared off the shelves virtually overnight.

Actually, CRT's dropped off the shelves for three reasons:
#1 - Collusion by the "beige box" computer manufacturers (Dell, Gateway, etc) to only offer LCD monitors.
#2 - Collusion by the "Big Box" retailers (Worst Buy, Circuit Scammy, etc) to no longer sell CRT's because they got better margin on higher-priced, but same sized, LCD TV's.
#3 - Bought-and-Paid-For legislation in states like California creating regulatory nightmares that basically ensured only LCD/"flat panel" monitors could be sold. Remember the uproar over crap like this last year? What you forget is that a number of states passed earlier legislation that made nightmares for CRT's in relation to disposal and components.

LCD TV's are not being pushed for any other reason other than that they are what the retailers want to sell - higher margin, more prone to breaking down (average life of LCDTV: 5 years, average life of CRT: 15+).

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[hedwards]

Does it? I'd imagine that a 3D TV would include a pair. So, if the measure is 3D glasses being sold, that would probably mean that only one person is using TV at a time.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[hedwards]

Were ATSC tuner equipped CRTs ever particularly common? Because I remember the CRT TVs disappearing about the time that the retailers stopped selling the analog tuning TVs.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[skuzzlebutt]

That's crazy...I just assumed that they came with at least two pairs.

I, personally, would never buy a 3D tv unless I didn't have to wear glasses, or any other kind of stupid, uncomfortable, intrusive peripheral device. I loathe using them in theaters, I sure as hell don't want to subject myself to them when I'm at home.

Now, if they could do effective holography, I'd consider glasses...maybe.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Firethorn]

I figure they're being upsold on '120HZ REFRESH!!!!' and 'Image smoothing' and all the other buzzwords that tend to float around the most expensive screens in a store. Sure, '3D COMPATIBLE' is in there, but the buyer isn't concerned about that, he's buying it because it's the best looking screen (convienently also placed in the best looking spot in the store), etc...

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[MachDelta]

Unless you own a PS3.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[MichaelKristopeit 86]

my 3d projector that i use on a 140" screen was cheaper than my 46" flat panel.

i haven't used the 3D feature, and i won't... requiring me to keep special glasses around my viewing area, keeping the batteries charged, having enough for everyone, and being forced to wear them, is not something i'm willing to do.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Defenestrar]

The disappearance of CRTs is a real shame because there's nothing else out there (that I'm aware of) which offered really high resolution options. I do some imaging in one of my labs where I'd love to see the whole picture (>2500 pixels wide) at once (so I can observe patterns) without having to reduce image size (which might cause me to miss some of the artifacts I'm looking for). While I know current LCD is heading toward the 2500 pixel width mark, I don't want to have to use a 35" display to do so.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[jitterman]

It will become clear in 3-4 years (earliest)

Only if glasses are included with the analysis...

If I had points, +1 insightful, sir. Well written.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Richy_T]

And then the standard changes and they're crying about how they wasted all that money.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[aztracker1]

I have to whole heartedly agree on this, I'm very much a *threshold* buyer myself... I generally am not at the lowest end on everything, but generally will by at a given value point that I find reasonable. I think the lack of content is probably the largest point holding back greater adoption... there's still only what, a half a dozen 3D BlurRay discs available? That's hardly enough to convince people to spend >= 50% more. I mean, one can only watch a movie so many times before it gets very boring (unless you're 5).

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Anonymous Coward]

I think his point was that the 3D effect only works when you are sitting straight in front of the screen. Currently we are trying to fake 3D by using stereo cameras, one for each eye, and for the effect to be convincing you need to feel that the two cameras recorded one image for each eye. But if you gather more than a couple of people, you need to have a large screen that everyone sits far away from, because otherwise only one or two people will be able to sit in front of the TV. It's the same problem with surround sound, it only works perfectly when you're sitting in the middle and not when everyone is sitting close to different speakers.

It's a gimmick, it's fake, and watching a movie requires both a big screen, a large room and glasses.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Anonymous Coward]

#4 - They literally dropped off the shelf. They are HEAVY! Every see a 42" or 50" direct view CRT? Flat scales better as far as weight.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Chruisan]

I don't think they were. I purchased a Samsung ATSC tuner equiped HD CRT when my 14 year old Mitsubishi CRT finally died. Resolution goes up to 1080i (not that that makes a big difference relative to the size of the TV). I think it was one of the last ones in the store still in the box. It's a great TV, with HDMI, Composite, and Standard AV connections. It's still tough to beat the color and B/W contrast from a CRT.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[ibbie]

Unless you own a PS3.

...And are willing to let Sony yank features out of your firmware. I don't honestly think that 3D is worth losing the ability to boot Linux.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Bertie]

And if it works when you're sitting down, it won't when you're standing up.

Last week I was looking after my friend's six-year-old son for the evening. I was going through London Bridge train station with him, and Sky had set up demo TVs on the concourse. I thought the young fella might enjoy checking them out, so in we went. The screen was at adult eye height. We stood and watched, but it didn't seem to be thrilling him. I realised why when I crouched down to his height and it didn't work at all - the screen was just a blurry mess. So I picked him up so he could see what was going on.

The whole thing's a terrible idea. It basically eliminates watching TV as a passive, background activity, which is how most people watch it most of the time - it's going on in the background while they're chatting, doing the ironing, going in and out to the kitchen, whatever. And they want me to wear glasses while I do those things? No. It's just not worth it.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[NetNed]

Are you kidding me? Every 3DTV I have seen (Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, Visio, etc.) all blur badly when motion is anything above really slow. They all have odd RGB highlights to anything brought out of the background, most have issues with images bleeding over to the other eye making the 3D look odd and out of place, and the picture is less then impressive in the clarity department. Anyone that is interested in them quickly lose it once they watch it. ALL the stores in my area are offering these TV's at great discounts even including the 3D blu-ray player and the Monsters vs. Aliens movie and people are still not buying. That is because there is no wow factor with these sets. I was more impressed by the clearness of the LED sets then any of the 3D's I have seen. Heck even a 3D LED is more impressive when 3D is off and just a 2D blu-ray is played. It's a gimmick that the manufacturers tried to force down consumers throats in a effort to move more TV's. Hard to see the sense in it when many haven't even upgraded from standard def TV's.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Maxo-Texas]

both a big screen, a large room, and ....

damnit...

I meant to say.. our THREE, three requirements for watching a movie are a big screen, a large room, and glasses, and a comfy chair...

damnit...

Among the elements required for watching a movie are, a big screen, a large room, and glasses, a comfy chair, good lighting, ...

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[rjstanford]

No problem. How about 2560x1440 in a 27" LED display for under $1,000?

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC007?mco=OTY2ODE5MQ

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[rjstanford]

LCD TV's are not being pushed for any other reason other than that they are what the retailers want to sell - higher margin, more prone to breaking down (average life of LCDTV: 5 years, average life of CRT: 15+).

Well, you missed the fact that LCD TVs are also lighter (cheaper to ship) and much smaller (cheaper to store/warehouse/ship and also a lot more appealing to people with limited desk space). Plus an inexpensive LCD panel looks much better than an inexpensive CRT to most people and has no issues with flicker in a corporate (fluorescent lit) environment.

But by all means, keep up your collusion theories.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[amorsen]

3D is practically free for a modern TV, as long as the manufacturer doesn't care about the awful bleed-through between the frames. All they need to do is allow a reasonably high refresh rate, fiddle a little with the HDMI input, and send out the VSYNC signal somewhere so the glasses can access it.

The glasses on the other hand are expensive, so it makes sense that no one buys them.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[amorsen]

The standard is just double frame rate video, it's difficult to imagine that it could change significantly.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[amorsen]

Apple Cinema Display. Dell has a version too. Both have been on the market for years, in various incarnations. And don't complain about the price, any CRT which can actually go black->white horizontally at 2500 pixels isn't cheap and never was.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Richy_T]

For example, a new standard arises for operation of the 3D glasses and everyone stops producing the old style ones, making replacing broken ones an expensive proposition. Or similar. Though I'm hoping if 3D does get going (which I have doubts of), we'll see polarized glasses as standard (which still leads to crying)

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[peragrin]

no they all do, the active glasses while greater than the glassless tv's is still quite limited and once you get beyond a 45 degree angle view quailtly drops to that of 1970's tech.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[markdavis]

Well, I finally had my first 3D TV experience in a Costco. It was a Panasonic TV and they had the glasses mounted on a movable pole. So I looked for about 10 minutes. Yes, the 3D depth part is fine, but it flickered and stuttered horribly. I found it immediately extremely annoying. And instead of getting "used to it" over time, it just got worse. And when I was "done", my eyes hurt too.

Please note that I *like* 3D, and when I watched Avatar in a 3D Imax theater, I observed no such flicker/stuttering at all.... it was great.

So if all the 3D TV's act like that Panasonic, I know that I have ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST in obtaining a "3D TV". And if my next TV just happens to have the 3D feature (and still looks like that Panasonic) then I would just never use it in 3D mode.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[BoogeyOfTheMan]

I used to stare at these things all day long. They do work at way more than 45deg. I would say closer to 90.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[mabhatter654]

don't forget that CRTs cost more than triple to SHIP. For vendors like Dell that's a big chunk of change. Also for all shippers an LCD in packaging is 5 to 10 times less volume than an equal-sized CRT. I have one of the 30" Samsung CRTs with ATSC tuners from 5 years ago and it's nice. It's a bit too small to appreciate the 1080i (and like I said before cable, etc isn't "really" HD anyway) but it's got to be 75 pounds to lift... I can do it myself, but it's dangerous. An equivalent-sized LCD can be comfortably picked up in one hand... It's the difference between USPS and Freight delivery charges.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd agree. Personally I think the tech is pretty decent. I had my wife try out the Sammy TV at the Best Buy setup and she was pretty impressed. The biggest hurdle is getting enough content produced to warrant the use. The only real thing Best Buy shows is some goofy G/PG movie or an ESPN station that is most likely pre-recorded.

Normal TV isn't recorded in 3D because the filming has to be done in a certain manner to even be worth while in 3D. (ie: shot angles, actor movements) Some things aren't great being shot in 3D or don't need to be shot in 3D. In the end the biggest issue is wearing the glasses. $150 a pair?!? Most families can't afford that on top of paying for food for their kids, let alone the recession/depression we're still in. I was prepared to buy it just to show it off to friends/family to help try and get the technology out there and to ease others I know into it. If only to kill some of the preconceived notions of the technology. However, I wouldn't expect the technology to take off or even force someone else to try and buy it. I do think that Avatar in 3D all over again on a 60" would play out rather nicely.

Again $400-500 bucks on movie playback is a bit much. But that could be somewhat compared to purchasing a PS3, GT5:Prologue, the logitech G25 and one of those racing seats to go with it. That setup actually out prices the 3D setup. So in the end it comes down to what type of person you are and what hobbies you have. Or simply if you have kids. If you have kids your hobbies are your kids and they've already spent your money ;)

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Idiomatick]

Which the parent corrected... Some types of 3d you do, some you don't...

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Idiomatick]

True! .... Sort of. I think it holds true for any particular product or technology exactly as you stated.

BUT. 3d is JUST as inevitable as HD was. We were always going to move to higher resolutions eventually. Just as we will eventually move to 3d. Only the particular implementations will falter or fail.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Urza9814]

Meh. I was in a Sony store not too long ago and they had 3D TVs running with glasses to try it out. I honesty didn't notice much difference at all when putting on the glasses, but I had a headache in under a minute of wearing them.

I was fairly impressed at CES last year I think when I saw Guitar Hero on a large screen in 3D - the effect was quite noticeable there, but it was still not something I'd want to have all the time. Maybe for playing video games - I could see Call of Duty in 3D being pretty cool - but for watching movies it seems kinda pointless. I mean, it's one thing if you're in an interactive environment that you can move around in. But when you're just seeing what the director wants you to see, WTF is the point of having it in 3D?

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[havana9]

One of the key factor of the disappareance of CRT was the switch to digital terrestrial TV. Older CRT designs with analog tuners can't be sold anymore. These designs were kept because all the R&D were totally paid for. Before the digital switch over you could still buy portable black and white TV sets in big malls.

HD TV is shoved to the buyer because SD LCD or plasma set aren't sold anymore, and I think this is because the scale economies to make low end small panels identical for computer and TV uses. Older plasma and LCD SD sets were also equipped with analog tuners so they were phased out on DTV adoption, and newer designs were made with HD ready (aka PC grade) screens. It's normal to see those HD ready sets with an SD only DTV decoder, actually using them as SD panels.

Of course my 1983 26 inch Loewe Opta and my 1995 35 inch Sony Trinitron still beats the crap out from cheap LCD HD ready panels....

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Defenestrar]

Hey, thanks for checking out the options for me :) I had glanced at Newegg, but didn't spend too much time looking since I didn't see any really high pixel density displays (what I miss about the CRT was the actual physical resolution). This cinematic display only has a resolution of about 109 pixels per inch (109ppi = (2560^2+1440^2)^(1/2) / 27"). I think I remember CRT's pushing 200 ppi for the higher-mid ranged models).

So while this display might work for viewing the image, I've only got about 20" of horizontal desk space in that lab next to the microscope.

I guess my point is that nobody is making LCDs with the pixel density of what the high end CRTs used to be able to do. Pixel density is true resolution (pixels per sq. area) - so just making a bigger screen to get in more displayed pixels is IMHO cheating when you call it increased resolution. Not that I wouldn't mind large displays at work, there just isn't space. It sounds like device manufacturers (phones, cameras, etc...) are working on 300 to 400 pixel per inch displays - they've even been out since '07, but it's not moving up to the computer monitor level yet (aside: Apple's was late to the party this time with their '10 iPhone 326 ppi "retina" display, Toshiba had a 313 ppi phone in '07 ).

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[Belial6]

Don't forget that LCDs are cheaper in the long run. My LCD TV was free. Not the day I purchased it, but after a couple of years of use, the reduced electricity costs more than covered for the purchase price of the TV. With things like switching to LCD TVs, CFLs (Now that they work right), switching to power efficient HTPCs instead of space heater satellite boxes, as well as a few other energy saving efforts, I have reduced my power bill by $150-$200 a month while improving my quality of life.

The most common reason I have seen for people to buy LCD when they had the choice between LCD and CRT was that it would give them a bigger picture while increasing the livable space in their home. So as a practical matter, it made their homes larger.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[bareshiyth]

I love 3D. Bought a Sony, which is a great TV system (Bravia, direct net access, etc.) even if it weren't 3D, and the glasses are no bother ... you gotta use them even in theaters. So while price is a real problem, THE BIGGEST problem is there's still only 3 decent movies available yet. 3 grand for a 3D TV is silly if you can only watch 3 movies!

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[arivanov]

1. Even if there was collusion at first it went with the wind in less than a year. The race to the bottom in the PC business knows no mercy. The moment LCDs became mass market their margin became mass market - low.

2. Same for the retailers, though in their case they also got lower overall costs for selling an LCD monitor. Less weight, less floor space, less money to shift it. However, that gain in margin has once again been eaten by race to the bottom.

3. There was open collusion over here even without bought in legislation. Despite multiple requests to the regulators at least in the UK it was not investigated because it fit some misguided green agenda. However by the time collusion happened the CRTs were already a minority. The collusion finished off a process which naturally occured within the market anyway. Even if the businesses gained something margin-wise in the collusion it was again eaten by race-to-the-bottom in a very short order.

Re:Price and glasses, most likely

[sznupi]

But the stereoscopic illusion gets garbled much quicker than that.

hmm

[Ryanrule]

no glasses or bust

Why Get one?

[mattwrock]

It's not like there's a lot of 3D choices. Most of the movies I saw in 3D still work in 2D. Until there is something really compelling *cough* porn *cough*, it's not going to fly off the sheleves.

Re:Why Get one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Until there is something really compelling *cough* porn *cough*, it's not going to fly off the sheleves.

Check out This Ain't Avatar XXX 3D

There's some other's out there I'm too lazy to link to, like "Octopossy 3D" and "Whorrie Potter and the Sorcerer's Balls"

Re:Why Get one?

[delinear]

And to think, they always said if you watched too much you'd end up wearing glasses. Who knew they'd be 3D!

Re:Why Get one?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The prices are still a little high too.

Regarding the summary though, don't most 3D TVs include two glasses? You can buy extras separately. There's no reason to buy a 3D TV unless you're going to actually use the feature, so saying that people aren't buying glasses sounds spurious, it sounds like they're not buying extras.

Re:Why Get one?

[gmuslera]

Most movies that were released in 3D looks BETTER in 2D, and most of them were filmed in 2D, and then converted to 3D. Maybe in some future 3D movies have a place in your home, but for now, neither technology nor content makes it worth. About 2010 (or 2011) this won't be the year of the 3D TV, but of the Internet TV

Re:Why Get one?

[sznupi]

Stereoscopic photographs are around for around 150 years, are easy and quite cheap to make & view. Almost completely ignored - despite the fact you certainly can find porn among them too.

Re:Why Get one?

[sznupi]

Heh, a bit similar to audio - the execs and marketers hoping for their vision of the future (SACD, Minidisc, etc.) vs. what turned out to be the future (mp3, ... you know the rest of the story)

Re:Why Get one?

[Anonymous Coward]

3-d Porn is not compelling...trust me.

(It's all fun and games until the money shot...)

Re:Why Get one?

[Dogtanian]

Heh, a bit similar to audio - the execs and marketers hoping for their vision of the future (SACD, Minidisc, etc.) vs. what turned out to be the future (mp3, ... you know the rest of the story)

Someone made the very astute point that hardware-wise, MiniDisc *could* have been something much closer to MP3 much sooner... *if* they hadn't deliberately hobbled it, rendering it into something not that much better than the cassette.

The fact that they forced people to copy via standard audio input at standard speeds, restricted recopying of material and generally stopped people from accessing what the hardware could really have been capable of (e.g. hard-drive like data access)... had they not done that it would have been a different story. I gather that they loosened some of these restrictions later, but too little, too late.

Re:Why Get one?

[sznupi]

It would at most slightly prolong the inevitable; MD would have problems with scaling to bigger storage and smaller physical sizes. Especially if trying to combine it with the idea of music phones... (no, iPhone is neither the first nor the most widely used; I even guess that Sony Ericsson might have already sold more music capable phones than MD players)

Re:Why Get one?

[Dogtanian]

That's not really the point I was making. What I meant was that if the MiniDisc had been allowed to do what it would clearly have been capable of (had it not been hobbled), it would have permitted data transfer and usage more akin to what we associate with MP3, but the better part of a decade in advance.

Of course the hardware would inevitably have run into a dead end (as MD basically has done nowadays anyway), but it *could* have knocked spots off the competition in its day.

Anyway, Sony lost the portable market and they thoroughly deserved to as well.

Re:Why Get one?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is are only two major genres of content that can get a true benefit from 3D... The other is sports. Unfortunately for the 3D industry, people don't want others to know when they pay for the first.

Re:Why Get one?

[sznupi]

I see - though I'm not sure if it would have so much time. MD stuff was too long quite expensive; making its capabilities "fuller" probably wouldn't help with that. And real uptake of small wearable digital audio players (again not limiting ourselves to looking at few atypical but highly visible markets) happened only with really low prices. In a time when it could fit nicely with growing penetration of internet access.

no surprise.

[notgm]

if i wanted a pseudo-3d bubble effect, i'd buy a tv with a huge bulging CRT.

Re:no surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

if i wanted a pseudo-3d bubble effect, i'd buy a tv with a huge bulging CRT.

OMG thanks! I've been looking for the perfect name for my chiptune-nerdcore band! That's perfect!

Re:no surprise.

[jra]

"Fruit Bat Fellatio".

Don't you read Slashdot?

Cumbersome

[olsmeister]

Who wants to wear some clunky glasses while they watch a movie? Who wants to purchase a pair for every member of their family? Who wants to walk into a room where someone is watching 3DTV with their glasses on and not be able to look over without seeing garbled pictures on the TV? Who wants to replace the $2,000 TV they purchased a two years ago? Seriously, the only reason I would jump on the bandwagon would be for video games. I think they should be pushing that market more. (or porn, of course...)

Re:Cumbersome

[eldepeche]

Some of us have to wear clunky glasses all the time, you insensitive clod!

Re:Cumbersome

[frozentier]

Who wants to wear some clunky glasses while they watch a movie?

To be fair, the last time I saw a 3D movie in a theater, the glasses were like sunglasses, and they actually weren't clunky at all.

Who wants to walk into a room where someone is watching 3DTV with their glasses on and not be able to look over without seeing garbled pictures on the TV?

I think that's a better point. And the fact that our family has to search for the remote every time we want to sit down and watch TV. I can just imagine the hunt for half a dozen glasses to go with it. Now, if the 3D effect was an ENHANCEMENT when you wore the glasses, yet it looked like a normal picture without them, then that might be a good solution.

Re:Cumbersome

[elrous0]

Yeah, which makes it even WORSE for us because we have to wear those annoying glasses uncomfortably over the glasses we already have. DOUBLE ANNOYANCE!

Re:Cumbersome

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'm more than happy with my HD projector. I feel no need to get a 3D TV.

Re:Cumbersome

[martas]

switch to contacts, dude. best decision i ever made...

Re:Cumbersome

[Skater]

Who wants to wear some clunky glasses while they watch a movie?

To be fair, the last time I saw a 3D movie in a theater, the glasses were like sunglasses, and they actually weren't clunky at all.

But that's not what they use at home. Theaters use polarized glasses and aren't bad at all like you said. Home systems use a shutter system that requires batteries and the associated annoyances.

Re:Cumbersome

[Anonymous Coward]

You summed up my thoughts very nicely.

Re:Cumbersome

[elrous0]

They dry my eyes out too bad (especially in my work environment, which is by nature very dry). Maybe I'll look into that LASIK surgery someday.

Re:Cumbersome

[O('_')O_Bush]

Contacts irritate my eyes, and don't offer as good focus as my glasses do. I've found this is important for hunting/driving with tired eyes at night.

Tried contacts, went back to glasses, never looked back.

Re:Cumbersome

[HotBits]

That... and how many 3D glasses do you need to buy? What are you going to do during a Super Bowl party? Ask everyone to bring their own 3D glasses? Will they even be compatible?

3D TV is a non-starter for me until a good product comes out that doesn't need expensive glasses (i.e. cheap polarized glasses, or no glasses).

Re:Cumbersome

[sjames]

That's because the movies use polarized light and the glasses are lightweight filters. For the TV they're heavier and much more expensive LCD shutters synchronized to the TV and require a battery to work.

Re:Cumbersome

[SydShamino]

Movie 3D glasses merely require polarized lenses; the projector uses horizontal and vertical polarization to achieve the simultaneous images.

Home 3D TVs most commonly use alternating images for the left and right eye at twice the usual refresh rate. Glasses with active shutters in each eye - synchronized to the television - are required to so each eye only sees have the frames.

Thus home 3D glasses are bigger and clunkier than movie 3D glasses. You can't compare the two.

Re:Cumbersome

[index0]

Four eyes, four eyes ..

Re:Cumbersome

[sammyF70]

not everyone can wear contact lenses, or get laser therapy. I was in the first group, but luckily my retina was thick enough for laser.Expensive like hell, but way more comfortable than glasses or contacts.

Re:Cumbersome

[Anonymous Coward]

I just bought one of these 3d tvs. Also did not get any of the 3d movies (of which there is a *small* handful btw). The kick in the balls was the 150-300 a pair. And it makes the nice bright screen I just bought look dim and dark. And it doesnt work for me as I have 'lazy eye (mono ocular vision)' And 10% of the population has my same problem in that they only can 'see out one eye' at time. Uh skip... If it had been like 4 free pairs or 20-30 bucks a pop I *MAY* have considered it.

Re:Cumbersome

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, the last time I saw a 3D movie in a theater, the glasses were like sunglasses, and they actually weren't clunky at all.

I think very few people can afford to have a passive 3D display in their home. All of the TVs available at the big box retailers use active battery-powered (i.e. clunky) glasses.

That said, passive 3D is the most natural I have seen, you just need to compensate for an even greater loss of brightness because you are effectively wearing real sunglasses in addition to the light-reducing polarizing z-screen attached to the projector's lens.

JVC has a pro monitor that uses this technology; I hope others follow suit.

Re:Cumbersome

[IICV]

Yo dawg we herd you like glasses so we put glasses on your glasses so you can see while you see in three dee.

And that's why 3D TVs don't work for me - either I use my normal glasses and it's blurry, or I use the 3D glasses and it's blurry. Hmm, which to choose? I'll go with 2D.

Re:Cumbersome

[will_die]

What you need are Prescription 3-D Glasses

Re:Cumbersome

[glwtta]

Yeah, which makes it even WORSE for us because we have to wear those annoying glasses uncomfortably over the glasses we already have.

Get over it, six-eyes.

Re:Cumbersome

[pak9rabid]

LASIK is where it's at. Got my appointment for that in early Nov....can't wait.

Re:Cumbersome

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer to all of your rhetorical questions is "some people".

I totally agree with you about games though; if Sony or Microsoft could make every single game for their respective consoles 3D-ready, I think that would be sufficient to start the avalanche.

Re:Cumbersome

[Black Cardinal]

LASIK only makes sense if you're eyes are stable and not still getting worse. I'm 38 but every couple of years my prescription gets updated to correct my ever-increasing nearsightedness.

I wish my eyes were stable, I'd get LASIK in a heartbeat if I had confidence that I wouldn't need to start wearing glasses again 2 to 3 years after the procedure.

Re:Cumbersome

[macshit]

Who wants to wear some clunky glasses while they watch a movie?

To be fair, the last time I saw a 3D movie in a theater, the glasses were like sunglasses, and they actually weren't clunky at all.

But aren't the glasses for "3d" televisions somewhat different?

The glasses used in theaters are relatively cheap "passive" material, but the glasses used with 3d-tv are "active" (LCD shutters or whatever), and much more expensive to produce -- especially in large sizes...

Re:Cumbersome

[eldepeche]

Thus home 3D glasses are bigger and clunkier than movie 3D glasses. You can't compare the two.

You just did!

Not interested

[Anonymous Coward]

2d > 3d

it's a chicken/egg thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a chicken/egg thing. There aren't many 3D enabled movies or other things out, and for the extra price you're spending at least a grand extra just for the screen, then $200+ for the glasses. It's a novelty right now, and unless they appeal to the videophile (or whatever) on the SUPER-XTREMEEEEEEEEEEEE (insert echoing growly voice) level, they aren't going to sell...

Not interested 2

[synackpshfin]

Why would I even want to watch TV?

Re:Not interested 2

[lennier1]

It's an overhyped gimmick. The only way to have it sell like crazy is to put the Apple logo on it.

content

[snookerhog]

as soon as they can come up with more content that is not just more monster chiller horror theater they might have a chance. I think the real win for this will be with video games. even just making the most basic platforming game in 3D would be pretty cool.

Re:content

[nedlohs]

Games would be more headache inducing I suspect. A competent 3D film maker is going to arrange things so that you are looking where they want you to look.

A game can't do that, and hence the parallax and focus queues of distance will conflict more often.

Re:content

[vallette]

I keep hearing this argument whenever the failures of the current 3D wave are discussed. The reality is that 3D has been touted as the next big thing for the last 60 years and it's never amounted to more then a passing fad. Our entertainment overlords have had 6 decades to figure out how to make 3D compelling and more then a gimmick and they've always failed. Unlike color which the studios embraced once they discovered it actually added to the telling of a story, 3D has never amounted to much more then a way to separate the uninitiated from their hard earned cash. Maybe (and this is a big maybe) when it gets to the point where glasses aren't required and there's no additional production costs or viewing premiums it'll catch on but until then I predict once a generation it'll pop up and quickly fade into the background like...well, like a bad 3D effect.

Re:content

[westlake]

as soon as they can come up with more content that is not just more monster chiller horror theater they might have a chance.

I seem to remember that the party line here not so many years back was that HDTV would never take off.

That analog broadcast or the DVD was "good enough."

Tech doesn't just happen.

It takes someone to make it happen.

The first RCA color TV sets had an aborted launch in 1954.

The vacuumn tube tech for a successful home receiver wasn't quite there it - and very expensive.

Sarnoff, RCA, and NBC carried the torch for color for ten years before seeing any return on their investment:

Bonanza 1959
Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color 1961
Star Trek 1965

1965 is the year when NBC went to an "all color" prime time schedule.

It would be 1972 before more than half of US households had a color television set.

 

Re:content

[ottothecow]

No no, that is all wrong. What will happen is that bad filmmakers will use 3D to force you to look where they want you to look.

Good filmmakers can already make you look where they want you to look. The problem with 3D is that you can't explore the frame...good filmmakers have carefully thought out everything that appears in the scene (in avatar, I kept wanting to look around and couldn't). Bad filmmakers are just going to use 3D to punch you in the face so they don't have to care about what is happening in the upper right hand corner.

Re:content

[0123456]

Unlike color which the studios embraced once they discovered it actually added to the telling of a story, 3D has never amounted to much more then a way to separate the uninitiated from their hard earned cash..

I'd partially disagree with that: some of the IMAX 3D -- I mean really shot in 3D on IMAX cameras, not shot in 2D on 35mm and then faked into pseudo-3D -- looks very impressive and really brings you into the movie. But I don't know anyone who has an IMAX cinema in their house.

One of the biggest problems with 3D is that nothing can move outside the viewing frustrum of the screen, so unless it fills your field of view (as it should with a decent IMAX setup) the effect will never be particularly good.

Re:content

[BoogeyOfTheMan]

I dunno about that. When I worked at Sears, the 3D demo for Motostorm on the Sony display was frickin amazing. It may not work well for all genres, but for racing games it was fantastic looking.

Re:content

[nedlohs]

How is that not what I said?

Where in the phrase "arrange things" do you see "use 3D" and not "have carefully though out everything that appears in the scene"?

I don't care about bad film makers, or bad game makers - I'm comparing the good versions.

Of course games can draw the eye as well, but scanning the entire screen is pretty much the gameplay in a FPS (at least I think it is, that's a genre I haven't played since Quake 2 broke the things I liked in Quake).

Re:content

[bwintx]

Right on the money on all counts, except for one thing -- Star Trek (TOS) debuted in September '66. Other than that, you had it right. (There was a weekly Disney program before '61, but it was on ABC and in B&W, IIRC.)

Re:content

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm....3D for gaming is old hat.

My Riva TNT2 video card, Viewsonic 19" CRT, and ELSA LCD stereo shutters did all this for games over 10 years ago. Tomb Raider was cool in 3D, Need for Speed was even better. Descent3 was good but gave me a headache whenever the HUD sight appeared to pass through a close wall.

Then I got one of the first GeForce1 cards off the line. It blue screened in stereo mode so often I had to give up on 3D. Then I got married, had kids, "got a life" as so many people suggested. I'm not saying I don't miss gaming, because I do. I just don't have time for it anymore. And games seemed to have jumped the shark after Descent3, Thief3, and Need for Speed anyway; same stuff, different hardware requirements. No real commercial studio support for Linux.

Re:content

[Anonymous Coward]

Might I suggest the 3DS, then?

3D handheld console that is getting a lot of support for its release. Granted, it won't be out until about spring 2011 (tentative), and it may be a bit more expensive than Nintendo's previous handhelds, but it'll be way cheaper than a 3D TV set (+ equipment to play 3D movies and/or games), and the 3D effect can be disabled on the fly (via a phyiscal slider on the unit, kind of like a volume control).

Things may change between here and now, but the 3DS might be something to keep your eye on.

Re:content

[Anonymous Coward]

I think lack of content is one of the important factors. I have a 3D TV and 2 glasses, but there is almost no 3D contest available.

I get ESPN 3D on my cable system, but it is only on the air to show one college football game a week. The rest of the week it is off the air.

Other than that, the cable system has a few on demand silly 3D demo short programs.

There are almost no 3D movies available on Blu-Ray. Maybe a few animated movies, but nothing I'm really interested in watching.

When is the 3D version of Avatar going to be available on Blu-Ray?

Re:content

[Gilmoure]

We didnt' have a color tv until 1976. And then Mom kept that tv, taking it in for repairs every year or two up through 2001.

Re:content

[jonwil]

If Fox would hurry up and release the 3D Blu-Ray of Avatar, that would probably sell some 3DTVs and glasses.

Re:content

[vegiVamp]

That, and nature/science documentaries. Someone get David Attenborough to pay attention, please.

Re:content

[sznupi]

You know, all those dates & events you mention are younger than stereoscopy...

Re:content

[sznupi]

Do you have that Nvidia "3D" glasses thing promoted by them for 2 years or so? Do you know anybody who does?

Shortage

[Anonymous Coward]

"In Western Europe (the only region where they offered this data point) sales of 3D glasses are less than 1 per 3D set sold. In other words, a lot of Western Europeans who buy a TV with 3D capability don't even bother to buy the glasses to use that feature."
There was even a shortage of those 3D glasses here (Belgium).
Consumers were supposed to be get 1 pair of glasses for free when buying a Samsung 3D TV, but the stores claimed they weren't available yet.
Consumers were then advised to write to Samsung directly to get their free pair, but a lot never bothered afaik.

3D vs. high end

[The Grim Reefer2]

It would be interesting to see how many of the 3D TV sales were "entry level" 3D. My guess is that the major reason they have 2% market share is because virtually all of the high end models have 3D these days. That would also explain why less than 100% of owners purchased glasses.

Maybe because of this kind of warning?

[rsborg]

WARNING: 3D Video Hazardous to Your Health:

... You Cannot Give This To Kids! Pesce says that Sega took the test results and buried them. Fearing lawsuits and consumer backlash over health risks, the VR Headset never made it to market and neither did the truth about the dangers of prolonged exposure to 3D virtual environments - until now. The results of SRI's research have been published and there is an unclassified document from the defense department of Australia that says there are a variety of "...unintended psychophysiological side effects of participation in (3D) virtual environments."

All that took was one google search for "3d tv danger". I'm sure experience with the actual devices would yield more "headaches" and other disorientation, which a parent takes as serious coming from the kiddos.

Re:Maybe because of this kind of warning?

[westlake]

Fearing lawsuits and consumer backlash over health risks, the VR Headset never made it to market and neither did the truth about the dangers of prolonged exposure to 3D virtual environments - until now.

The military use of virtual environments - imcluding motion simulators - is not the same as consumer tech. It is not even the same as the amusement park thrill ride.

Re:Maybe because of this kind of warning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your eyes are drawn to it...and you end up cockeyed! *gasp*

Re:Maybe because of this kind of warning?

[martas]

uhh, well, that technology was very (ok, very) different from modern 3dtv's. not saying the same problems don't exist, just saying it's not directly applicable.

Re:Maybe because of this kind of warning?

[Anonymous Coward]

So...? Some people get sick reading a book in a car. I imagine the same people get sick in a simulator, and a 3D simulator would make that worse.
Is that related to sitting on a couch watching a 3D display?

Don't let Google think for you guys...

Re:Maybe because of this kind of warning?

[blackraven14250]

I had a headache after watching the 3d TV in my local Best Buy for about 20 seconds.

I do admit, 3D has come FAR since the last time I saw it, but the headache thing sucks big time

Re:Maybe because of this kind of warning?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a panic over motion sickness.

Re:Maybe because of this kind of warning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jerk, have a thermos and some pizza in a cup.

Re:Maybe because of this kind of warning?

[Nethemas the Great]

The problem as far as I understand it has to do with proper alignment of the image projected to the eyes. The Sega (and any of the other 20th century, god I feel old) was that the image must be bloody near perfectly aligned to the pair of eyes it's projected to. The early head sets were trying to be made on the cheap so that consumers could afford them. Cheap and quality didn't coincide.

With this latest greatest attempt at stereoscopically projected 2D video the issue still remains. To further complicate matters, every person has a slight mis-alignment of their eyes. For those that have a more pronounced alignment problem--bear in mind I'm not talking about people with strabismus, or what is commonly referred to as being "cross-eyed"--watching these so called "3D" movies even on the expensive movie theater equipment are producing headaches. The only way this gimmick has a chance at wide spread adoption is if each viewer were capable of having--with minimal effort on their part--their own projection that is calibrated with a high degree of accuracy and precision to the requirements of their own eyes. Realistically though, I can't see this as anything more than a passing burp on the time line. I think people are going to tire of having virtual 2D pies thrown in their face pretty quickly.

Re:Maybe because of this kind of warning?

[StikyPad]

Ah right, and transport by sea will never take off because of sea sickness. Likewise for air travel and the horseless carriage due to altitude sickness and motion sickness. Maybe one day we'll invent inertial dampeners, and then we'll finally be able to use mechanized transport!

Or maybe, just maybe, these very real potential side effects are nonetheless inconsequential for the general population. After all, "3D sickness" is, by all accounts, just motion sickness in reverse. Instead of the environment remaining fixed during inertial changes (as in a plane, or the backseat of a car), inertia remains fixed during environmental changes. The lack of large portions of moviegoers spewing their junk food across the theater is, I believe, fairly strong evidence that most people can tolerate such disconnects with little or no ill effect.

Re:Maybe because of this kind of warning?

[Mashiki]

Eh I just got back from the US and decided to hit a local bestbuy when I was down there to see their display of TV's. Headaches I can manage, the 40mins of vomiting on the other hand makes it an instant no-sale.

Re:Maybe because of this kind of warning?

[blackraven14250]

It was a kinda severe headache, and that was only about 20 seconds. I have no plans on finding out what's going to happen to my head (or the rest of my body) after being exposed for a full-length movie.

Re:Maybe because of this kind of warning?

[geekoid]

Did you read the report?
1) Conflicting results
2) No controls
3) VR in VE, not 3D
4) Only stereoscopic
5) Too may factors.
6) bad VR and VE implementation

So not only is it irrelevant to 3d TVs, They aren't really sure about its effect and impact and temporary motion sickness in some people.

While I believe at some point we will start to see cyber-psychosis and cyber-sickness, this isn't it. I would like to see more studies. Studies done with good controls.

Re:Maybe because of this kind of warning?

[rsborg]

Ah right, and transport by sea will never take off because of sea sickness. Likewise for air travel and the horseless carriage due to altitude sickness and motion sickness.

You're comparing sea travel with 3D TV? Get real. Sea travel took off because of war, trade and colonization efforts. What does 3D TV do for me? I'll put it to you this way: I don't think 3D TV is going to be a Civilization "tech" anytime soon, but sailing/flight/horses sure are.

Re:Maybe because of this kind of warning?

[DeadCatX2]

I believe I have also heard that mis-alignment of the pixels is ultimately what drives the discomfort behind 3D video.

Re:Maybe because of this kind of warning?

[DamnStupidElf]

It might be focus strain in your eyes. The parralax used to simulate 3D images creates a virtual focal plane at a distance where your eyes try to focus. If you are 10 feet from the TV but it is presenting a virtual image that your eyes think is 5 or 15 feet away, you will constantly attempt to focus at those other distances causing the actual image (which is on a real plane 10 feet away) to become blurry, and your eyes will continually try to adjust. Additionally, if whatever being viewed on the 3D is rendered with a depth of field that leaves parts of the image out of focus, trying to look at those areas will be even worse for your eyes because you'll never be able to focus on a clear image in that area despite parralax clues that there is something far away or very close to focus on.

Re:Maybe because of this kind of warning?

[blackraven14250]

It may very well be focus strain. I never caught something that was out of focus while I was watching, but it was a 3D demo - showing off the 3D, with stuff closer than the screen itself.

Doesn't make it any less of a problem for wide adoption, though.

2 problems

[pandore]

I don't think the price of the TV is the problem.
The first problem is probably the price of the glasses. Imagine you are are 4 or 5 persons family and have to buy 4 or 5 pair of glasses at 150$-200$ each pair, you will have to spent a lot.
The second problem is the market penetration of the standard HDTV was too high. If a family bought a 52" HDTV 2 years ago and just finished to pay for it, will they buy a 3DTV today ?

Re:2 problems

[residieu]

You will have to buy 4 or 5 pairs of glasses, 2 of which will immediately be lost by your children and you'll have to buy another 2... I have enough trouble hunting for remote controls on a daily basis.

Re:2 problems

[iamhassi]

A 55" HDTV is $900 and a 50" is only $650. If a family spent 2 years paying off a TV they have bigger concerns than the size of their TV, they might want to spend the time wasted watching TV working towards getting a better job.

Re:2 problems

[Andy Dodd]

"If a family bought a 52" HDTV 2 years ago and just finished to pay for it"

Quoting the grandparent - 2 years ago, TVs in that size class were a LOT more expensive than you quote.

Re:2 problems

[Anonymous Coward]

A 55" HDTV is $900 and a 50" is only $650. If a family spent 2 years paying off a TV they have bigger concerns than the size of their TV, they might want to spend the time wasted watching TV working towards getting a better job.

Two years ago the price was 3 times that.

Re:2 problems

[Sporkinum]

I can't see throwing out a tv that works fine. I don't have any HD content, so I don't need an HD screen. Also, giant TVs are practically given away on Craig's list. I got a 1999 60" Philips for free. I just had to replace the CRT coolant.

we dont need their..tourch control

[Anonymous Coward]

They try to force us to all kind of new standards
I am a bit tired of this, TV is for them time i'm bored, and i'm not that often bored.
And neither i do need high definition TV reason.. i'm sitting like 3 metres away of that tube when i watch.
I dont care for less noice, simply dont buy a TV so big that you see all the noice 3 metres away.

But still it amazes me that a lot of people with glasses are convinced it is so much better..
I got good eyes and i dont care about it, got it, away with all your new standards etc.

Instead of TV's start producing reprap printers, then we we will print our required device ourselves, its not the time for TV thats old age tech RepRap is the new kid in town.

Re:we dont need their..tourch control

[Anonymous Coward]

Never heard of RepRap. I checked it out, and I think it's the stupidest thing the FOSStard community has come up with to date. As usual, you take a hobby toy and assume that the entire world would have some use for it and one will be in every home. Who wants something that makes a bunch of cheap plastic parts that you have to assemble into something useful? The notion this would ever be useful to a non-hobbyist individual is delusional at best.

And this idea of yours about everyone printing their own TVs sums up the flawed thinking of the FOSStard. Do you really think people are interested in printing a bunch of plastic parts and assembling them into a TV? Where will they get the semiconductors?

Moron.

I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[eldavojohn]

Were it not for a lack of content and finances, I would probably buy one.

I am so happy we have blu-ray discs today. I don't own any blu-ray movies nor do I own a blu-ray player. But what I do own is lots of DVDs that I purchased after blu-ray came out. Found a complete X-Files box set for under $100 brand new (over 40 discs!) from some 'deep discount' retailer online. Same with a bunch of other movies I liked but never had the cash to blow $20-$30 to get on DVD. Dr. Strangelove looks pretty much the same to me on DVD -- again, found it on the cheap given the advent of blu-ray. Handbrake allows me to rip the discs to an m4v file so I can stream them to my player on my TV and then put the discs away in safe storage to increase their shelf life. I'm happy. Obviously if I'm compressing them to m4v and enjoying that with no problem, DVDs are more than satisfactory. Could I even still do this with blu-ray and 3D, let alone afford them? Probably not.

Now with the 3D, I was hoping that publishers would be forced to put out three tiers of purchasing: DVD, blu-ray and 3D. And the ceiling would be on 3D while DVDs might shift even lower. I know I'm the minority when I say that I am satisfied with current DVD resolution and am okay with buying into DVDs but the price difference is unreal -- especially used discs.

Of course, this backfires if they 1) stop making DVDs of movies or 2) stop supporting DVD playing in major electronics and players. Since the discs are the same size, I don't ever thing #2 will happen but #1 is a possibility. Until then, my wallet and I are really enjoying these transition periods!

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Dorkmaster Flek]

I know I'm the minority when I say that I am satisfied with current DVD resolution and am okay with buying into DVDs but the price difference is unreal -- especially used discs.

I don't think you're the minority at all. I think a lot of people feel this way, myself included.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Maxo-Texas]

Exactly. I did the math once and at 15', the difference between DVD and HD is meaningless on a 46" screen. Pretty meaningless on a 55" screen.

I have gone a step further and stopped buying things like the X-Files (tho I did buy that before I stopped).

I only buy a movie on DVD now if I know I will be watching it at least 5 times or at least once a year. If I know I'm going to watch the movie once or twice, I rent it.

I can't keep up with the new entertainment as it is. Still haven't seen Dr. Horrible, How I met your mom, and numerous other shows. Even missing some movie's I'd like to see but don't have time for.
Same for books.

Since they are mostly equally "good", the main determining factor is price. I can watch something on netflix for $8.95 for all you can watch? I watch that first. You want me to pay $5.99 to rent one movie from Vudu? Are you crazy? Guess I'm not in your target market.

I especially like the better iPhone video games for this. I must have spent 80 hours on "Angry Birds". The same for "Finger Physics". Now I'm starting Doodle Jump. Each cost 99 cents.
I'm excited about this new space war/flight simulator game too- have a free copy- it looks super deep and if I can make it through the learning curve (it's a full fledge starship combat / star colony simulator) I'll buy the full version for ... 99 cents.

Each time I do that, I skip a few 19.99 movies and almost all $50 games.

As for movies at the theater- I go to the $4 saturday / sunday movies most- and everyone else has shifted around and we go as a group then. It's $7 for "3d" and most of the time I skip the 3d unless everyone else is crazy about it. 3d rarely matters for more than 2 minutes out of a 2 hour movie.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Anonymous Coward]

Still haven't seen Dr. Horrible ...

If you have netflix, it's available on there. I'd also suggest Archer.

How I met your mom

Well aren't you the fortunate one! :)

O/T eldavojohn

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Lumpy]

handbrake will rip blurays the same way as well.

upgrade to a bluray reader drive in your PC. and rip those blurays to 720p or 1080p m4v's and SHOCKER they look as good as the bluray but at 1/4 the space and none of the crap.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Vectormatic]

I'm excited about this new space war/flight simulator game too- have a free copy- it looks super deep and if I can make it through the learning curve (it's a full fledge starship combat / star colony simulator) I'll buy the full version for ... 99 cents.

care to share the name of this potential gem with us?

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[ByOhTek]

Exactly. I did the math once and at 15', the difference between DVD and HD is meaningless on a 46" screen. Pretty meaningless on a 55" screen.

I have an aunt and uncle that would violently disagree with you. Never underestimate the psychological effects of something like that. Funny that they are always having financial problems, buying the biggest, brightest, flashiest, newest thing.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[dogsbreath]

I know I'm the minority when I say that I am satisfied with current DVD resolution and am okay with buying into DVDs but the price difference is unreal -- especially used discs.

I don't think you're the minority at all. I think a lot of people feel this way, myself included.

Spot on. It will be interesting to see what happens with 3D... my wife gets motion sick watching 3D so its a non-starter for her. Plus we both wear glasses and have no interest in laser surgery or contacts so the glasses truly are PITA.

Again... probably not the majority but there are a lot of people for whom 3D is just not worth it.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Skater]

I know I'm the minority when I say that I am satisfied with current DVD resolution and am okay with buying into DVDs but the price difference is unreal -- especially used discs.

We have a Blu-Ray player, and I have to agree - the difference between Blu-Ray and a DVD with good upscaling, such as what the Blu-Ray player offers, is not huge. We buy Blu-Ray discs (might as well; the price difference for new discs is no longer very large), but we're in no hurry to replace any of our DVDs.

The biggest advantage for Blu-Ray I've found so far is for TV show collections - what used to take 7 discs can now be compressed to 2, which makes it easier to play/watch them, and fewer unskippable disclaimer screens ("the studio has nothing to do with the commentaries...").

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're in the minority then I'm sitting with you. I have yet to been wowed by any high def movie, and for the most part DVD's are fine for me. As I don't even own a TV, and watch the majority of my media off of hulu, network sites or other sources, I generally watch my shows in formats that are sized for a stream anyways and the quality is still more than enough for me. I do enjoy the price drop in DVD's though, more than happy to buy a season of my fav shows so long as I don't have to re-finance my home.

I do joke though that I am going blind, so by my standards I just take off my glasses and enjoy whatever is on the monitor. Give me some witty jokes + dark objects moving around and I'm golden.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Vamman]

I hate the 3D glasses.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[__aamnbm3774]

I agreed with everything you said, except the 50-60 dollar video games.

If I could find them cheaper I would go that route, but I guess I'm still a sucker for blockbuster titles :(

Comeon Black-Ops!!

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[networkBoy]

I had a family member buy a 55" sony when that was still ~$3K. then proceed to connect the HD receiver to the HDTV with a composite cable...

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[tepples]

Of course, this backfires if they 1) stop making DVDs of movies

Unfortunately, I see that as likely to happen. As DVD titles shift to the Walmart* $5 bin more and more quickly, the studios' profit margin after paying residuals will drop. Consider that VHS was pretty much dead by the time HD DVD and Blu-ray came out.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[slyrat]

Exactly. I did the math once and at 15', the difference between DVD and HD is meaningless on a 46" screen. Pretty meaningless on a 55" screen.

15 feet? Well no wonder. Most every time I've seen tv set ups it is at most 10 feet, and even then everyone I know has distances closer to 6 feet. If you have that kind of distance you should look into projection hd. You can make it a bunch bigger for just moving it back a bit farther.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[dogsbreath]

I have gone a step further and stopped buying things like the X-Files (tho I did buy that before I stopped).

I only buy a movie on DVD now if I know I will be watching it at least 5 times or at least once a year. If I know I'm going to watch the movie once or twice, I rent it.

Yup... we stopped buying video content a long time ago. We just use the PVR, watch a show a couple of times and then let it disappear into the bit bucket. I have almost no interest in owning/permanently keeping video content. My experience is that most discs are played once or twice and then just take up space on the shelf that would be better used for books, pictures or photo albums.

OTOH, I am very much into a permanent collection of audio. Music has more meaning and permanent value for us than videos/movies. Go figure.

I still buy CDs because of the flexibility and control: I can convert it to any format with ease, but if (legal) downloadable content was DRM free then I would not buy CDs either. I would rather maintain a reliable NAS vault of music than manage a collection of fragile plastic discs.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[0123456]

We have a Blu-Ray player, and I have to agree - the difference between Blu-Ray and a DVD with good upscaling, such as what the Blu-Ray player offers, is not huge.

Indeed. Blu-Ray only gives you five times as many pixels as an NTSC DVD.

Sarcasm aside, I'd agree that such an improvement in picture quality is nowhere near as strong an incentive to buy as the difference between VHS tape and DVDs (picture quality, analog vs digital, tape vs disk, etc).

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[TheCycoONE]

The key is to stay several years behind on video games. I'm currently on 1998-2003 and finding many good ones for $5-$10. As a plus they run on my laptop at full settings.

At the time I

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Maxo-Texas]

Empire Ascendant.

The instructions for the interface took about 15 minutes to wade through.. dynamic energy balancing between weapons, shields, different ship type upgrades, overloaded weapons- looks like a glorious cross between Net Trek and "Star Fleet Battles". Appears purely solo.

Typical good comment:
Super Awesome! First game I ever felt I had to write and let others know about.
Great Game! Try the light version to see if you like the concept.

Typical bad comment:
Game has a lot of potential.
I don't get it.
Game could be awesome. Too hard. Enemies are overpowered. Needs to be dummed down some. Understanding it is hard.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[cjb658]

How big is your TV? I can see 480p being fine if your screen is 30 inches or less.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, this backfires if they 1) stop making DVDs of movies or 2) stop supporting DVD playing in major electronics and players.

I'm in the a similar boat, my DVD collection has grown significantly because of the burgeoning used market. These discs go straight into the computer, get ripped with x264 & AC3 and dumped onto the media fileserver. I can't tell the difference between the DVD player and the rip, when I play them back, and barring some psychotic lockdown of personal computers, they'll be available for years to come. If you take your movies down to, say, 1G filesize, a single hard drive is capable of holding almost 2000 movies.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Anonymous Coward]

did you know you can masturbate for free? no need to buy anything at all!

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[pak9rabid]

...the differencebetween DVD and HD is meaningless on a 46" screen. Pretty meaningless on a 55" screen.

What, are you fucking blind?

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[__aamnbm3774]

1998!
No thanks. I enjoy playing against humans on this thing called 'the internet'.

I'm sure you'll reply, saying people still play Q3A and Team Fortress, but not as many as Modern Warfare 2 / Halo Reach.

I wouldn't mind booting up Serious Sam 2 for nostalgia, but that only lasts a few hours.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[krazytekn0]

...Even missing some movie's...

Ok, you got it right with "shows", "things", "books", "hours" etc. why do people insist on putting apostrophe's into plural word's

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Civil_Disobedient]

and then just take up space on the shelf that would be better used for books, pictures or photo albums

People use the same argument against CDs. And get the same response, by the way.

HARD DRIVE.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[kent_eh]

*shrug*.
I'm still watching a CRT TV, analog tuner, low-feature DVD (though it can import from USB), and occasionally VHS.
No digital cable box, no blu-ray, no HD, no flat screen.

But I do watch a lot of downloaded stuff (via USB memstick) on my old 30" CRT.

Good enough is good enough for the scant few hours of video I watch in a week.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Defenestrar]

Make sure you don't miss Jade Empire, Knights of the Old Republic, and Mass Effect. All are pretty cheap on Steam. I tend to play the ~2 year old strategy myself. And Nethack.

The other option is the new cheap games still in development like Minecraft.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Maxo-Texas]

No but apparently the people sitting 6.5' from a 52" screen must be.

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-btv1k8ewsdn/learn/learningcenter/home/TV_placement.html
52" 6.5-10.8 feet

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[eth1]

Exactly. I did the math once and at 15', the difference between DVD and HD is meaningless on a 46" screen. Pretty meaningless on a 55" screen.

Who'd have thought? If you don't set up your media room properly, you don't get the benefits of the tech. Viewing distance and display size have to be properly related, and 15' is a pretty long way. At that range, you'd need a projector (70-80" screen) to get the full benefit of 1080p. In fact at 15' on a 46" TV, you probably won't be able to see the difference between 480p and DVD (you'd need to move in to about 12' to start seeing that).

So, either pick your resolution and TV size, then sit the proper distance away, or, if you're like me and your viewing distance is dictated by the available space, pick a display size and resolution to match (and if you're limited by budget to a smaller screen, available space almost never prevents you from sitting *closer*).

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Maxo-Texas]

you win some, you loose some.

typing too fast. I get a little fast and lose with punctuation in those situations.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[geekoid]

It's irrelevant because his math is wrong.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Sirusjr]

Well now you don't even need to go more than a year or two behind new releases. God of War 3, FFXIII and many other big titles that came out earlier this year are now available through Gamefly's used game sales for $20 or so and they haven't even been out an entire year. I only buy a game new if I know that I am going to get tons of hours of gameplay out of it.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[theotherbastard]

Exactly. I did the math once and at 15', the difference between DVD and HD is meaningless on a 46" screen. Pretty meaningless on a 55" screen.

I've found that the differences between DVD and Blu-Ray are not just in the picture. The sound sampling on a Blu-Ray is a step or two above DVD. Not only is it a 'larger/louder' sound on Blu-Ray, but I really get the feeling that you get more of the depth of sound. Little things that get lost in the compression to DVD. Of the half-dozen or so Blu-Rays I own, I've definitely heard a difference in the couple that I've 'upgraded' from DVD.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[DreadPiratePizz]

No difference at 15 feet?! I'm 3 feet away from my computer monitor, and fullscreen the difference between SD and HD is like night and day.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[ngg]

...but if (legal) downloadable content was DRM free then I would not buy CDs either.

What about MP3s from Amazon? Their downloader adds them to your iTunes music database (if you're into that kind of thing) and there's no DRM.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[careysub]

Exactly. I did the math once and at 15', the difference between DVD and HD is meaningless on a 46" screen. Pretty meaningless on a 55" screen.

I can tell you that with both a 41" and a 55" screen I can immediately tell the difference when it is a Blu-ray rather than an up-sampled DVD. This has happened several times when a family member is viewing a movie and I don't know which format was purchased in. It may well not be the resolution per se that makes the difference visible, but the image quality difference is unmistakable.

That being said, mostly I don't care if the movie is on Blu-ray. Up-sampled DVD is perfectly fine for nearly all movies IMHO, even on the 55" screen. Although an image difference is easily detectable, it doesn't *improve the movie viewing experience to any significant degree*.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Anonymous Coward]

but if (legal) downloadable content was DRM free then I would not buy CDs either. I would rather maintain a reliable NAS vault of music than manage a collection of fragile plastic discs.

have you heard of something called "piracy"?

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[grangerg]

Exactly. I did the math once and at 15', the difference between DVD and HD is meaningless on a 46" screen. Pretty meaningless on a 55" screen.

I have an Optoma HD20 pointed at a 120" screen and we sit ~13' away. My wife and I came to the conclusion that if you already have the DVD, don't bother "upgrading" to the Blu-Ray. While the difference is noticeable, it's not enough to justify the expense. However, if it's a newer release, we lean towards the Blu-Ray; it's all about whether the original footage is high-def. Every Blu-Ray we have spits out 1080/24p, but not all we've watched were actually filmed in that high a resolution (or the transfer sucked).

In general, what HD (1080) gets you at 120" is that your picture looks "normal". You lose the "wow, that's sharp" feeling pretty quick. You just notice "hey, that's pretty fuzzy" on the standard-def stuff, and "that's not as clear as it could be sometimes" on 720p stuff. I've heard in many places that if you're going to sit further back than 5', you'd better have a screen larger than 50" or HD won't matter. I've personally witnessed that effect on my old 32" Trinitron and the DVD of Planet Earth; seemed to look as good at 10' as the Blu-Ray did on a 50" LCD at 10'.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Maxo-Texas]

Or the math is correct... since Crutchfield recommends sitting 6.5 feet from a 52" screen if you have a high quality signal and no more than 10.8 feet even with a terrible analogue signal.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[p3bf]

Thanks, your mention of Star Fleet Battles was enough to get me to go look at that app.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[adisakp]

Exactly. I did the math once and at 15', the difference between DVD and HD is meaningless on a 46" screen. Pretty meaningless on a 55" screen.

Either your math is wrong or your TV is crappy or your eyesight is really bad. With the higher resolution, you do get a lot more image. There are BluRay discs of Nature shows where you can see individual blades of grass or individual hairs and whiskers on an animal's face during close ups. On the DVD versions, everything looks a lot muddier.

In addition to just resolution, there is also a much higher bitrate. BluRay can hold 25GB per layer - DVD can only hold just over 4GB per layer. Having 5-6 higher data-rate influences video quality. Finally, BluRay uses a more advanced codec than DVD, even at similar BitRates and resolution to DVD, the codec should generate a higher quality video.

So we have better codec, higher quality bitrate, and higher resolution -- and you can't tell the difference between an older 640x480 video and a high quality 1920x1080 modern one on a display that takes up half your wall? I call bullshit.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[MMC Monster]

I still buy CDs because of the flexibility and control: I can convert it to any format with ease, but if (legal) downloadable content was DRM free then I would not buy CDs either. I would rather maintain a reliable NAS vault of music than manage a collection of fragile plastic discs.

Buy the CDs. Rip them and store them on the NAS. (Or buy the .mp3s on amazon.com.)

There's no reason now to keep shuffling through CDs except to take to a friend's house (or if your car doesn't have an mp3 player connection and you don't want to deal with the quality degredation associated with those tape translators or such).

Just remember to backup your vault. ;-)

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[MMC Monster]

I would buy7 some blu ray movies...if I could reliably rip them to store on a hard drive. I'm in the process of putting together a XBMC or MythTV style media center. Why would I want to have to shuffle around discs when I can control everything with the remote control?

Are they going to lose some money to people who rip DVDs and return them to the library? Sure, but they already lose those people with the entire DVD format. There's so much more money to be gained by just opening up the encryption and letting people build (or buy) the media tanks.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Rick17JJ]

I still watch my old mid-1990s era 13-inch TV set from 11 feet away. I have not felt the need to upgrade to HDTV or 3D TV or anything larger or better. However, I do not watch much television and rarely rent movies anyway.

The digital transition did not occur where I live, because the mountaintop translator between here and Phoenix was not required to make the change. I do not have cable or satellite, so I just use the amplified rabbit ears antenna for receiving the 7 available analog TV channels in the old analog NTSC format. The old analog TV broadcasts look just fine on my 13-inch TV set from 11 feet away. I am quite happy with that setup.

When I occasionally do buy a DVD, I always get the ordinary DVDs. I do not have a Blu-Ray player, so I doubt that I could tell any difference on my old mid-1990s era non-HDTV 13-inch TV set from 11 feet away anyway.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[nomorecwrd]

And I bet $10 he said it looked spectacular! Best picture ever!

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Omestes]

Your not alone, and I do own a Bluray player. In the last year I have bought 4 Bluray movies, and all of them were discounted to within $3 of the DVD, or were from used bookstores. $5 is the price difference I'm willing to pay, if it is more than that I will get the DVD. I'm being generous, since I'm not sure Bluray brings $5 of added value, since they have one killer drawback that DVDs don't, loading screens. I'm not actually sure I can tell the difference between BlueRay and upscaled standard DVDs on my set-up, around 12' from a 40" LCD TV. On some movies the display is even worse, older movies, filmed before digital movies the film grain on the HD version is annoying and distracting. I'm glad I can see all the grain that my old DVDs and inferior technology hid from me. For newer movies I can barely tell the difference, and in a decent double-blind study I might not even be able to, thanks to psychological effects.

I find it bizarre how much they cost in a retail store. They are 2x as much as a DVD. Who the hell pays $22 for a movie? Why not just get two regular DVDs? Or a regular DVD and a six pack. I currently have several thresholds set, I will not pay more than $10 for a DVD thats over six months old. I will not pay more than $15 (at the extreme end, it better had killer special features) for a Blueray. If a movie i really want is above those thresholds, I will go to a used bookstore, if they don't have it or don't have it at the right price, I will buy a couple books instead, and devote that weekends "family fun night" to playing Arkham Horror instead.

So why do I own a Blueray player? Netflix streaming.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Anonymous Coward]

The only time I've been "wowed" by HD is when my dad bought a 60" HDTV for his, at tops, 20' living room, with the sofa maybe 10' away from the TV. The size was a bit wowing, but when I got it hooked up some channel was playing The Empire Strikes Back at 1080, and I was floored. I could tell the difference.

Not that it makes me want go out and cough up enough cash for a 60" TV, and go rebuy the full trilogy YET AGAIN. I might offer to watch his dog when he goes on vacation next time, though.

Not to sound antagonistic, though, you seem overly cheap. I don't mean that in a complimentary "a penny saved" way, either. Yes, I have limits for the price I'm willing to pay for entertainment. Music being the cheapest, art being the highest, DVDs/Blueray being $10 or no deal. Books being roughly the same, I refuse to spend over $15 for a hardback, and generally live through Amazon and Bookmans (the local used book super-store). As for games... It is my addiction, I probably cough up over $100 a year, but then again I like to completely zone out in them, and play them obsessively for a month or two. I have taken to pirating them before buying them though, since there is no way to actually know if they are worth the stupid prices they charge without actually paying the stupid price. This has saved me a bit of money, but oddly increased my spending too, since I'm willing to download more games, but feel a strange obligation to pay for them if I like them. So while I buy less AAA games, I buy more little games, like Torchlight, Audiosurf, Minecraft... etc...

I can't compare a 99c iPhone game to something big like Starcraft II. I probably would pick Starcraft most of the time. I like the immersion, and not just the time-killing.

I have around 50 books in a pile, waiting to be read. I lie, I have around 15 books in a physical pile, and another 35 sitting on my Nook's memory waiting to be read. I have no problem with this. Buying a book is almost always money well spent.

Then again we're not really hurting for money. We're not rich, but we're comfortable within our means, so spending $60 at Amazon at a pop (not every week, or month, granted) isn't something we lose much sleep over. I generally don't fret over spending money on entertainment, but then again we get as much entertainment from watching Antiques Roadshow on Boxee as we do from many big movie releases, probably more, since I can't think of a movie that came out since Moon that I actually wanted to see. And we never go to theaters, not because of cost but because the experience isn't as good as watching it in your own living room, with beer, and no little children screaming because their parents have never heard of the term "age appropriate", no overweight people with dubious hygiene, no chatty teens, or morons with cellphones.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[An ominous Cow art]

Ditto. I remember hearing about this game a while back, but had completely forgotten about it.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Anonymous Coward]

but if (legal) downloadable content was DRM free then I would not buy CDs either. I would rather maintain a reliable NAS vault of music than manage a collection of fragile plastic discs.

??? Amazon? iTunes? Where are you legally downloading music that has DRM? Now if you said "lossless" I might buy your argument, but DRM? Is that really a part of legally downloadable music anywhere anymore?

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Maxo-Texas]

Fair comments.

I live in a $150k house when I could "afford" a $240k house. But it will be paid for in 3 years- I won't be 55 and I'll be debt free with a couple hundred grand in retirement, a pension, and decent social security payment (if we get it in the end). I wear my dress shirts twice before I take them to the cleaners unless I stain them. I am considering cutting cable TV for netflix and hulu. I cut off my land line phone until they offered me one for $16 a month with 25 calls per month limit (I use it to find my phone when I lose it). I'm considering cutting off my personal cell phone now that I have a work provided iphone.

My expenses are elsewhere.
Charity donations run about $3k a year. That includes (but not every year) red cross, police survivor fund, USO, and relatives in distress financially (lot of that lately).
I downhill ski, that runs about $1k a trip (and a ludicrous cost per hour- probably $30 per hour).
I buy D&D miniatures (about $500 a year).
I can drop $10 on a cigar that I burn up faster than a movie.
I have an annual 10 day beach house vacation that usually runs a few grand.
I also average a grand a year on wine (and that seems to be increasing slowly as more friends pick up the habit).
I probably drop $1k a year on board games too (tho that is decreasing now that I have most of the top games and the new games seem like variations/repeats with new themes).
I drop $1k a year on a cellular modem which at most is used 20 days a year.
I'm probably going to drop $1k on a cruise next spring.

I used to eat out a lot- I caught and stopped that. I wasn't creating any memories compared to the money I was blowing.

I played Rise of the Triad, Diablo, Doom, Quake, and others TO death and I used to drop about $2k a year on computers but I caught and stopped that (now it's about $1.5k per 3 years).

I don't judge people who spend a lot of money on a big TV. Everyone has to have a hobby. To me, the benefit of DVD's were immediate and obvious. The benefit of Bluray is incremental and teeny. I'm not going to sit 6' from my 52" TV so I can see a difference. I own a 3d bluray player and so far no disks. I got it to play netflix. It was a quality brand (LG) and it was inexpensive (under $150) and had good reviews. I've watched the "HD" netflix content and the difference is imperceptible to me. As I said in the parent post, at one point I read up on the resolving ability of the human eye and did the math and for the way most people I know watch their TV's (over 10') it didn't make a difference on the 46" screens they were getting.

Perhaps when I am ready, I'll upgrade to a wall size screen-- I'll be able to afford it because I'm cheap.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[nine-times]

I can't keep up with the new entertainment as it is. Still haven't seen Dr. Horrible, How I met your mom, and numerous other shows. Even missing some movie's I'd like to see but don't have time for. Same for books.

I wonder if this could reasonably be blamed as contributing to poor sales in recent years. Obviously there's a lot of entertainment to choose from-- books, TV, movies, video games, music. But also, I now have a big backlog of old movies and TV shows I want to watch on Netflix. I've seen a bit of people borrowing/trading DVD box sets of whole television seasons. Plus there's a lot of stuff on Hulu...

I feel absolutely flooded with options.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Dogtanian]

Found a complete X-Files box set for under $100 brand new [..] Same with a bunch of other movies I liked but never had the cash to blow $20-$30 to get on DVD. Dr. Strangelove [..] found it on the cheap given the advent of blu-ray.

I don't think the fall in DVD prices has as much to do with Blu-Ray as you think- they'd already fallen significantly by the mid-2000s. Box sets in particular were already massively cheaper than the equivalent material would have been on VHS.

I saw the Matrix 10-disc set selling for around UK £20 three or more years ago, before Blu-Ray was remotely affordable for the vast majority of people, and major films have been on sale in the under-£5 ( US $8?) price range for quite a number of years now.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Maxo-Texas]

It's not an age thing, since my daughter's TV (46") is about 12' away. So is it geographical?

I mean with 6', I don't see how you can fit in a coffee table and still have room for your legs. The couch takes up 3' alone.

What area of the country are you in?

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[squiggleslash]

: I can convert it to any format with ease, but if (legal) downloadable content was DRM free then I would not buy CDs either

FWIW, there are plenty of non-DRM options these days. I personally use Amazon.com. Amazon even has a GNU/Linux app (with a suitable Ubuntu .deb) that takes care of downloading multitrack albums automatically (why they can't just send you a zip is anyone's guess.)

The bigger problem is one of quality, but, personally, my ears aren't sensitive to know the difference between a well encoded MP3 and a CD.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[RocketRabbit]

It's not though. The point is that, even with perfect vision, you are still limited to a certain pixel size per distance before you lose the individual pixels.

If your TV is 15' away, you can't see the pixels, even with perfect vision, at 1080. 720 is even stretching it.

If you are one of those people who watches TV from 6' away, then sure, the resolution matters more.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Dreadrik]

Or even from iTunes Music Store. They haven't had DRM on their music since march 2009.

I buy all my music from eMusic. It's a subscription based service and they sell you music from all but the biggest labels for about half the price of iTunes's.
All music is in high quality MP3's and once you bought them, you can download them again and again on any number of computers.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[ConceptJunkie]

Although my evidence is anecdotal, I've sometime noticed a greater tendency to put inappropriate apostrophes on words to make them plural when the word ends with a vowel.

I'm sure some linguist or psychologist could come up with a theory for it. Although there seems to be a huge increase in people using apostrophes in plurals, I, who feel I would never make that mistake, have on occasion done it before I caught myself in the heat of typing some nugget of profundity on /. or wherever. It's like using the wrong "their" (or "they're" or "there")... sometimes our fingers get ahead of our brains (or vice versa). So while some (probably most) of it is people being ignorant of the language, I'm convinced that a lot of it is a natural tendency for brain farts with respect to this particular feature (and other similar ones) of the language.

Now checking for stupid typos... Oh, look, I was spared of the humiliation of making a stupid typo while complaining about stupid typos. Now that I said that, I'm paranoid.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[adisakp]

Yeah, but this parent said that DVD (480 lines of resolution) is INDISTINGUISHABLE from BluRay in quality. Basically he said there's no difference between high-def and standard-def video for a big screen at a normal distance away from viewers. That's total BS. If you have a really good DVD upscaler, you come close to BluRay but you'll still see areas that are more blurred out and occasional artifacts that you won't see on the BlueRay versions. And you're never going to see individual facial hairs and pores on an actor during a close-up (although that may be a good thing).

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[WuphonsReach]

In addition to just resolution, there is also a much higher bitrate. BluRay can hold 25GB per layer - DVD can only hold just over 4GB per layer. Having 5-6 higher data-rate influences video quality. Finally, BluRay uses a more advanced codec than DVD, even at similar BitRates and resolution to DVD, the codec should generate a higher quality video.

Close, but not quite.

You can easily fit a 720p movie on a DVD-R - if you use an advanced codec like h.264 (x264). And probably a 1080p as well, but you wouldn't have room for extras. Traditional DVD MPEG2 encoding bitrate was typically somewhere in the 3-6Mbps range for 480p. To get the same quality with h.264 on 480p, you only need about 1.5-2.5Mbps. Any 720p footage typically can be compressed into about 3-4Mbps and 4-6Mbps for 1080p. Which would still enable you to fit most movies on a dual-layer DVD.

The reason that MPEG2 bitrates for 720p and 1080i are so much higher is because MPEG2 simply does not scale well. Broadcast hi-def is typically MPEG2 at anywhere from 10-20Mbps. To do the same with h.264, you'd only need 1/3 to 1/2 the bitrate. But MPEG2 is the ATSC standard (sigh) and a lot of the set-top box hardware can't handle h.264 yet.

Early Bluray releases used MPEG2 encoding, but more recent releases have finally switched over to MPEG4/h.264/AVC.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[RocketRabbit]

You're still missing the point. "Normal" TV viewing distance is across the living room. 12'-15' or so. At that distance HD is literally pointless.

I am not saying that you can't tell the difference. I am saying you can't tell the difference between 480, 720, and 1080 if you have a typical sized screen (42"-48") and are viewing it from a typical viewing distance.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[dogsbreath]

: I can convert it to any format with ease, but if (legal) downloadable content was DRM free then I would not buy CDs either

FWIW, there are plenty of non-DRM options these days. I personally use Amazon.com. Amazon even has a GNU/Linux app (with a suitable Ubuntu .deb) that takes care of downloading multitrack albums automatically (why they can't just send you a zip is anyone's guess.)

The bigger problem is one of quality, but, personally, my ears aren't sensitive to know the difference between a well encoded MP3 and a CD.

Boy... a lot of responses to a little statement. ;->

I probably should expand a bit... there are a lot of holes in the available DRM free, legal, online content. eg: most of what I am interested on, say iTunes, is all DRM'd. A lot of the alternatives (eg: amazon) don't carry what I am looking for. My first preference is to purchase online and download to my vault. Second choice is to spend time in the pawn shops' previously owned (previously stolen?) collections. eBay and Kijiji are good sources. If I have to, I will buy retail but a lot of what I am looking for is no longer available. eh... its a process.

Really, I was saying that for me, ownership of an original physical disk is (almost) pointless. Just give me the file and don't make things complicated.

I was also trying to say that I like having music files on hand because I listen to them again and again but I seldom do that with films and shows. Lord of the Rings, a few others are worth keeping but it seems that the value of watching video content again is often much less than listening to music again and again. For me anyways.

Thanks for the pointers y'all.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[herojig]

count me in too...cool tech at rock bottom prices; who cares if it's not 3D or blueray!

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Idiomatick]

"haven't seen Dr. Horrible...don't have time for. ... I must have spent 80 hours on "Angry Birds". The same for "Finger Physics". Now I'm starting Doodle Jump. "

Hmmmm. Dr. Horrible is what? an hour?

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Lost_In_Specs]

As someone with only one functional eye, I sure hope that 3D doesn't become the standard and screw me over.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[kiddygrinder]

Or you could continue to not care and save a lot of money.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[AmberBlackCat]

My friend was telling me he couldn't enjoy DVD anymore since he had seen the beauty of HD. So he had to buy all of his movies over again in Blu-Ray. I did my best to avoid HDTV and Blu-Ray so I wouldn't fall into that trap. Then the United States government forced me to upgrade.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Maxo-Texas]

I'll chime in but the other guy caught my point.

I'm completely surprised to find out that the recommended distance for a 52" screen with a high quality blu ray signal is 6.5'. I'm astonished people sit 6.5' from a screen that large. Everyone I know watches their TV's from a couch where their head is at least 10' away from the screen. Even 4000 lines (4x blu ray) in the movie theaters on the really big screens turns in to 1/5" pixels. You can see those easily from 10' away.

A blu ray on those screens would have pixels .8" square. A DVD would have pixels about 1.5" square.

I'm willing to grant that people who buy a screen over 4' diagonal and then watch it from 6.5' away can see a difference between bluray and DVD.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Maxo-Texas]

What's pushing daisies, 44 hours?
What's season 4 of "The Guild", an hour?
What's How I Met your Mother, "88 hours"?
What's Batman, animated series (116 episodes- about 2100 minutes)
What's Doc Martin, 24 hours?
Everybody's War .. 2 more hours (this was solid)
Zombies Anonymous.. 2 more hours (this was awesome)

Dr Horrible is on the list. Even free, there is a lot of stuff ahead of it.

TV comes out of a different time budget than iphone video games for the most part. I play a lot of them 20 minutes as I'm going to bed or I have 10 minutes of downtime (waiting for food at a restaurant, at a friends house and they go to the bathroom, etc.).

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Eivind]

But that's not required. Even just staying ONE year behind the curve as in "never buy a game that's been on the market for less than a year" is sufficient to generally get the games at half the price, or less.

I do this. It works splendid. Bioshock is $14-$19 now, and it's just as much fun as it was when it was $59. At the moment I'm playing uncharted 2, which came out slightly over a year ago. I got it for $35 - and that was the "game of the year edition" that includes add-ons that those buying it at $59 a year ago would have to shell out $30 for. $35 is a lot cheaper than $89.

And it's not as if this is an old, crappy, last-generation game. Progress in gaming is fast. But not fast enough to make a one-year-old game obsolete.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[vegiVamp]

I can see the difference on my 46" TV, but it is indeed meaningless. DVD is more than satisfactory, BR adds nothing whatsoever to the experience for me.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Heian-794]

As someone with only one functional eye, I sure hope that 3D doesn't become the standard and screw me over.

Couldn't agree more. There have been several "advancements" in television that have benefited most people, but they didn't actually leave those unable to take advantage totally unable to use them -- the switch from B&W to color didn't prevent color-blind people from looking at a color screen, and people with blurred vision who can't distinguish HD content certainly don't lose anything by looking at it.

3-D, on the other hand, is less than worthless to those without binocular vision. It actually exacerbates their (our) handicap. In an age when we like to consider ourselves sensitive to handicaps of all kinds, I sincerely hope that all TVs can convert 3-D images into 2-D ones so that more of the population can see them.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[slyrat]

It's not an age thing, since my daughter's TV (46") is about 12' away. So is it geographical?

I mean with 6', I don't see how you can fit in a coffee table and still have room for your legs. The couch takes up 3' alone.

What area of the country are you in?

Well I checked last night and our tv is 7 feet from where we sit to view it. It is only a 720p 40 inch tv, but we certainly can tell the difference from dvd and blu-ray. Area of the country shouldn't make any difference since you're indoors when you watch it...

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[alexandre_ganso]

Apple and amazon sell drm-free music.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Maxo-Texas]

No what I'm saying is that in my area of the country, living rooms and viewing habits tend towards large rooms with over 10' from the television. 7' seems extremely close. I would feel uncomfortable (smothered) by a huge screen that close. The advertisements show a couch or pit group 10+ feet away from a centrally located screen about 2' off the ground, often with a coffee table in the middle. A very common setup is TV on one wall and the seating on the opposite wall.

Do you have naturally tiny rooms where you are, a custom viewing room, or some tiny corner of a larger room set aside for viewing.

I take it that you don't have a coffee table or it is pushed against the TV.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[slyrat]

Well I live in Ohio. I think it is more that I'm in an apartment. The living room is long and thin, so the distance from tv to edge of couch is the 7 feet. We do have a coffee table that is also long and thin, so it is probably 2-3 feet of the 7. The rest being the walking room. It doesn't seem cramped to me, but then I guess I haven't really ever had a space that could even do 15 feet if I wanted.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Sir_Lewk]

Why would I have any interest in playing a game that doesn't have two or three years of staying power? If the average gamer is only going to play it for a year or so then forget about it, I think I can safely ignore it entirely. I'll play at most a game a year, because I have better things to do with my time, so waiting two or so years to see what games are still considered to be good is a superb way of filtering out the crap.

Furthermore, there are easily hundreds of people still playing Q3A at any particular time. Seeing as you can only put 16 people in a match at once, I'm not really sure why more people playing at once gets you... anything. (as a bonus, there are far fewer caffeine addicted 12 year olds playing Q3A. The people that still play it play it because they love it, not because they feel the need to inform you how promiscuous your mother is.)

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[__aamnbm3774]

meh, whatever. I like staying current on games.
You can live in the past all you want. We probably wouldn't be friends in real life anyway, so this helps avoid that conflict.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[Maxo-Texas]

Thank you!

I remember when they first brought out the phillips thin screen and they had a bunch of 20somethings take it into a long but narrow room and put it on one wall and sit on a couch on the other wall and at the time I thought "Man that seems very close!" It was probably about 8' leaning back and 6' leaning forward.

Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling

[sznupi]

It does seem to be a matter of custom. I'm over the Pond, where probably a larger portion of the population lives in flats, and typically probably smaller.

TV and couch tend to be almost on the opposite sides of a room; certainly closer to 12' than 7 (if Google calc converts that properly from/to meters)

Gaming, gaming, gaming, gaming,...

[WikiChris]

Doesn't really surprise me too much. 3D is a bit of fun and the whole glasses thing... But I am absolutely convinced it's going to be absolutely massive in gaming. PS3 owners are all going to want one and enough will buy to make it the next big thing but not for average Joe. That extra bit of immersion will go down VERY well. Xbox will get very interested soon.

Re:Gaming, gaming, gaming, gaming,...

[j0nb0y]

Honestly, I think /.ers are hugely underestimating the draw of sports. ESPN has already made a huge investment in 3D. ESPN3D is a huge draw for sports fans.

It's going to take time to catch on though. HDTVs didn't take off overnight either.

Re:Gaming, gaming, gaming, gaming,...

[Eponymous Coward]

I think you're wrong about sports. Watching sports on TV is often a very social thing. Especially the big events like the Super Bowl, World Series, World Cup, Stanley Cup, etc... Who wants to socialize around a big game wearing glasses? Even if they manage to shrink them and make them not burn through batteries, nobody wants to need glasses to watch TV with their friends. At my place, when we are watching a game, probably only 1/3 of the time is actually watching the television. Another 1/3 is spent preparing and eating food and 1/3 is spent just talking.

Somebody sitting at home alone might go for it. But that too assumes people give their undivided attention to the television. In my experience, that simply isn't the case.

Re:Gaming, gaming, gaming, gaming,...

[Gilmoure]

And once 3D^3 starts up on the Ocho...

Re:Gaming, gaming, gaming, gaming,...

[sznupi]

That Nvidia "3D" shutterglasses thing is available for, what, 2 years? In a market quite a bit more receptive to expensive upgrades necessary for new "shiny" - I guess it's my fault for not noticing how major of a success it is.

Re:Gaming, gaming, gaming, gaming,...

[sznupi]

Oh boy... either wide shots of the action from a distance, quite flat in nature and where most of the information is conveyed by position on the field, or very "fast" close-ups showing very local action and with the rust blurred out. That will be fun disaster to watch.

Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there even any content to watch on your flashy new 3D TV? I'm not going to bother replacing my perfectly good TVs with new 3D ones unless there's some really compelling 3D movies I need to watch on them (can't imagine anything that would fit that description.) And even if I was replacing my TV anyway, I'd want some really good content on the shelves before I shelled out extra for the 3D feature.

It's possible that those Europeans who are buying 3D TVs with no glasses are simply waiting. They figure they'll shell out the extra for 3D on the TV now (cheaper than replacing the whole TV later), but will wait to get glasses until there's a movie they want to watch with them. But the concept of 3D isn't attractive enough to me to make that investment

Too many barriers for mainstream adoption.

[popoutman]

The 'active' screens with the requirement for very expensive glasses is definitely a barrier to adoption. Pretty much only the true early adopters / gadget freaks / over-rich will get these, and even then mostly for bragging rights. Active screens are not suitable for those with kids, or those people with friends.

The 'passive' screens are so much more expensive than the 'active' screens, that's another barrier to consumer takeup, at least these sets have cheap near-disposable glasses as a requirement to get the 3d effect. This is a better option for those that actually have a more than a few friends that might come over to watch the screen.

Now when the screens that have the micro-lens array in front of the pixel matrix, that will allow a better 3d effect, if only in certain places around the set. That'll be an improvement for sure.

My pie-in-the-sky idea is a micromirror array, fed by three-colour lasers, that'll illuminate the eye's pupil with the correct pattern for each eye, with tracking of the pupil locations. This would ensure that no matter where one stood in front of the display, the correct image would be seen at all times. Anyone know if this is a realistic possibility?
And all of the 3d diaplays will do absolutely nothing for those of us that have e.g. a lazy eye or other problems with binocular vision. My girlfriend has poor vision in one eye, and doesn't have true binocular vision available, so 3d tv is not a priority.

Re:Too many barriers for mainstream adoption.

[elrous0]

I can remember when plasma HDTV's first came out they cost $15,000-$20,000 and not even most hardcore early-adopting videophiles (incl. myself) could hope to afford them. It's taken over 10 years for those to become mainstream. So early adopter data means nothing. Now, if these things still aren't selling 5 or 6 years from now, then they'll be in trouble.

Re:Too many barriers for mainstream adoption.

[Abcd1234]

My pie-in-the-sky idea is a micromirror array, fed by three-colour lasers, that'll illuminate the eye's pupil with the correct pattern for each eye, with tracking of the pupil locations

Someone's been masturbating to Snow Crash again...

Re:Too many barriers for mainstream adoption.

[Rich0]

My pie-in-the-sky idea is a micromirror array, fed by three-colour lasers, that'll illuminate the eye's pupil with the correct pattern for each eye, with tracking of the pupil locations.

I hope not! Otherwise there goes my ability to anywhere outside without being bombarded with images in front of my face. Pretty soon we'll be selling glasses designed to block TV transmissions...

Re:Too many barriers for mainstream adoption.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have lazy eye and terrible vision in my left eyel - completely screwed me up in sports as a kid.

Around age 18 I got prescription glasses. Not only does my eye track now, but it focuses slightly better.
And, no more problem w/ 3D films, apart from the hassle of fitting the 2nd set of glasses over my regular ones.

Re:Too many barriers for mainstream adoption.

[The Clockwork Troll]

You've got it backwards.

The fricken' lasers need to shoot _out of_ the eyes.

Re:Too many barriers for mainstream adoption.

[Anonymous Coward]

>My pie-in-the-sky idea is a micromirror array, fed by three-colour lasers, that'll illuminate the eye's pupil with the correct pattern for each eye, with tracking of the pupil locations

The first part already exists and is a product: http://www.microvision.com/wearable_displays/wearable_application_gallery.html

I've used their monochrome HMD, quite impressive effect.

Re:Too many barriers for mainstream adoption.

[Flyin' Low]

I think the better option than zapping the eye with lasers is a simple neural interface that turns on and off your left and right eyes alternately, at 60 Hz. That should be much better than glasses, and what could go wrong?

Re:Too many barriers for mainstream adoption.

[Eponymous Coward]

But 3D TV's don't have a huge price barrier. They are within reach now, especially to the hardcore early-adopting videophiles.

I think the big mistake being made is that the manufacturers are assuming people give the television their undivided attention when it's on. That just doesn't happen all that often anymore. Perhaps for watching a movie and certainly while playing a video game, but other than that, people are often doing something else while they watch TV.

Re:Too many barriers for mainstream adoption.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

y pie-in-the-sky idea is a micromirror array, fed by three-colour lasers, that'll illuminate the eye's pupil with the correct pattern for each eye, with tracking of the pupil locations.

Lasers - in the eye?! We'd go BLIND, man! ;)

Re:Too many barriers for mainstream adoption.

[Anonymous Coward]

e.g. a lazy eye or other problems with binocular vision. My girlfriend has poor vision in one eye, and doesn't have true binocular vision available, so 3d tv is not a priority.

Sounds like a real keeper. I bet she has to fend off all the other proto-nerds with a stick.

Oh... right. That would require depth perception.

Re:Too many barriers for mainstream adoption.

[LukeWebber]

My pie in the sky idea is that the idiots pushing the 3D cart might give up and go back to giving the consumer something he actually wants. I can count on the thumbs of both feet the number of things I would care to watch in 3D. IT doesn't really add anything much to the experience except, potentially, vertigo.

Can't wait for this fad to die...

[MetalliQaZ]

I hate 3D. It looks awful, adds unnecessary cost to everything, and gives me eye-strain headaches faster than "Battling seizure robots". Lets not forget the fact that even Justin Timberlake can't make those glasses look cool in their super-budget commercial.

It is just a fad pushed by a panicked industry who is seeing their strangle hold on the home-cinema market evaporating to iPads and other disruptive technologies. The fad will die, just like it did in the 50's, but it will gobble up a few orders of magnitude more money this time.

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[digitalhermit]

I know... 3D right now is a gimmick. It was a gimmick in the 50s too...

But they also said color was gimmickry. So were moving pictures. And sound.

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[Manhigh]

Color adds information. In its current state, 3D doesn't. Anyone who plays first-person videogames understands that you can feel pretty damned immersed into the virtual environment just by experiencing it through a 2D screen.

When we have holographic TV, and I can walk around to the other side of the projection table to watch a football game from another angle...THAT will be worth upgrading to.

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[0123456]

But they also said color was gimmickry. So were moving pictures. And sound.

You don't need to wear special glasses for color, moving pictures or sound. And they provide real color, moving pictures (ok, stills at 24-30fps which fool the eye into seeing motion) and sound rather than fake 3D which doesn't change when you move and is focussed on a different place to your eyes.

I watched part of a movie on a 3D TV a while ago and while it was OK it really didn't add anything worth paying $3000 or wearing silly glasses for. Or even paying $200 for yet another Blu-Ray player.

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[amRadioHed]

I'm actually surprised that the movie industry would be pushing for 3D in home. With the way that home theaters and downloaded movies cut into ticket sales, I would have expected them to want 3D as a way to lure people to the theaters.

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[glwtta]

But they also said color was gimmickry. So were moving pictures. And sound.

Did they actually? Or is that just something people like to say to seem clever?

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[geekoid]

there home-cinema market isn't evaporating. It's really stpid to think they are loosing out to iPads.

new 3d tech is awesome and I love it. Especially for computer games. I would love to play Wii games in 3d.

The issue here is that:
A) bad economy
B) a lot of the people who would buy this recently bought a large TV and can't justify another large purchse. see A.
C) Some new devices don't require glasses, but I don't mind wearing them anyways.
D) Some TVs that can puch 120Hz can already do 3d. No new purchase needed.

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[geekoid]

3d does add information in it's new state. This is why it's awesome as compared to previous 3d attempts.

And 3d with video games is so freaking awesome.

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[Anonymous Coward]

But they also said color was gimmickry. So were moving pictures. And sound.

Did they actually? Or is that just something people like to say to seem clever?

Color TV gives me headaches!

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in the motion picture industry, with studio execs who have been in the business many many decades.

And yes, all of those were genuinely considered gimmicks by the majority of the population and industry.

Of the three, sound was the one that was almost universally called a gimmick. Of the dozens of very profitable movie theater chains that existed at the time, only 1 studio and exhibitor invested heavily in sound. The entire industry thought the talking picture was a gimmick and joke, and felt the company had dug its own grave. That company is Warner Brothers, and most of the others are gone.

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[Richy_T]

And the 80s. I still have my "Tomorrow's World" 3D glasses around somewhere.

Roll on 2040...

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[Thaelon]

Uhhh...no.

It's definitely catching on and getting more and more popular.

It's not caught on yet for home TVs, but it's absolutely here to stay in the cinema. Half the movies out right now are available in 3D.

And this is the first real innovation in cinema tech in a long time and you're giving the studios shit for it?

The tech they used in the 50s was a cheap hack and didn't work very well. The current tech of two synchronized images viewed through differently polarized lenses? Outstanding results, and I for one applaud them for it. It makes going to the movies worth it again for a change.

It's not some gimmicky hack, it's literally that video content has finally caught up to audio. In stereo at last. We have two ears and two eyes, and only recently have the studios taken advantage of the fact that humans have two video channels as well as two audio. Don't knock it!

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[Blakey Rat]

Charlie Chaplin famously thought sound was a gimmick, although he did eventually adopt it. (Kind of-- the movies are still *mostly* silent.)

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been very impressed with the quality of picture some 3D tv's have and find it ads much more to the movie or gaming experience than a lot of people actually think.

I think the 3D tv question is a lot like surround sound, most people without surround sound think it isn't a big deal but once you have a proper surround sound setup at home it really does add to the immersion and experience of watching a good movie or playing a game.

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[Anonymous Coward]

And you wonder why everyone thinks you're a tool.

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[Namarrgon]

You can feel pretty damn immersed in a black & white movie too, or a simple book; that's not really the issue.

But stereo 3D certainly adds information, especially to games. Parallax adds a powerful depth cue to the existing perspective foreshortening etc. Playing shooters, I sometimes throw grenades too short or too long, because I don't always have enough information to accurately judge the distance, and parallax would help that. Driving games in particular would benefit (me) if I could better judge the distance (depth) to the turn, and the speed (change of depth) I'm approaching it at.

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[vegiVamp]

Regardless of all that, both colour and sound did not require extra hardware to enjoy, just the right set. 3D will similarly get it's fighting chance only when the appropriate sets require nothing extra and allow you to watch from more than one micrometer-positioned chair without losing quality.

Personally, I hope we get immersive 3D before it takes of for good.

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[sznupi]

The tech in the ... 30s, actually, worked just the same, with "outstanding results" (but if you insist on 50s there's The "golden era" section)

It can be easily argued how it doesn't take advantage of our "two" channels, instead confusing them, providing information which is not merely incomplete but outright false (convincing the visual cortex of depth while making refocusing and changes of parallax impossible)

Also, the "3D" sister of photography is available for over 150 years; and for a long time quite cheap and easy, from time to time also with some momentary enthusiasm... but when was the last time you viewed such photo made by somebody you know? have you made even one yourself? Do you know anybody who did?

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[sznupi]

But it adds wrong parallax (not merely an image of "incomplete" kind), one that doesn't work right - objects don't become "doubled" when in front of or behind the depth of focus.

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[Namarrgon]

The parallax is (potentially) identical to that experienced in real life, or at least it is if the viewer's head is in the optimal position, and is focused on the same point that the camera is (and the scene has been created correctly for the viewer's screen size and position). Of course, if (inevitably) the viewer looks elsewhere in the scene or isn't optimally centered, issues do arise which are less tolerable by some of the population, and hence some still get a better experience than others. And of course bad scene construction can easily make this a lot worse.

The only unavoidable disparity is where the eye lens' focal length (to the screen) differs from the focal point of the parallax (in the scene), and this is minimised when the screen is around 12-15m+ distant (i.e. theatre viewing, not so much for home viewing).

So yeah, you do in fact see doubled images on near/far objects, both in real life and on 3D screens, when the object's apparent depth is sufficiently different from the eyes' parallax point. This is something I have to deal with in the software I write.

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[sznupi]

It won't be identical if it's beyond control, if when looking somewhere where one shouldn't - there is still only doubled and blurry image there, no matter how hard the eyes try. Worse, isn't this on what eyes constantly stumble upon during "proper" viewing anyway, when depth of focus in the displayed image changes, just a bit in reverse? (the perceived focus & parallax change - but the visual system must suppress playing along, remain mostly fixed on the screen)

Perhaps most telling is how the posterchild of recent "3D" movement seems almost like a meta-joke: for all the advanced tech in the setting of Avatar (insane energy densities, interstellar travel at high relativistic speeds, huge advances in materials science, neuroimaging, and so on), the display tech is, overall, barely further along from our times, and from what it promotes. Virtually all instances of photographs were...plain old analogue prints (*). Virtually all displays not really utilizing "3D" - except for the topographic one, used not for displaying recorded "3D video" (what many scifi productions had for some time), but simply for what is (also in setting!) just a generated CGI. Where was something as straightforward as, for example, augmented contact lenses? (something what we essentially have already, in the form of airplane helmets, skiing goggles and ,lately (I heard), even glasses with HUD; all of which can get interesting once coupled with basically current augmented toys on smartphones) Never mind how, with such levels of neuroimaging and "neurolinking", a simple patch acting as a brain-computer interface should be doable, for the most basic stuff.

It almost looks like Cameron has something else in mind for cheap stereoscopic screens (doesn't he have some physics background? They should be nice for education and few of the "inspiring" or revving-up scientific disciplines), but knows what was the only way to get mass-commodity industry onboard.

(*)IRL, 2D photography also completely dominates, despite its "3D" sister being barely younger, at ~160 years old. With some fascination now and then, with cheap and easy setup possible for a long time. But ultimately - ignored. When was the last time you've made a "3D" photo? Have you seen even one such photo made by the people you know?
Do you have that Nvidia "3D" glasses thing for games, available for 2 years or so? VirtualBoy?

Re:Can't wait for this fad to die...

[sznupi]

"3D" shutter glasses for PC games are available for over a decade. I assume you had those at least for some time or knew at least one person who did?

Paying for the headache privelage

[onyxruby]

Executive's view of why 3D TV's aren't selling:
Hey, why don't people want to pay for something with the latest technology? Avatar was awesome..

Consumers view of why 3D TV's aren't selling:
Hey, I can pay a huge premium for something that will give me a headache, requires glasses and that almost no content can use. Besides most 3D movies were done after the fact and aren't avatar.

Tip to electronics executives, your market for 3D TV's wont be ready for another 5-10 years.

Re:Paying for the headache privelage

[kehren77]

Everyone always uses Avatar as their example of "good" 3D. Am I the only person on the planet that thought Avatar's 3D was more annoying than anything else. I didn't get a headache or anything, it just didn't do anything for me.

And it's not really 3D. Real 3D would allow someone to see around an object by changing your position relative to it. The 3D being marketed today is mere depth perception trickery.

Re:Paying for the headache privelage

[iamhassi]

"Hey, I can pay a huge premium for something that will give me a headache, requires glasses and that almost no content can use. "

Or pay for a feature I'll only use maybe 4 hours a month, assuming you watch a 3D movie twice a month. Sorry, that 4 hours of fun a month is not worth an extra $2,000, I could buy a lot of Avatar 3D tickets for that.

Besides, if we all had 3D HDTVs doesn't that mean pirates would download 3D movies and the MPAA would be mad again? Can't make everyone happy.

Re:Paying for the headache privelage

[Anonymous Coward]

The 3D effect in Avatar was all-right. Sure, it isn't real 3D, but hey. It added to the movie.

But for absolutely gob-smacking 3D, go see "Despicable Me" in 3D, you won't regret it!

Re:Paying for the headache privelage

[PingSpike]

I thought Avatar's 3D was pretty neat...until about 10-15 minutes in when I honestly didn't even notice it anymore.

Re:Paying for the headache privelage

[Anonymous Coward]

I can pay a huge premium for something that will give me a headache, requires glasses and that almost no content can use...

something = whisky, right?

Re:Paying for the headache privelage

[kehren77]

I don't doubt that "Despicable Me" is great in 3D. But I think it and other animated films are the only films where today's 3D really adds anything to the film.

I've seen "Monsters VS Aliens" in 3D at the 3D TV demo set at Best Buy and it looked decent. But not good enough that it really added anything to the viewing.

Re:Paying for the headache privelage

[geekoid]

the don't give most eople headaches, not all devices require glasses, and they aren't just 3d. It's an addition feature.

Re:Paying for the headache privelage

[geekoid]

Not really an honest comparison. 3d tech is included along with all the 'regular' TV. SO you aren't paying 2G for a #d TV. you are paying 2g(or less) for a new HD TV that also has 3d.

Re:Paying for the headache privelage

[NetNed]

You're not the only one that thought the 3D in Avatar was less then impressive. It pretty much went away 10 minutes in and wasn't used well in place it could have been. The best 3D I have ever seen is at Disney and they have been pushing that out since 85' or so, whenever Captain Nemo came out. That is 3D that comes out of the screen and looks different depending on the angle you see it at. Over the years they have added to it, but the basic concept from the 80's is still the same and still stunning the first time you see it. But in the end it has never made it to the local cinema either because of cost, copyrights, or just plain stupidity. After seeing those films at Disney, all others are like a cheap attempt to pull in more cash.

Re:Paying for the headache privelage

[sehlat]

5-10 years is wildly optimistic. The studios tried 3D in the fifties. It bombed. They tried again (Jaws 3D) it bombed. "Avatar" is a rare outlier, it's still bombing and the latest version of 3D includes a free migraine included for a premium price.

Believe me, if they applied "three strikes" to the studios, they'd be getting "cease and desist all commerce" orders.

Shocking

[Drakkenmensch]

Who doesn't want to spend 5000$ so they can watch Monsters 3D over and over until more 3D movies come out?

Its a UX problem.

[AndersBrownworth]

As long as you have to have glasses, 3D TV will remain a niche market.

Re:Its a UX problem.

[John Hasler]

But none of the "glasses free" 3D systems work.

Re:Its a UX problem.

[sourcerror]

Glassless 3dtv already exists.
http://www.holografika.com/

Google TV will kill 3d TV

[alen]

i've watched 3d shows on TV for almost 30 years as they played every so often. wearing the glasses is PITA and adding 3D is not something i'm going to pay the extra $300 or so for.

LED TV's are cool mostly for the nice CPU's inside them. i've seen HD shows on them and they look almost as good as seeing something with your own eyes. much better than watching HD on the original HD sets from years ago. but the real value is in internet access. netflix and youtube on TV's is nice. and with Google TV promising to organize all the video on the internet it will make it a lot easier to view shows straight from the network's website rather than pay for DVR. and it makes it so much easier to watch porn on your TV with flash built in. there is a return on investment in buying a TV with Google TV in it. people aren't stupid. they look to buy stuff to save money in the long run, not some gee whiz tech being hyped as the next cool thing

Re:Google TV will kill 3d TV

[JoeWalsh]

I just finally bought my first HDTV last month (my old TV finally died). After researching a bit, I bought an LED-backlit LCD TV and a Blu-ray player. And you're right, in addition to the image quality being great, having networking built in is awesome. I have access to You-Tube, Netflix, Vudu, and a slew of other services all right from the TV and the Blu-ray player both. I'm looking forward to when Hulu Plus will be available on the TV (or maybe I'll break down a buy a Roku or some other device that offers it). When I get Hulu Plus, I'm cutting the cable and never looking back.

Anyway, I'm very happy I wasn't an early adopter of HDTV. My coworkers who were have sets with a single HDMI jack, no built-in networking, less contrast, and image blurring when things move quickly. And they paid five times as much for theirs!

I'm treating 3D the same way. If it's around in five years, I'll consider upgrading. But for now, forget it. Who knows what the standard will eventually be? Who know whether it's just a fad or if it will stick around? And who knows what improvements are on the horizon?

Re:Google TV will kill 3d TV

[Anonymous Coward]

LED tvs do NOTHING to improve the picture quality. LED TVs are just LCDs lit with an alternate backlight source, LEDs instead of CCFL tubes. Maybe if you bought a really shitty 720p set with a really crappy panel in it will you see a difference between CCFL sets of years ago VS todays LED sets. I have a nice Sharp Aquos CCFL set at home and see no compelling reason to upgrade to a new LED set. Maybe get some energy savings out of it, but likely not enough to offset the cost of buying the new TV

I really dont like the idea of TV's becoming "smart" ie having fancy interfaces, network streaming, apps, etc built in. As the consumer electronics industry has shown in the past, good luck getting firmware updates, feature improvements, addtional codec/streaming support added to that TV set once its ended production. hell youll probably be lucky to get a few bug fixes before production ends. A tv is something that should last you atleast 5 years, by the time that TV is 3yrs into its life youll probably be finding that integrated CPU which was probably lowend when it came out to be a real bottleneck to any new content.

I would rather have a "dumb monitor" and let me choose/build my own HTPC which wont be at the whim of the TV maker to keep it updated, add features, etc.

The one movie that really WOWed me on 3d was avatar. seen a few others movies in 3d and some of the ones converted to 3d in post and nothing has come close to avatar. Funny thing is this movie that might help move some of the consumer level 3d gear wasnt even out in a 3d bluray that consumers can buy last time i checked!! WTF!!!

Re:Google TV will kill 3d TV

[Anonymous Coward]

You're kidding, right? LED (and the newer LED-LCD TVs) are complete crap. Plasma TVs still have the best picture, hands down.

Don't believe me? Check out Panasonic's 58" Viera 3D (plasma!) TV, and compare it against any LED TV. Watch closely for the awful glowy halo effect and lack of any displayed detail when any sort of light source is present in the picture.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the totally crappy color gamut that LED/LED-LCD TV has when compared with plasma.

Also, FWIW: I have the aforementioned Panasonic TV - but it was purchased based on the 2D image quality. I could care less about the 3D - I'd imagine the set of glasses that came with the TV will remain in their box until the TV goes to the scrap heap.

Re:Google TV will kill 3d TV

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

hey look to buy stuff to save money in the long run, not some gee whiz tech being hyped as the next cool thing

This is dangerously similar to the logic which says "It's on sale, so it's OK!" If you don't need it to begin with, in no way can purchasing it be justified as a savings -- present or future.

Re:Google TV will kill 3d TV

[Anonymous Coward]

people are stupid. they can't figure out how to write a simple sentence or paragraph

Re:Google TV will kill 3d TV

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if any GoogleTV device planned so far has 3d output support, but Google actually has a nice 3d library on youtube. Search for "YT3d". You can actually choose the 3d methodolgy - Differing colors for old-style 3d glasses, different interlacing methods that work for various 3d monitors/drivers.

Re:Google TV will kill 3d TV

[Anonymous Coward]

i've watched 3d shows on TV for almost 30 years as they played every so often. wearing the glasses is PITA and adding 3D is not something i'm going to pay the extra $300 or so for.

If you think the glasses are a pain in the a$$ maybe you're wearing them wrong? Sorry couldn't resist. I don't care for the 3D/Stereo vision either.

Paying premium for zero overhead cost?

[dazedNconfuzed]

Adding 3D ability to a TV costs (AFIAK) nearly zero. So long as the refresh rate is there, stick on a dirt-cheap IR transmitter to sync the glasses and add mundane 3D support to the software. It's a no brainer: support should just be there for new models; sure, you can leave off the extra-cost glasses, but then the ability is there and customers can get those when they see fit for a relatively low cost.

So why is 3D a premium on the price, and yet another decision buyers must make? Between price and confusion they'll opt for the non-3D version, and then sellers won't have another chance to sell 3D for another decade or so (cycle time on TVs is pretty long).

Want 3D out there? Stop making it a big deal. Build in the support cheap. Stop charging a premium. Stop making it confusing. Just include it, quietly, and be done with it. People will spring the $75 for the glasses when they're ready - they won't spring another $1500 until the screen dies years hence.

Re:Paying premium for zero overhead cost?

[alen]

a year or so ago there was a huge lawsuit settled where the panel makers admitted to colluding to keeping prices high. TV makers liked this since they could hike the price of TV sets for higher margins. now with prices falling everyone is looking for ways to sell a high end model with something to make people pay a premium to keep the margins high. the 42" EEFL 120Hz TV I just bought for $650 didn't give a lot of profits to Panasonic

Re:Paying premium for zero overhead cost?

[hedwards]

I disagree. It's not very easy to get the glasses to sync up correctly and reliably. If you do it wrong you get complaints about headaches. And the technology is prone to that in the first place.

OTOH adding the 3D which uses filters is much cheaper, with the only cost being that you really need to increase the amount of light so that you've got enough after some of it gets filtered out.

Re:Paying premium for zero overhead cost?

[fostware]

The premium is there from all the R&D for 120Hz/200Hz panels they created.

3DTV is nothing more than rebadged 120Hz/200Hz panels with a dinky 3D processor, and 200Hz died in the ass sales -wise as it brought nothing to the table over straight 100Hz.
The reason every manufacturer brought out 3D so quickly comes back to the 120Hz+ panels everyone was producing already - and what a way to shift aged stock...

Marketing Departments, I salute this most devious con. ^_^

Apple

[Krneki]

In 2 years Apple will make a 3D TV and everyone will want one.

The key to this success?
1. Increase price
2. Fancy design.
3. Marketing
4. ????
5. Profit!

Re:Apple

[Lumpy]

REally.....

Apple completely shuns bluray.

3d over internet delivery will take 2X the bitrate or you need to degrade the resolution. I dont see that happening in backwater internet countries like the USA any time soon...

(yes we are backwater, we do not have 100Mb/100Mb to our homes.)

Re:Apple

[Abcd1234]

Ahh, the hipster geek strikes again... "it's popular, therefore it's bad, and people are stupid, and baaaaah baaah! Now if you'll excuse me, I have to return to my underground trance music and my Gentoo box."

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

4. It will actually work well, especially for people who don't care about computers.

Re:Apple

[StikyPad]

Nah.. like everything else, adoption will be spurred by porn. If you film it, they will come.

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but Apple will put the time and money into creating an experience people want to have. Every apple flamer I read fails to understand this very important aspect of why Apple products sell so well. Try using a Sony mp3 player vs an iPod. After about 2 mins with SonicStage I bet you'll be in love with iTunes.

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

4. Make it useable

Re:Apple

[grimJester]

3d over internet delivery will take 2X the bitrate or you need to degrade the resolution. I dont see that happening in backwater internet countries like the USA any time soon...

(yes we are backwater, we do not have 100Mb/100Mb to our homes.)

2 x the bandwidth isn't much. Add 40% to the width in pixels and you have the same. 100Mbps is far from necessary when good quality 1080p is 8Mbps and a DVD rip is 2. Double those figures. It's nothing. Home users have had the bandwidth for good quality video over the Internet for a decade now.

Re:Apple

[steelfood]

I doubt it. Apple's not big on consumer electronics. With the polish on their products, it is easy to forget that almost everything Apple puts out are one form of general computing device or another, accessories notwithstanding.

If they did do 3D, it'd be their monitors and handhelds that will see the technology first. Just like Nintendo is doing 3D with their 3DS, Apple would integrate it into the iPhone/iPod Touch.

3D is not for everyone...

[cpghost]

Having widely different diopters on both eyes (-7 and -1), and unable to wear contact lenses, I can't enjoy 3D even in real life. So 3D-TV is not my cup of tea. I only hope that if and once 3D-TV gets mainstream, monovision will sill remain an option, because looking at the blurred 3D-image is horrible, and looking at it with colored glasses would make it appear with a green, blue or red tint, which is also bad.

Re:3D is not for everyone...

[wiredog]

I've got no central vision in one eye, so I have trouble seeing 3-d in real life as well.

Re:3D is not for everyone...

[Anonymous Coward]

About 12 years ago I went basically blind in one eye (Keratoconus) - I thought that I would go on disability, loose my drivers licence, be unable to work. After researching my condition, I found that the US government does not consider having vision in one eye a disability. You can still drive and work. It's that common. So there are many people out there like me who don't have depth percerption, and to whom Avatar, while beautiful, was not 3D at all. But I still had to wear the glasses so that it was not blurry. YECH.

Re:3D is not for everyone...

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a cornea graft 30 years ago to correct keratoconus - but afterwards that eye was longsighted, and my other eye was still short-sighted. Total screwed up my binocular 3d vision, so 3d movies and TV are not for me either.

Re:3D is not for everyone...

[Anonymous Coward]

You know you're like the 50th person who's posted about this, right? We get it.. nobody on Slashdot has binocular vision.

That said, it's clear you haven't thought about this at all. The only way 2D content and presentation would disappear is if 3D content didn't require special glasses. If things get to that point, it *won't matter* that you can't perceive 3D any more than it matters in real life -- your brain will simply fail to process one of the images and you'll be left with 2D, just like when you look at things in real life. Now I don't know if you have to close one eye in order to walk around without knocking over everything and everyone in your path, but however you manage to cope with real life (or watching a standard 2D TV for that matter) is the exact same way you'd cope with ubiquitous 3D.

Re:3D is not for everyone...

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern 3D no longer relies on the blue-red glasses, I believe it is polarization of light now, so wearing the glasses you should be able to see the 2D image just fine.

3D TV To Watch What???

[damn_registrars]

Currently Best Buy only lists 12 3D Blu-Ray titles - and 8 of them haven't been released yet. The four that are currently available:

• Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
• My Bloody Valentine 3D
• Monster House
• The Jonas Brothers 3D Concert Experience

Odd that the title that is most often bundled with 3D sets - Monsters vs Aliens isn't on the list of titles you can buy. Nonetheless the titles offered aren't exactly movies that sold out 3D theaters for very long. And a lot of what's listed as coming soon isn't likely to bring a lot of interest either.

Re:3D TV To Watch What???

[residieu]

You'd think Avatar, the movie that started the latest round of 3D interest, would have been the first on their list of priorities (but I can see why they thought Step Up 3D was more important...)

Re:3D TV To Watch What???

[Lumpy]

fun part is none of those are real 3d titles but "simulated 3d"

Which blows my mind as the CGI stuff can easily be re-renderd in real 3d. 10 minutes to write up that camera script.

Re:3D TV To Watch What???

[Abcd1234]

Here in the western world, we have this thing called "Christmas", whereby individuals purchase unnecessary material items for their family members in a belated attempt to demonstrate how loving and thoughtful they are. Due to the obviously lucrative nature of this holiday, "hot" products are often delayed until the Christmas purchasing orgy, which commences some time after American Thanksgiving. As such, expect to see Avatar on the store shelves by December at the latest.

Re:3D TV To Watch What???

[0123456]

You'd think Avatar, the movie that started the latest round of 3D interest, would have been the first on their list of priorities (but I can see why they thought Step Up 3D was more important...)

Forcing people to sit through another butt-numbing three hours of digitial Smurfs would probably completely eliminate any desire to buy 3D TVs.

Re:3D TV To Watch What???

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have Christmas stuff crowding out the Halloween decorations already where you live? Good Americans start their Christmas shopping immediately after Labor Day.

Re:3D TV To Watch What???

[damn_registrars]

Good Americans start their Christmas shopping immediately after Labor Day.

Because that is what Jesus would do!

Re:3D TV To Watch What???

[Richy_T]

Yep. 3D needs its "Love Over Gold" or "The Matrix". So does Blu-ray come to that. (Though I believe that as physical media, it's a "dead man walking" anyway.

Who wants to wear glasses to watch TV?

[digitaldc]

Absolutely no one, that's who!

Re:Who wants to wear glasses to watch TV?

[solipsist0x01]

Glasses free 3D is going to have some really crappy viewing angles. I don't mind the glasses, but the price needs to come down to something like $50 a pair.

Are there people that just sit and watch at home?

[netsavior]

Seriously does anyone really just sit still on the couch watching a movie or TV? Without like getting up to get a snack, playing on the laptop, taking care of the kids, sweeping the floor, straightening the books, wiping down the table, etc etc...

I haven't just sat there watching the TV uninterupted for more than 10 minutes in a row, pretty much ever. Special Glasses would be so damn annoying at home for exactly this reason. Sure I love going to see "Disposable Action Movie THREE DEE" in the theater, but really the home experience is so different from the movie theater one that it won't translate for me at all... AND I have a projector with 2 rows of seating, and a dedicated theater room in my house, so it isn't like I don't like watching movies at home.

Even sports, isn't that usually some kind of social gathering with lots of snacks and banter? How can that work with big glasses on your face?

It's just not that compelling

[shadowrat]

Most people want higher resolution. HD was a compelling shift in tv technology. One look and people saw it was better. Wide aspect ratios were compelling as they take advantage of our natural FOV. 3D is just kind of MEH
.
I think people generally think of what they see in the day to day world as a 2D scene. Sure you rely on depth perception, but it's sort of at a lower level of thought. You know when to catch a ball that someone throws you, but you don't marvel at the depth of field. You appreciate rich landscapes, but are mostly focused at infinity. Kids don't really struggle with projecting a 3D scene onto a 2D plane. They just start drawing what they see on paper. They don't even think about vanishing points and projections. That interpretation is natural as our vision is really based on 2D sensors.

When we watch tv or movies, 2D is good enough because we are used to thinking about the world this way. We appreciate a good 3D scene, but it doesn't really ever add anything that was missing from the 2D scene as we are very adept at reconstituting depth.

Re:It's just not that compelling

[Dunbal]

HD was a compelling shift in tv technology.

      Er, except your cable company probably offers a limited range of HD channels because they don't have the bandwidth. Good for you if you're rich enough to justify an HD television just to watch ESPN in HD. That doesn't stop it from being a scam.

Wow I am going to pay thousands of dollars for a television with "new" technology that somehow has a worse pixel resolution than my computer monitor!

Or, you could just download HD movies and watch them on your laptop...and at the end of the day you have a laptop.

Re:It's just not that compelling

[StikyPad]

Right, just like those idiots who bought color TVs when there was only a limited range of color programming available. What a bunch of stupid-heads!

Of course, 100% of network television is broadcast in 3D, and probably 75% of popular cable channels at this point, and SD channels will be disappearing soon to make way for the remaining channels to make the switch. Also, people actually enjoy large screens and a shared experience without watching a laptop over someone else's shoulder. But please don't let any of that get in the way of your Luddite diatribe.

I'll go ahead and step off your lawn now.

Re:It's just not that compelling

[Dunbal]

I'm not being a luddite, I just see this "fad" as an attempt to churn the TV market once more. Only the American public can't afford to pay their mortgages - they certainly aren't going to fork over thousands of dollars for HD 3D televisions - unless of course Nancy Pelosi decides it's time to Support American Electronics Retailers, and Obama signs a new tax break for all TV purchases over $3000.

HD is not the same difference as the one between color and black&white. And, as you say, it's mostly only available on "popular" channels. There was a series of articles a while back that demonstrated that cable companies simply could not transmit every channel as HD due to bandwidth constraints - so it will only ever be on the "select" channels someone else decides are "worth it". 3D is silly and causes headaches, and short of impressing young children, 3D movies are absolute rubbish anyway as the plot soon disintegrates into "wow this is 3D look at what we can do" zooming in and out on objects.

While no doubt some revolutionary technology will be invented that will cause everyone to want a new television, 3D and HD certainly aren't it.

Re:It's just not that compelling

[StikyPad]

Wide aspect ratios were compelling as they take advantage of our natural FOV. 3D is just kind of MEH

By that logic, 3D should be compelling because it takes advantage of our natural depth perception.

IMO, the reason 3D it's *not* is because depth information usually fades into the background (metaphorically speaking) unless we're actively using it. Since we're not trying to interact with objects in movies and, for the most part, objects in movies aren't being thrown toward the viewer, there's very little relevant content or context where depth information is relevant. Motion is the other factor, but most non-action films have very little motion. Avatar was possibly an exception, but that could arguably be classified as an action flick. Even then, I know I had to consciously check to notice whether scenes were still in 3D, and I suspect most people forgot they were watching 3D at those points as well.

Re:It's just not that compelling

[Ignorant Aardvark]

Kids don't really struggle with projecting a 3D scene onto a 2D plane. They just start drawing what they see on paper. They don't even think about vanishing points and projections. That interpretation is natural as our vision is really based on 2D sensors.

Actually, that's not true. The naive/untrained method is to draw everything from a flat 2D perspective. You can see this both in art by children (or people with no formal art training) as well as in pretty much all art from the Middle Ages and prior. The development of perspective, which is an application of mathematics/geometry to art, is why paintings from the Renaissance Era on simply look so much better and more lifelike than paintings from any earlier era. The rules of perspective (that is, mapping a 3D world to a 2D surface) are not obvious, are not simple, and learning how to draw perspective well is a skill that is hard to master.

Re:It's just not that compelling

[izomiac]

Is our 2D perception natural, or is it simply because we deal with 2D media most of the time? Television is 2D, books are 2D, computers are 2D, chalkboards are 2D, paper is 2D, text is 2D, etc.. Since these are all limited by technology, perhaps removal of the technological limitation will allow people to maintain the third dimension in everything that they do. It's probably not even healthy to be constantly exposed to that artificial limitation, perhaps that's why so many people have differing degrees of myopia between eyes.

Re:It's just not that compelling

[shadowrat]

So I gather you aren't interested in a 3D tv.

Re:It's just not that compelling

[shadowrat]

But they take a stab at it. They instinctively feel that the world before them can be represented by a 2d plane. The mathematics of projections are not obvious, but the idea is instinctive. And many kids do know that things get projected smaller ad they recede from the viewer.

Re:It's just not that compelling

[Anonymous Coward]

You know when to catch a ball that someone throws you.

Slashdot?

Re:It's just not that compelling

[shadowrat]

I don't know. That's a good question.

People have found 2D projections useful, informative, and entertaining long before there was TV. Movies, Photography, painting, map making, cave walls all predate TV.

Your retina is 2D. the depth perception comes from your brain analyzing subtle differences between the eyes and state of the muscles focusing them, but your brain also seems to do a fair bit of extrapolation about depth as well. It's fairly easy to fool someone's depth perception with tricks like making a room that gets wider at the far end. Your eyes are recording the same delta between them, you must have to focus farther away to see the far end, but because lines you think are parallel are not, your brain overrules depth perception.

If you close one eye, you notice you are impaired but it hardly impedes you. People even close an eye purposefully because they find the 2D view of the world advantageous for certain tasks.

In school (I went for fine art), a couple of my teachers recounted tales of how people need to learn to read 2D. They claimed people of primitive cultures not exposed to paintings and photographs couldn't make sense of them. Those anecdotes seem to conflict with evidence that primitive people painted 2D depictions of people and animals. No, they didn't understand the math of projections, but they clearly understood occlusion and may or may not have understood that things appear smaller the farther away from the viewer they are. It also clashes with other anecdotes of how primitive people think photographs are somehow soul stealing because the representation is so perfect.

So do people like 2D content because they grew up consuming tv, or do people like to consume TV because it represents an inborn way of looking at the world? I dunno, but it sounds like something that the 3D tv people should be studying.

Re:It's just not that compelling

[FoolishOwl]

I think people generally think of what they see in the day to day world as a 2D scene. Sure you rely on depth perception, but it's sort of at a lower level of thought.

I think that's quite accurate.

I enjoyed Avatar. As I watched it, I was struggling to understand what the point was of using 3D in Avatar. Before long, it dawned on me that in the scenes which genuinely had depth effects (many didn't), my eyes were drawn to the specific focal point of that scene. 3D effects were a tool for the filmmakers to control where the audience is looking.

I have mixed feelings about that: sure, it's another tool for filmmakers, but it comes at a cost. In addition to the discomfort of the apparatus, I felt for much of the movie as if I was being coerced, by being forced to look at what the filmmaker wanted me to look at, not what I wanted to look at.

I'd been puzzled at some of the negative response to Avatar -- reviews often complain how manipulative and conventional the plot is, but that's hardly unusual in an action movie. I wonder now if some of the negative response is from the physical experience of watching the movie, being attributed to the narrative form of the movie.

Anyway, I think the utility of this technique is limited.

Re:It's just not that compelling

[Anonymous Coward]

The compelling reason for the shift to HD was that everyone was scared they were going to loose their TV all together, even though most people are on atleast cable and their old analog TVs of 15yrs ago will still display a picture from a cable or satellite box.

Of course the added resolution looks nice, but im pretty sure that alone was not the reason for the quick uptake of HD

Re:It's just not that compelling

[FoolishOwl]

It is a basic principle of composition that the important stuff is in the foreground; any background, realistic or not, is kind of optional.

Re:It's just not that compelling

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL! Looking at the snippets of replies to your posts I have to laugh. At them, not you. I'm a graphic artist by trade, and the whole 3D versus 2D is, to me, silly. Pictures I draw are 2D that look 3D. It's easy, and doesn't require the viewer wear special glasses. Only thing that '3D' like that has on 2D is the ability to see the sides of objects when changing the point of reference, like turning the 2D plane to the side to see the sides of what is pictured in 3D.

I'm probably not making sense at all, but I just had to comment on your post because you're essentially saying what I've always said about 3D that isn't an actual hologram. It's silly, and as far as I'm concerned it's overkill. Oooooo! 3D animation. That was like, what, back when Pixar first got the raytracing perfected? Stuff looks like it comes out of the screen now! Neat, but to me it actually looks less realistic, not more.

Re:It's just not that compelling

[steelfood]

HD adoption only really happened because of the FCC mandate for broadcasters to move to HD. Widescreen wasn't a choice. It was forced upon us by LCD manufacturers, who realized that they could get a better yield, and the upper had in marketing with 16:10/16:9. 4:3 just disappeared off the market. One day, you could get them. The next, you couldn't. And widescreen was good (and cheap) enough for people to not complain.

Re:It's just not that compelling

[sincewhen]

Most people want higher resolution. HD was a compelling shift in tv technology. One look and people saw it was better.

And yet, I remember discussions here (and I think there are some above) saying HD content is not compelling for them. Or that their wife couldn't tell the difference.

Seems like people are different.

Re:It's just not that compelling

[WinstonWolfIT]

The greatest visuals in all of cinema will not improve with 3d: Laurence emerging from the desert as a spec that can only be seen on 70mm; The crane shot of Gone with the Wind; The intrusion shot of Kane; etc. Unlike 'talkies' which were also scoffed in their early days, 3d is a vulgar gimmick with no hope of adoption. And get off my lawn!!

Re:It's just not that compelling

[sznupi]

Avatar as, apparently, a posterchild of this "3D" uptake ends up funnily insincere - practically all photographs in the setting of the movie were good old analogue prints (glued to a fridge, to boot). Virtually all displays not being particularly 3D...except for one. Which wasn't used to show recorded footage or videoconference (as is common for a long time in scifi, with volumetric displays), but merely to display what is in setting just CGI of topographic data.

Re:It's just not that compelling

[sznupi]

I'm not sure if trying to employ our depth perception in a scenario where a) we can't control it b) parallax is outright wrong (no doubled images outside of plane of focus) c) despite apparent changes of fake parallax and focus, we must force our eyes to remain focused on the screen can be called taking advantage of our natural depth perception...

Re:It's just not that compelling

[sznupi]

HD was a compelling shift in tv technology. One look and people saw it was better.

Not quite. A lot of people think they watch HD television, when in fact they get only SD signal from the broadcaster, Bluray player, or DVD player (and thinking it does give them HD)

http://www.bva.org.uk/news-press-releases/choose-right-kit-world-cup-bva-advises-consumers-how-make-right-selection-june

Nothing is selling right now.

[orsty3001]

Nothing!

Please!!!

[PPH]

I'm not certain I want to see a huge shocker on any TV, let alone 3D!

Re:Please!!!

[snspdaarf]

...and the discussion has looped back to porn again...

Re:Please!!!

[PPH]

...and the discussion has looped back to porn again...

Remind me again why we ever left.

kids got bored with it pretty quick

[Anonymous Coward]

got a 3d tv as a present with the monters vs aliens blu ray... pretty cool to watch the first time thru... ever since then my kids watch it in 2d mode so they can run around without the glasses on... overall it's kinda neat, but i agree more content needs to be available before anyone will take them seriously

No surprise

[JustNiz]

Its hardly a surprise when you look at the number and quality of 3D blu-ray movies available.

http://www.3dmovielist.com/list.html

Even of the few available, most 'live' movies (as opposed to entirely CG) have been "converted" from 2D rather than originally filmed in 3D.
The results suck as much as you would expect.

Re:No surprise

[solipsist0x01]

View-Masters were pretty cool!

economy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't buy one right now even if I had money to burn... I don't want to risk buying a big ticket item then lose my job. I still use a 19" cathode ray tube TV even though I could afford a flat panel. I don't want to risk spending money I don't have to.

Re:Are there people that just sit and watch at hom

[Anonymous Coward]

You cant eat snacks and communicate while wearing glasses?

Why is 3D TV Stumbling

[SkinnyGuy]

PCMag.com says "If there's one thing consumers won't put up with, it's the fracturing of the basic television-viewing experience. Not only do all current 3D TVs require glasses, they're not all using the same ones. Some knuckle-head manufacturers are even charging extra for these glasses, which may only work with a fraction of today's 3D TVs. Imagine if you bought glasses that only focused on buildings and signs but not cars and people.

No surprise

[metamatic]

I've seen 3D HDTV at Costco. The 3D reminds me of a View-Master, it's really not all that convincing. I can imagine it being useful for games, but that's about it.

And as far as games go, I might pay $100 or $150 for a pair of glasses to get 3D... but buy a whole new TV? Forget it.

Camel's Nose

[DumbSwede]

3D may not be being adopted has quickly as TV manufactures would like, but I don't think it is going away. This isn't the same once every decade or so gimmick it was. But the camel's nose under the tent won't be movies I think, but rather immersive 3D games with good 3D tracking.

I haven't yet tried Sony's Move system, but couple 3D tracking with a large 3D display and you may have an unbeatable gaming experience. I am also not a Second Lifer or a WoW player, but again 3D seems ideal for when you are not just looking passively at a story being told, but must move about in an environment. 3D Desktops have been predicted for quite sometime, but perhaps you really need true 3D to pull of a 3D Desktop.

Still this may all fall to wayside if someone can get rid of the screen, giving you true mobility in a 3D space. Yes there are VR 3D headsets, but they are clunker than the 3D glasses everyone here is already complaining about and high definition VR headsets are prohibitively expensive. No doubt technology will eventually catch up with how to make a high definition, light weight, untethered, long battery life, unobtrusive, VR headset.

On a related note, more than 3D for passive content, we need higher frame rates. There seems to be some conception that movies must be in 24fps to have a 'movie' feel as opposed to a 'TV' feel. I don't know any TV in full progressive 60fps. Most prime time TV shows are shot on 24fps film. 60fps 1080p would be much more immersive for high motion scenes. Someone needs to shoot some action epic in 60fps or higher and see if the public responds to it. IMAX once sometime ago shot one or two films in 48fps. It was insanely expensive to pull off back then, but now should be a cinch. Oddly almost every one's HDTV is capable of displaying 60fps, but unless you are using it for gaming it probably never use more than half this bandwidth.

(BTW, yes I posted this first in the wrong thread. Sigh....)

Re:Camel's Nose

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget the nose... Camel Toe would sell more 3D... or 34DDD if I were making the rules.

Re:Camel's Nose

[Attila Dimedici]

Until it is real 3D, not just stereoscopic 3D, it won't make that much difference in gaming. If by moving my head to one side or the other I could see around an obstacle (like happens in real life), then 3D would make a big difference for gaming, otherwise, not so much.

Re:Camel's Nose

[sznupi]

So, do you notice some uptake of that Nvidia "3D" glasses thing that was released one or two years ago? And BTW, head-mounted displays are insanely more headache-inducing than "3D" TVs.

Why the TV?

[tomk]

Reposting from a previous 3D TV story...

If I have to wear glasses anyway, why not put LCDs in the glasses themselves? You'd get a full edge-to-edge experience, avoiding some of the weird off-screen 3D effects. You'd always be in the "sweet spot", avoiding the off-center weird geometry effects. You could go 120Hz on both eyes and make the correct matching frames appear at exactly the same time, avoiding the headache-inducing strobe effect. You would not have ghosting or other distortion caused by trying to use the same display surface for two independent images.

I am cautiously optimistic about 3D as a whole, but I don't understand why I need to buy into the 3D TV paradigm in order to get a 3D experience. I would prefer to simply use active-screen glasses.

Re:Why the TV?

[sznupi]

The practical implementations of LCD glasses have quite poor viewing experience and are much, much more headache-inducing than "3D" TVs.

The great thing about 3D televisions...

[zerofoo]

Is that it is depressing the prices on non-3D televisions. I really don't care about 3D TV. I do care about a quality 2D image, and there are tons of good televisions with great quality panels at nice prices thanks to the lack of 3D.

It's a great time to buy a TV if you don't care about 3D. The window is closing though. I suspect every TV will have 3D capability within the next year of product refreshes.

-ted

Re:The great thing about 3D televisions...

[sznupi]

CRT TVs are still made for some of the biggest markets; considering how the difference between "3D" and "2D" flat displays is very much smaller, the latter should remain at least as a budget option (which might be not so great quality-wise...)

stereoscopy minus focal depth considered harmfull

[mikeabbott420]

Stereoscopy without actual focal depth requires me to consciously think about how I'm focusing my eyes or I get eyestrain and headaches.
For me this makes it an interesting novelty but not something I actually want to put up with on a regular basis.

As an aside, despite having only two eyes I find it annoying that stereoscopy (2 * D * D) is described as 3D (D * D * D).

Bought my own 3DTV and have little to do but wait.

[Fixer40000]

I picked up a decent Samsung 46" 3DTV the other day since I'm moving into a new place. Amazon was doing a special offer for one week and it turned out about the same price as a regular TV of the same spec with a 3D Blu ray player thrown in for free. So not bad at all. Would have I bought it if it had been just for the 3D and using it right now? Nope. There's basically 2 movies that you can actually buy for it. Cloudy with a chance of meatballs, and Monster house. Two movies I have absolutely no intention of buying or seeing. One that I wouldn't mind seeing 'Monsters Vs. Aliens' is bundled in with a £100 3D glasses kit I don't need, and one that I would like to see 'How to train your dragon' is going to be done likewise. For the foreseeable future that leaves just one Blu ray coming out soon worth seeing that I can actually get my hands on... Avatar. What has been fun though has been hooking up the PC to the big screen and playing around with some custom 3D drivers, it's not perfect and it's as buggy as hell on anything but a handful of games however playing Left 4 dead 2 where zombie tongues stick out of the screen and hit you in the face has been crazy awesome (guessing where the mouse [pointer is supposed to be on the screen to start the game, less so). nVidia is coming out with some proper 3D driver tools for hooking up to a big screen 3DTVs in the near future making that far less painful and I figure that gaming is where 3D stuff is going to sell and in the near future while so little video content is available that will be the main reason for buying these screens.

Re:Are there people that just sit and watch at hom

[Abcd1234]

Seriously does anyone really just sit still on the couch watching a movie or TV?

Yes, believe it or not, some people have attention spans that allow them to focus on a single activity for more than five minutes at a stretch...

Slashdot predictions

[Anonymous Coward]

I love it when slashdot predicts doom and gloom the ipod, ipad , blu ray, ... . Its like the signal that now its time to invest in some stocks that are 3d tv related :p

Business case?

[Anonymous Coward]

For me, the business case would be as follows:

1. Buy 3D TV, paying a considerable premium compared to an equivalent 2D set
2. Select from a pitiful choice of 3D movies I have no desire to watch anyway, again at a considerable premium
3. Puke my guts out, because I get sick from watching 3D movies with those silly glasses (the general quality of the stuff Hollywood produces is not really helping)
4. ????
5. Prof^w Thanks, but no thanks

whatever, 3d blows.

[Anonymous Coward]

3D technology fucking blows, that's why. I can't stand the fact that the "good" theaters get wasted on this technology, let alone having to spend $200 on a pair of glasses to watch TV in my own home.

This is just the media industry trying to come up with another technology that continues to ensure that they can maintain the long-outdated controlled distribution model. They want more proprietary technology that requires proprietary media that keeps the prehistoric publishers in continued control of the market and therefore in business.

And this is unexpected?

[Tuan121]

You mean a new expensive technology is not selling like older cheaper technology? Surely you are mistaken.

Not doing our part!?!

[Xugumad]

> consumers aren't doing their part to make 2010 the year of 3D TV

Oh, I'm terribly sorry that you thought I wanted to buy a new TV and Blu-ray player, plus enough glasses for everyone who might want to watch, in order to watch Avatar in 3D at home.

No, wait, I'm not.

It was BLOODY STUPID IDEA and the "consumers" are doing our part by responsibly looking at you like the MUPPET you are.

Customers. The word is CUSTOMERS.

I will never wear special glasses to watch TV

[JoltinJoe77]

...and neither will the majority of TV-watchers. Tech-geeks and videophiles might buy special equipment to do an otherwise simple everyday task, but those groups make up niche markets.

Delusional.

[MaWeiTao]

Given that the majority of consumers have made the switch to HDTVs in the past couple of years, especially after the switch over to digital signals is it really any surprise? And on top of that, who want's to watch tv with a pair of stupid, expensive glasses especially given that there's little out there that takes advantage of the technology. This has been one of the more blatant gimmicks dumped on the consumer.

What I find surprising is that companies seem to have loads of disposable income. They seem to think that the average person is willing to spend a good $800 every couple of years to replace a perfectly good television. I'd venture to say that most consumers buy a tv with the same expectation they've always had, which is that they're going to keep the thing as long as it still works. All sorts of consumer electronics are competing for everyone's hard-earned money: DVD/Blu-ray players, televisions, game consoles, mobile phones, computers, tablet PCs and a multitude of other toys. Just because people are willing to throw away $150-$300 every year or two on a new mobile phone doesn't mean that they're automatically prepared to do the same with pricier consumer electronics.

Corporate executives seem to be delusional and have far, far too much faith in marketing. They seem to believe that if you market something well enough that people will lose all common sense and go out and waste money on something. All you need to do is convince them they want it. It works sometimes, but only to a limited degree. This is especially absurd given the state of the global economy. They're totally detached from reality.

Well, the problem isn't that they're offering these TVs. The problem is that it seems they expected the TVs would would sell in significant numbers.

Put an end to 3D

[bytesaber]

Good! I don't want to see 3D. I want to see focus on HD and Quality. 3D is the most non-relaxing escape from your day after work I've ever experienced. Everything I see in my TV screen is already in 3D anyhow. I can tell what's behind something. 3D is blurry, darker, messes with frame rates, and simply put is unnatural. It is not the future. -bytes

Sports

[BlackHawk-666]

Over here in Australia we are dangling a larger carrot in front of the consumer's face. Aussies love their sports, and so channel Nine (I think) is now broadcasting large amounts of sport in 3D for the punters.

Given the availability of 3D content to many over here it will be interesting to see how our market goes in comparison to the US / UK.

Once people try it, they like it even less.

[guidryp]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/11/nielsen-survey-shows-high-interest-in-3dtv-low-interest-in-payi/

A pretty awesome graph that shows that you pretty much have to sell this site unseen.

Before trying 3d tv, they surveyed 25% very likely to buy. 13% Not likely at all.

After actually seeing 3DTV in action that flipped in the other direction with 12% very likely, and 30% not likely at all.

"Doing their part"

[swordgeek]

Funny old thing, language is.

You can say nearly the same thing so many ways. Consider the following:
- consumers not buying into 3D hype
- 3D sales lagging behind expectations
- consumers not doing their part to make 2010 the year of 3D
- soft economy hits 3D TV sales ...and many more.

Ultimately, they say the same basic thing: 3D TV is not selling. The difference is in where the blame is placed. Is it the economy? Is it the technology? Is it the rotten consumers refusing to consume? Or is it just bad sales projections? These are always interesting questions to consider, but I just had to laugh when I read something so entertaining as "consumers are not doing their part..."

No point, really. I just had a laugh.

Sony's implementation

[chroma]

I saw Sony's setup at one of their stores. If you're at all interested, I suggest you go check it out, but please lower your expectations.

The 3D effect is OK and the glasses aren't too awful to deal with, but the image is very flickery, especially if you move your head. It's also not quite as good if you're viewing from an angle; you really need to see it straight on.

Re:Are there people that just sit and watch at hom

[leonardluen]

no, because everyone will be snickering about how everyone else looks so stupid in the glasses

I disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

I also saw some demos in Best Buy. I was reminded of those old view-finder toys, only moving. The 3D was obviously post-production as it looked like flat cut-outs positioned in 3D.

Really, I thought, my mind does better with converting truly flat projections to 3D. This is just distracting.

this is the reason

[roc97007]

As Scrameustache said:

> Maybe it's because its an expensive device that delivers a sub-par viewing experience in exchange for a gimmick that people are already fed up with.

To which I would add: Introduced in a down economy.

Also just too expensive

[Sycraft-fu]

3D TVs cost a good bit more than non-3D TVs. Most people don't really give much of a shit. I mean they might like the idea of 3D TV, but I know few people who "Gotta have it." So you are TV shopping and you find that for $1000 gets you a nice, quality 46" Samsung LCD TV. You then discover that a 3D version costs you $1400, with no glasses. So $400 more just to get 3D. Eh, no thanks. This is of course presuming you are shopping now, and not replacing something you already have.

If it was all near enough to the same price then maybe there'd be more interest. However it is a pretty hefty price premium. For that particular line of TVs you are adding 40% to get the feature. I think most people can find a better use for the $400, like a larger TV, or a sound system and so on.

Re:Also just too expensive

[Namarrgon]

This must be a US thing. Here in AU, a friend of mine bought a 55" Samsung LCD 18 months ago, and a second friend bought a very similar 55" Samsung 1 month ago. The newer TV supported 3D (included a pair of glasses), but cost about $600 less than the non-3D TV.

Prices do drop, and nobody's being forced to pay more right now for something they don't want. 3D TVs don't inherently cost much more than equivalent high-end TVs (a cheap IR emitter, new firmware, and some optional glasses is the only difference). Once the novelty passes, all decent TVs will support 3D (like they supported colour, stereo, comb filters, LED backlighting, YouTube playback etc), and any minor extra costs will have been hidden by price drops.

Once the premium evaporates, more people have supporting TVs and there's more content, I expect rather more take-up, but I still don't expect anyone to bother with the 3D and the glasses except on occasions where the extra hassle might be worthwhile.

Re:Also just too expensive

[Sycraft-fu]

I doubt it, I think perhaps you aren't considering the price drop over 18 months. I am talking current market prices. Right now $1000 gets you a 46" non-3D TV. $1400 gets you a 46" 3D TV, with no glasses. $400 is not a trivial amount.

Re:Also just too expensive

[Namarrgon]

In AU, a high-end name-brand 55" LCD TV generally costs $4K+, and all the latest models are either 3D-compatible or at least 3D-ready, so there's little to compare them against other than previous models (which are largely identical except for the 3D features).

Anyway, my point was that if there's a premium for 3D here in AU, it's rather less than the price drop seen in 18 months. I suspect you'll find that in another 12 month's time the price of a 3D TV will be significantly lower - any premium will be significantly reduced, and many 120/240Hz TVs will simply build in the capability anyway as a standard feature, due to the relatively low added manufacturing costs.

The answer is Toshiba

[Tronks]

They will start selling as soon as they don't require glasses.

Math cannot tell you the difference.

[Shivetya]

Ain't going to happen. Oh, I know, you must be one of the few who can tell 1080i from 1080p as well, or other such fun. Your example sizes are wrong for 15' foot viewing distances, you need a larger screen. So yeah, if you buy the wrong tv for where you plan to use it no one can help you.

There is a large difference in many DVD versus Blu-Ray, spend some time on any reputable AV forum and you will see (AVS is great) Many of the transfers done to Blu are far beyond the quality of regular DVD, if not just image but sound. The most common problem people have with digital TVs is they over saturate their pictures and that can take away the detail quality of the image.

Watch your wonderful 99 cent purchases, you can end up burying yourself faster with those as it doesn't feel like much till you look at it by month and yearly expenditures. I know a few people who blew right by $100 before they realized it all the while bragging how much they saved

Re:Math cannot tell you the difference.

[Maxo-Texas]

Why on earth would I need a larger screen? It's big enough as it is and it looks (and sounds) great.

My point is I *CAN'T* tell a difference between 1080i and 1080p, etc.

I used to have the 7 speaker surround and it was just annoying as it required another remote and confused my mom when she came over to dog-sit.
And now I have a simple 3 speaker setup that's always on. Not even a sub-woofer any more.

You are an audio/videophile. I get it. It's okay to be an audio/videophile. To measure your vpenis by the resolution of your screen.

I've spent 9 bucks in 7 months. I'm not worried about runaway spending- but if it was WORTH $100, then $100 would be pittance to pay for it (what would that be 8000 hours of entertainment for $100?)
Tho actually, $5 bucks of that is an iphone locator. (device locator). It's cool- shows me if I left my iphone at work, home, car, friends house, bar, etc.

---

My parent post was on the "arc" you can actually see vs screen size vs distance of screen. Apparently there is a huge crowd of you who buy 55" screens and then plunk them down 8' away on the other side of the coffee table. Okay- resolution makes a difference when it's that close. You want it to feel like a movie theater I guess. I don't. Most of my friends don't. We have 50"ish screens about 10 to 13' away from the TV. TV is something we watch- not something that overwhelms us. That includes my daughter (mid 20's) who has a 46" flat screen 2" thick- and it's across the living room from her couch- so it's about ... 12' away.

From here:
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-btv1k8ewsdn/learn/learningcenter/home/TV_placement.html

Apparently some people are sitting under 9' from 70" screens. Holy cow.

The TV or the couch must be in the middle of the room, or else these rooms have an incredibly tiny axis.

My living room is 15' x 12'. My friends living room is 25'x25'. His couch is in the middle of the room, with the 12' area behind it basically unused.

--

I went and measured it. My TV is 13' from my head when I'm resting on the couch. It's a foot out from the wall to get that close. That's where it is "comfortable" to me while viewing.
I've had friends who took their 50" screen back because it was "too big" and bought smaller screens.

Pffft! No s***, Sherlock

[zmollusc]

I am still waiting for HD to become the norm. I keep looking at flat panels to replace my old Panachronic CRT Telly and there are still many 'HD-ready' 1024x768 LCD units for sale.
Maybe everyone figures that this is enough for playing the camcorder-footage-based DVDs that they buy for a couple of bucks?

I actually have a 3D TV and love it

[solipsist0x01]

Most, not all, of the negative comments I've seen regarding 3D TVs are from people that haven't experienced them. People seem understandably pissed because they just shelled out serious dough for a new TV that won't support 3D. Some people just don't care, or are stereo blind, and others hate the idea of wearing $200 glasses to watch TV. I think that because people are rightly pissed about these things, they aren't giving 3D a fair shake.

I just had to replace my TV, so I decided to spend a bit more and get a 240hz 3D 46" led lcd for ~$1800 (came w/ 2 pair of glasses and a movie), which is about what I spent 5 years ago on the TV that had to be replaced. I love the thing!

The fist time I crashed my car playing MotorStorm 3D Rift on PS3, I was literally laughing out loud, it's AMAZING. The game is so much more fun in 3D, it's easier to judge turns, you have dirt seemingly flying out of the screen at you, it's just really cool!

As far as content, there isn't much, MotorStorm is great, MLB is good, Super Stardust HD is better in 3D, Wipeout is awful, can't wait for Gran Turismo 5.

Re:I actually have a 3D TV and love it

[Sirusjr]

Exactly so even your positive review of 3D notes what most people are mentioning, the lack of quality content available in 3D that is worthwhile. I would love to play Samurai Warriors 3 or Sengoku Basara 3 in 3D if I had a 3DTV but since the games I play aren't in 3D yet, I am not too excited to buy one. Probably in a couple of years if it becomes standard for video games I'll buy one and go from SDTV to HD3DTV and die from awesome!

So what?

[formfeed]

Me too, but I really like seeing things around me in 3d.

It is being sold, but only by early adopters.

[arthurh3535]

Everything that people have stated (Cost, low amounts of 3D content, finicky technology, possible headaches) are all true, but that doesn't mean I personally don't see them being sold. (I work tech support for a major retailer.)

It's a new technology, it's not going to replace existing HD TVs right this year. On the other hand, it's probably a far bigger proportion of 'new technology' TVs than you would think.

And remember, most TVs come with at least one set of glasses. Most come with a pair. Unless you host football parties, you aren't going to need a dozen spares. So the 'no one is buying the glasses' is a pretty false data point.

I'm actually impressed by how much of an impact it is already getting. Like others have noted, 5 years is closer to adoption times. This is like one year old.

Get Football, Baseball, Soccer and Basketball in 3D at each game and you will probably see the numbers double or triple.

Everybody's waiting for 4D

[Anonymous Coward]

Just skip right over 3d

public doesn't care enough to overcome cost issue

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be that my $1200 TV that I just bought a year ago looks fine... Very few people are going to buy a 3D TV just because it's 3D. If I am already buying a TV and 3D comes for free or very minimal cost, then I might consider it. If my cable company wants to slap me with another $10/month for the privilege to watch a few things in 3D, then forget it. So, until it's essentially free & ubiquitous, most people just don't care enough. Everybody says the glasses are the problem, but I don't think it's that big a deal when you sit down to watch a 3D event. I think it has to do with the premium costs right now.

Gaming is another story entirely

[Petersko]

I dismissed 3D TV as going nowhere when I saw the Samsung offering in store. It looked like crap.

Then a buddy bought a Panasonic TCP58VT25. The 2D picture is fantastic in its own right... and I played the 3D Motorstorm demo on the PS3. 3D changes everything on a racing game.

Re:Gaming is another story entirely

[solipsist0x01]

MotorStorm 3D Rift kicks ass and the graphics aren't even that good! Gran Turismo 5 is going to have me ROTFLOL!

3D is just another form of copy protection.

[Viewsonic]

Everyone was wondering why everyone but the consumers were jumping on ship. This is why.

Re:3D is just another form of copy protection.

[geekoid]

Because they don't want people in flatland to view it?

Your statement is non stop stupid.

How much extra does it cost to make a 3D HDTV?

[Jellodyne]

What differentiates a 3D TV from a non 3D set?

1. Infrared transmitter for frame syncing glasses
2. A display panel with a refresh rate of at least 120Hz
3. An HDMI 1.4 input for receiving 120Hz signals
4. Capability of processing 120Hz content

Let's break these items down and see what it's costing the set manufacturers.
1. The only real added (as opposed to incremented) hardware to the TV, but it's a 50 cent part, at most.
2. Good luck buying a larger HDTV which doesn't already do 120Hz or 240Hz or 6000Hz or whatever. Free.
3. I'll be generous and say the HDMI 1.4 chips are $5 more than the older HDMI 1.3 chips.
4. This is the real wildcard, since even 240Hz TVs up until now haven't had to deal with anything over 60Hz on the input side, and generating 120Hz and higher signals is done with simple field duplication. Still, if you're handling 120Hz and higher signals later in the path, you can do it earlier with not a lot more effort. Let's say this costs whatever it costs to handle 1080P 60Hz signals 18 months ago. Let's call it $25-50 extra.

Of course you also need to include LCD shutter glasses with batteries and IR receivers. Pack in 2 pairs at, maybe $25 each manufacturing costs, though $5-$10 is more likely. Add another buck or two to pay off the standards body to ensure interoperability of the glasses with all TVs. Wait, scratch that, instead throw in a buck for security measures to ensure other sets glasses don't work with your sets. Why? Because f*** 'em, that's why!

So a 3D HDTV with a couple of pair of glasses should cost somewhere between $41.50 and $106.50 more to manufacture. I'd guess it is probably closer to the low end than the high. Double it for profits, and there's a fair markeup to go to 3D. A $1000 markup and $200 glasses is severe price gouging and everyone knows it. When the premium to go to 3D gets down to a reasonable level, it will be embraced. I'd look for a lower end manufacturer like VIZIO to realize they can bundle in 3D for practically nothing and sell a ton of sets to drive the 3D markup down.

Re:How much extra does it cost to make a 3D HDTV?

[geekoid]

Depend. My friend has a tv that plays 3d He has had it for years. You can use standard stereoscopic glasses.

They just need to be able to display at 120Hz.

I ahve no idea why you think it's a 1000 mark up.

Re:How much extra does it cost to make a 3D HDTV?

[LinuxIsGarbage]

That's what I've always wondered when it's the active shutter glasses doing all the work.

Re:How much extra does it cost to make a 3D HDTV?

[Jellodyne]

Certainly your friend hasn't had a TV that supports the current Blue Ray 3D standard "for years" since they have just begun to be sold this year.

Define "standard stereoscopic glasses". Stereographic glasses are a bit like the SCSI standard -- the great thing about the standard is that there's so many to choose from. The glasses sold with these sets are lcd shutter style glasses which block each eye alternately at 120Hz so that each eye sees a different 60Hz image. The new glasses use an IR reciver in the glasses to receive the timing signal from the set, and are battery operated. I had a hard wired pair of LCD shutter glasses which came 'free' with an old nVidia card -- I used to play one of the old Tomb Raider games in 3d. Even the CRT computer monitors of the time couldn't do 120Hz.

The reason I think it's a $1000 markup because I see electronics stores proudly offering 3D HDTVs for $2500 and $3000 which are almost identical spec-wise to TVs which cost at least $1000 less.

How many HDTV's do they want us to buy?!

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

The entire country finally just got settled with HDTV. FINALLY the majority of people own them, and now the manufacturers expect everyone buy a new 3D TV and toss out their 4 year old HDTV sets?

Not enough content

[Nato2k]

I have owned a 3D TV for about 6 months now and still do not own the glasses. They are ~$150 each and there is such limited content I do not see a reason to drop that kind of cash. I am happy to own a 3D TV if the technology does take off for home entertainment. Worst case is that I have a really good 2D TV with 3D capability that never gets utilized.

SALE?

[dragin33]

Under no circumstances do I want a 3D TV or do I want to watch many TV/Movies in 3D. However, Maybe when non of them sell there will be huge sales and I can pick up a nice TV and simply turn the 3D off! :)

Passive 3D TV in Europe . . .

[Tanman]

What the article fails to mention is that in Europe, unlike the USA, you can buy nice things like the LG 47" LD950. This TV uses a polarized screen with polarization set up identically to movie screens. That means people don't buy glasses -- they just bring home glasses from when they see a 3d feature film instead of throwing them away/recycling. I don't know how much of a percentage of 3D tv sold in Europe is passive, but it is something to consider that not all 3D tv requires the purchase of $150 glasses-per-person.

Why I won't buy one.

[CherniyVolk]

1) All the 3D technologies to date, work by tricking the brain. But the brain is still smarter than the technologies which is why a lot of people get headaches and other side effects trying to participate with the 3D stuff; I barely got through Avatar, and I watched maybe 10% of it without the glasses on. While there were some interesting 3D FX in Avatar (usually only the scenes of fluffies floating about), a more pleasurable experience would have been to watch the movie in 2D instead.

2) All the 3D technologies to date require additional hardware. Which the capitalists will attempt to capitalize one. It's my feeling that should I purchase a "3D" Television set, that is should come free with the same number of additional components to use the TV as the size of the average house hold population plus 2 more for visiting friends. So each family may be a mean sum of 3 people, so five "glasses" should be for free for each TV. And, the glasses shouldn't cost very much at all. Currently, they are around 150USD to 200USD; and not even stylish. For that kind of cash, it better be DG or some designer glasses with sapphire lenses. Only one pair is given for some televisions; boy if that isn't an insult! We don't have wives, girlfriends, friends or neighbors? What morons are deciding these things?

3) All the 3D technologies are ridiculously pricey, and with the above caveats out right stupid. While the idea is really cool, and the notion of such display systems gaining new R&D is appreciable. The capitalists running the show to the consumers are obviously out of touch with reality. There's no way I'm going to limit my viewing experience with a headache every 30 minutes; and pay dearly for the Television and pay dearly again for glasses. I can't even watch a full length movie with this stuff, I've tried varied 3D techniques none of them are comfortable and sustainable. On "movie nights" I can spend many hours watching movie after movie.

4) The industry put me off with the way they are wording things. "Consumers aren't cooperating" or "Consumers aren't doing their part". First off, it's not my responsibility or obligation to purchase your damn crap, get that through your skull or I'll write it on a bullet and help you get that message inside your head. If you make something worth buying, then I'll consider but just because you want more money for your own pleasure you have to earn it (just like you tell me). It's not that I'm not cooperating, it's you aren't doing your part in providing quality products or products worth buying, or if you think you are then you aren't putting reasonable price tags on those products. It's not the consumers responsibility to randomly purchase crap. I know you like impulse buying but be careful thinking that since some do that should be precedent; you just enjoy the morons who do buy Juicy Fruit gum at the checkout stand and you better respect those of us who don't. Don't tell me I'm not doing my part. You aren't doing yours!

3d stuff

[tomp1000]

the shocking 3D in cinemas doesnt help, most of that '3D' makes no difference to the film except you have to wear glasses, and before someone says I include 3d films that were made in 3d (avatar and such) saw a demo of a sont 3d tv at best buy, honestly i was quite impressed, but putting the fact i am an impoverished student aside, i still wouldnt buy one, i dont really want my tv flying into me to be pefectly honest. also i may be one of the minority that proper 3d causes headaches for focus more on improving picture quality and less of this gimmicky stuff. that or holograms. everybody loves holograms

Having a full brain, I disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

One eye senses 2D imagery just fine. The only thing one-dimensional about TV is the writing.

Another problem -- restrictive design...

[Kazoo the Clown]

I was looking at a demo setup over at Costco the other day. For a moment, I thought- hey, this is looking pretty good! The reason I thought that, is I looked at the back of the blu-ray 3D player, and thought I was looking at separate left and right component outputs. I would have walked out with that blu-ray player and some 3D movies if that were the case! The idea that I could take a ~$200 player and feed it to separate projectors and use passive polarizing glasses would be really great-- and using off-the-shelf 2D projectors. Then all I would want is a 3D vidcam so I could make my own material. But shuttered glasses? Forget it-- I don't care what the refresh rate is, I could care less about a system that requires you to buy active glasses for each viewer. On closer inspection of that blu-ray player, the two rows of three RCA outputs turned out to be a single tricolor output, stereo audio and a compvid connector that were lined up as two rows of three that got me thinking it was separate outputs. My hopes were dashed. Useless-- I'd never buy one as it is. Doomed to failure because of the short-sightedness of the industry who has already chosen for you the 3D technology you are going to have. A more componentized system that made fewer assumptions would have been much more flexible.

Out of focus kills 3D

[Xamindar]

As far as I am concerned there are NO valid 3D movies available, even Avatar. They all have 3D scenes with part of it out of focus. Look at the very first scene in Avatar when Jake wakes up with the water droplet as an example. If it is in 3D EVERYTHING needs to be in focus because my eyes are expecting to be doing the focusing. That I think is what gives everyone headaches. Your eyes keep trying to focus on things that are unfocusable for 2 to 3 hours. If you can't film a movie with everything in focus at the same time then don't make it 3D.

Games on the other hand should work well because they can be rendered in 3D with no out of focus issues. I look forward to the day I can play my games in true 3D. But I am not spending this amount of money on just a gaming TV.

Maybe there's too little middle class anymore?

[tchdab1]

TV's cost upwards of $1000.
Unemployment continues to be very high in the USA.
For 30 years we've been moving the tax burden from the rich to the middle class, and then outsourcing middle-class jobs to cheaper countries.
Maybe that's why the middle class isn't lining up to buy the latest shiny toys that they don't really need - because many are not there anymore.

Re:Maybe there's too little middle class anymore?

[FatherOfONe]

You are exactly correct! I would have considered one "if" the economy wasn't totally sucking. An unemployment rate of 10+%, with an administration and congress that seems to hate business is more than enough to make me drop all consideration for buying a new 3D TV. This kind of sucks, because we could really use a new TV now, but we will just have to do without. I have two other co-workers in the same boat.

What did the manufacturers expect?

[Animats]

What did the industry expect? The whole "3D TV" experience sucks for casual viewing. Off-axis viewing sucks. Viewing while lying down sucks. Viewing without glasses sucks. Viewing on a screen size / distance combination that forces the eyes to cross yields a quick headache. It takes a full "home theater" setup, with properly positioned seats for it to work right. And the "home theater" experience is incompatible with shows that have 30% commercial content.

Then there's the really annoying fact that, having finally developed a display technology that does not flicker, "3D TV" brings flicker back.

Worse, it isn't really "3D". It's just stereo vision. In the real world, there's no significant stereo vision effect beyond 2 meters or so. "Distance 3D" is totally fake. There are 3D systems where, when you move your head, the image changes accordingly, and you can move to look around obstacles. (I'm surprised that Wii games don't yet have that as standard.) But that's not what's being sold.

spoiled

[demonbug]

I've been completely unimpressed with the 3D movies I've seen in the theater (aside from the first time I saw Captain EO at Disneyland), and the demos of 3D TV I've seen are very underwhelming.

Part of it, I think, is because I was rather spoiled in this regard during grad school. I had access to a "CAVE"; ours consisted of four walls (left, right, front, and floor). Using the system made me familiar with a lot of the deficiencies of the widely-available TV and theater systems, to the point where I get very distracted by the inherent distortion in these settings. The CAVE system uses four projectors and a set of bulky shutter glasses (pretty simple so far). In addition, it does very accurate head tracking, so it can keep track of where you are and the orientation of your eyes. The system has a profile for each user, using their specific eye separation (and I think other parameters) to generate an image that is tailored to that person. Even when you are standing still, as you look at different portions of the screens, tilt your head, etc. the system is constantly adjusting the image to match your viewing angle. The difference between this actively compensated image and what you get with a normal system is huge. Wearing a secondary pair of shutter glasses and watching as someone else is using the system, you really saw how big of a difference it made to have all this active compensation. If you weren't standing right next to the primary user, the image would be hugely distorted. This distortion is what you nearly always get from a 3D theater or 3D TV set. Unless you are in the one perfect viewing position, and your eyes are very close to the "average" that was used in filming and generating the 3D images, there will always be significant distortion.
Some of this can be compensated for in video games, where the 3D content would be generated on the fly, but it is something you can't get around for any filmed or pre-rendered content. I prefer the traditional flat 2D image to a distracting distorted 3D image, never mind the hassle of having to wear glasses (and having to have a pair for each person).

the glasses

[Charliemopps]

They should be giving the glasses away for free. Each TV should come with 10 pair. Seriously, it's their biggest stumbling block. No one wants to get a TV, have people over to watch a movie, then find out they are 2 pair short and 2 people are going to have to stare at a blurry screen all night. Then you have the other problem of you might want to buy extra pairs. But they are expensive, and you only have people over so often... It's like a giant fail loop that we all saw coming and I'm sure the TV manufactures envisioned themselves making "Premium 3D glasses" and us paying through the nose for them. It's not going to happen, take a loss on the glasses, or your technology is doomed.

Holograms

[Anonymous Coward]

To the devil with 3D on flat screens - lets move right to the REAL 3D tech - Holographic TV! No Glasses!

Maybe it's just the recession?

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be that people dislike 3D... or it could be that people do like 3D (Avatar did very well in the box office, for instance), but we're in a major worldwide recession right now and people just don't want to spend $2000+ on a TV at the moment.

Re:3D TV upgrade cost.

[DocSavage64109]

I was just assuming that he already had a comparable non-3D tv. Granted, he could probably sell the current tv for some $500, making the 3D tv effectively $1500. Note, however, that he would also need to buy a 3D blueray player, and possibly a new stereo receiver that can handle hdmi 1.4a (or whatever the 3d spec is).

New things always take a while

[slapout]

Any time a new technology comes out it is expensive and slow selling. When DVD Players came out and were $400 a piece, not everyone could afford to rush out and buy one. It was when the prices began to come down that they found wide spread acceptance.

Much ado about nothing...

[Genda]

Face it... 3D is for porn consumption, and modern cartoons. The average porn user is satisfied with 3 minutes of use with glasses, and the so the real impacted population of 3D technologies is going to be children, and who cares what they think?

Mr blogger eh?

[scarface71795]

Why should we care what some blogger says? I just bought 3 new HD TV's i will not buy another one for 4 to 5 years

If you market it, some guy with credit will buy it

[halo8]

It should come to no surprise to any one that there are 3.2 Million people in North America that will be buying these TV's
Think about all those douchebags, jersey shore fans, non tech people, and guys that just want to show off to the Jones's next door. I do not think any one is worried about these tv's not selling this holiday season.

3D video games

[GWBasic]

I'll probably get a 3D TV when I can get 3D video games. For now, there's not enough good 3D content; but every time I play a video game I wish it was in true 3D.

This is in contrast to HDTV and DVD. HDTV and DVD benefited from a huge backlog of widescreen moves from the 1960s. I even bought a widescreen tube HDTV because there were so many widescreen DVDs.

3D - Schmee dee!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since I read about a few companies trying to create the 3D television where you don't even need glasses and having succes about it, I don't even consider buying one with glasses.
In the 1960's we had glasses, the tech may be newer these days but the concept of screen and glasses is still the same and it still sucks to me.

Get 3D contact lenses

[RapmasterT]

Yeah, which makes it even WORSE for us because we have to wear those annoying glasses uncomfortably over the glasses we already have. DOUBLE ANNOYANCE!

You need some 3D contact lenses. Then you can wear them ALL the time and experience 3D all day long without looking like an idiot wearing the 3D glasses in public.

I've always wondered what the real world would look like in 3D, just never had the nerve to wear those goofy glasses outside.

Re:Get 3D contact lenses

[Dahamma]

I've always wondered what the real world would look like in 3D, just never had the nerve to wear those goofy glasses outside.

I wear my 3D glasses around everywhere. It's weird, it really accentuates people's faces, makes them all look like they are laughing at me.

Re:Get 3D contact lenses

[airjordans11]

welcome to www.sneaker-trade.com
Good news:get a brand sunglass for order more then $200 from our site!
Main products: jordan,adidas,max shoes,NFL,MLB,NHL,NBA jerseys,LV COACH GUCCI brand handbags,UGG boots,wallets,sunglasses,clothes,jeans and so on.pls contact us to get wholesale price for a large order.
Mini order:1 pcs
Payment: we accept paypal ,western union
Shipping cost: $20 per order for less than $150.free shipping for order more than $150.we use EMS to send products,it usually takes 5-8 days to arrive.
Now start your online shipping on
www.sneaker-trade.com
www.discount-coachhandbags.com

Re:Get 3D contact lenses

[vegiVamp]

Funny, but I wonder if you *could* get used to wearing those contacts all the time; or maybe if it'd be possible to make 3D contacts that aren't intrusive on regular viewing.

Re:Get 3D contact lenses

[elrous0]

If 3D glasses make 2D look like 3D, then it follows that it would have the opposite effect in the 3D real world, of course. Everything would look like an old 2D NES platformer, which would make crossing the street in traffic a significant challenge.

No duh...

[MistrBlank]

And it's because 2010 was the year of the iPad, a new device that fills a niche we didn't know we needed filled at a price less than a new 3DTV. We all just finished buying up our brand new big screen TVs at a great price, no one is upgrading just yet. 3D TVs are currently 4-5 years too early.

I can't see 3D you insensitive clot!

[SpaghettiPattern]

I can't see 3D you insensitive clot!

Really, I own 2 eyes but I effectively use only 1. I don't see in 3D and I don't know what the fuss is all about.

I'd like a real 3D experience though, using stuff like Johnny Chung Lee achieved using a Wiimote.

My question was always. . ,

[Fantastic Lad]

Why did anybody think this was a good idea in the first place?

It's like having a pop-up book, or one of those Griffin & Sabine books where the pages have envelopes with letters inside you can pull out and read. They're great for a novelty, like Avatar, and everybody will want to take a look if it's marketed correctly, but when it comes down to it, my meat and potatoes novel is easier when printed on cheap newsprint. I already have to wear glasses to read, and that's annoying enough.

-FL

3D technology is broken

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious reason 3D TV's are not a big seller is that they do not work. At least here in Vancouver, I have gone to multiple big name stores here to try it out. They have booths setup with glasses to try it out... the content really is 3D (or it tries to be). But when I put on the glasses, everything is blurry and the 3D bits hardly work. You could blame this on the content, but these booths are setup with specifically 3D demo content... this is not playing random TV channels... so I know the 3D is trying it's best to work. It just doesn't.

I do wear prescription glasses, so maybe the additional lenses cause increased ghosting. But if this is true... then the technology will not be attainable by at least 1/2 the population.

My conclusion is that 3D is worthless in it's current state and there is little to no content available to watch it. If you plan on getting 3D, it is a MUST to try the 3D on the TV prior to purchasing it. Because you may be like me and find the technology complete garbage and something that you are unable to watch. I think 3D TV is like HD TV in the beginning... non standard technology with no content. When the standard does come out and content to match... you will find that your current TV is sorely lacking and that the purchase of this additional technology (included to "future proof" your purchase) was a complete waste of the additional funds.

If you have a known use for 3D.. like maybe a video console that you will use often in 3D.. and you test out the TV with it and like it... then enjoy... but I don't think that 3D TV and console exists yet (at least not the one that actually looks 3d when you use it). For now... I'll just be buying a nice large and flat screen for the lowest price at the best perceived quality (ignoring 3d labeling). And if you pay extra for the 3d label, then you may be a sucker and probably didn't try the 3d like I suggest.

Resurrect Michael Jackson

[Slur]

Announce the return of the King of Pop for a 3D version of Thriller, featuring Jack Black as the voice of Vincent Price. The 3D TVs will start flying off the shelves.

3D Is Still A Gimmick

[pandrijeczko]

Avatar was NOT a brilliant sci-fi movie but a very pleasant piece of eye candy that I was pleased I saw on IMAX - that gimmick factor is the reason it did so well.

What would be interesting would be to take a fairly good movie with a good story like "Up" and work out how many of the people who saw it in 3D would have gone to see it had it been in 2D. I'm guessing there probably wouldn't be too much of a difference.

Add to that the fact that selling 3.2 million TVs with 3D capability does not actually say very much. I don't claim to be a great TV or movie enthusiast but I bought my latest widescreen TV described as "HD Ready" because I thought it might be a useful feature to have - but I've never used HD because standard TV on it is "good enough" for what the missus & I want.

Plus the industry is missing the point anyway. If I go to the cinema, I'm there to see a movie. If it's a 3D movie, I borrow a pair of glasses, wear them to enjoy the movie & then hand them back when I've done. That's it finished.

If I'm at home, I may be on my own watching TV or sat with the rest of the family or with friends. Working out whether or not I have enough 3D glasses for everyone watching makes it far too complicated & that's the reason it won't succeed.

And if you don't accept that argument, you need only look at eating habits in the USA, UK and a few other parts of the world as proof. Most people in those countries *KNOW* that a microwaved prepared or take-away meal is not nutritionally as good as one that's cooked properly from raw ingredients. But, for many people, the microwave meal is "good enough" because it tastes okay to them & stops them feeling hungry. If you don't have a passion about home-cooked food, then you won't bother making home-cooked food because you just see it as far too complicated.

Likewise, until there's a passion for 3D TV, it will also be seen as just too complicated to bother with.

Maybe people already own TVs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a TV for Christmas when I was like 14.
It still supports analog cable, VGA, and DVI.

I still have basic cable and a computer that outputs VGA.
Maybe I don't want to play "arms race" with every single electronic device I own.

Uh oh

[NoSig]

I dread for the day of Goatse 3D, right out there in your face.

Glasses are supplied with the set

[I_Wrote_This]

In other words, a lot of Western Europeans who buy a TV with 3D capability don't even bother to buy the glasses to use that feature.'"

The sets I've seen come with glasses (usually 2 pairs) so you don't need to buy them separately to get the effect.

Nope on 3D

[valkraider]

I had a 32 inch Sony CRT which we used for 10 years. Then we replaced it with a 57 inch rear projection TV - used that for 10 years and just gave it away and purchased a new 47 inch LED LCD. Didn't even look at the 3D tv models. I have no interest. And now we won't be buying another TV for years - maybe a decade based on past patterns. Coincidentally, the 32 inch Sony CRT is still in use as the primary TV of the friend we gave it to. 3D sucks. Probably will never be one in my house...

Re:Nope on 3D

[mr_snarf]

I still use a 24 inch Samsung TV. I honestly don't notice the difference after watching it for 15 seconds, brain just disregards the space around it.

I didn't RTFA, but...

[phreakincool]

Maybe it has something economy? Or that most people have just recently upgraded to HD sets from SD and view 3D as a gimicky trick to buy a new HD set? Oh and the content is not there to justify the purchase of a new 3D set.

I bought one ...

[hardboiled.tequila]

I bought one a few weeks ago. (It comes with a free Blu-Ray, 2 extra glasses and a movie, see http://www.samsung.com/au/promotions/tv-av/footy_final/index.html )

Folks in the USA may be surprised to hear I'm located in Australia, and in a regional area that doesn't even do 3D broadcasts (since we're all behind the times down under). So why would I buy such a TV?

Ironically, I decided it was the TV I wanted despite the fact that it had no '3D' branding whatsoever in the store, and the sales guy didn't mention it. The reason I chose that model (58" Plasma) was value for money (size, picture quality, wireless, MKV support).

Here in Aus, non-3D TVs are slowly being phased out - you almost can't buy a TV over 55 inches without it. So basically we're being railroaded into buying 3D, despite the fact that the majority of 3D content is only available on Blu-Ray.

Oh, and I was really surprised to see how good DVD looks, especially with motion-smoothing turned on.

I was a little bummed at the thought of re-buying my only-just-purchased copies of Star Wars, Indiana Jones etc DVDs in Blu-Ray - but I have to say that the picture quality is much, much better than just "good enough"; I'm sure your average punter wouldn't even be able to tell the difference.

Don't get me wrong - I was sold on the TV's ability to push 1080p (Sintel looks incredible on it) but it's not enough to make me re-buy my DVD library.

Who is this itwbennett guy?

[Anonymous Coward]

So let's see... He does nothing but post stories from itworld (hence the itw part of his name), and seems pretty similar to that guy Bennett Haselton (bennett part of this /. account) that used to submit all kinds of trash to /.

Yep. I'm pretty sure that same guy just got some job linking to all the ad-sponsored non-stories on IT World. He should've just stayed trying to badmouth newspapers for his own misreading of their articles referencing him, badmouthing judges for making correct rulings, etc.

3d TV?

[oljanx]

Those are the ones we had before "flat screens" right?

Why?

[Namarrgon]

I genuinely don't get people's objections. If you don't like it (and many don't), then stick to 2D and don't buy TVs that cost more. You do have a choice, nobody's forcing anything on you, so why are you hoping for the choice of others to be removed?

Eventually all mid- to high-end TVs will support 3D, whether you use it or not (as with colour, stereo, etc) but by then the novelty premium will be gone, and any minor incremental costs will long since have been hidden by price drops. It still won't be adding anything significant to your costs, and you can still ignore it. I'm not seeing the downside you appear to be worried about.

Polarizing TV

[amorsen]

Polarized glasses mean that we have to put a filter in front of the TV which is able to switch polarization for each frame. I haven't heard of such technology.

Alternatively you'd need to halve resolution and put a fixed filter in front of each pixel. Actually, that seems like a really good idea now that I think about it. You might need OLED screens to be able to pull off the required resolution (prefererably 3840x1080 for Full-HD), but it would eliminate several of the disadvantages of current technology.

Re:Polarizing TV

[Richy_T]

Yes. I'm imagining the filter. Though there may be other ways.

LCD screens need polarizing filters in any case as far as I'm aware. So it may just be a case of tweaking that somehow.

A few other reasons for buying 3D sets...

[Shirley Marquez]

First, some people might be buying 3D sets because they are top of the line sets that offer good performance in other ways, and the 3D capability is just coming along for the ride. Second, some might be buying them to use as 120Hz displays for computer gaming. Third, some might plan to buy glasses in the future but are waiting for more compelling 3D titles - Avatar anyone? (Frankly, given the timing of the release of 3D TV, I was shocked when Avatar wasn't the flagship release for it.)

Exclusive Blu-Ray 3D titles are hurting sales

[Anonymous Coward]

One issue I haven't seen posted here is that the misuse of "exclusive" titles by TV manufacturers are killing sales of the various sets due to an "everyone poisoned the well" model. Over half the Blu-Ray 3D titles are locked up as hardware exclusives, such as requiring the purchase of a brand "Y" TV to get a studio "C" film. Totally defeating the point of an interoperable standard because of some shortsighted morons in marketing who should have just declared a truce early on. (If the entire marketplace is unattractive to customers due to this infighting, the entire segment will suffer due to it.)

Wrong interpretation of attach rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

"
In Western Europe (the only region where they offered this data point) sales of 3D glasses are less than 1 per 3D set sold. In other words, a lot of Western Europeans who buy a TV with 3D capability don't even bother to buy the glasses to use that feature.'"
"

The less than one pair of glasses per set attache rate is probably caused by each TV sold having one pair included. People only have to buy a separate pair if they want to be able have 2 people wathing simultaneously.

People already own the glasses; no need to buy

[psychonaut]

In other words, a lot of Western Europeans who buy a TV with 3D capability don't even bother to buy the glasses to use that feature.

Am I correct in thinking that these glasses operate on the same principle as those used to view 3D movies in the cinema? If so, then it's no surprise that Europeans aren't buying the glasses—over here when you see a 3D movie, you get to keep the glasses. I'd wager that almost everyone who buys and uses a 3D TV already has glasses from a movie theatre.

Can't buy their product due to their paycheck cuts

[master_p]

How do they expect to buy their expensive products, when they cut our paychecks? the current economic crisis is not a joke. Many people become unemployed, each minute we talk about it, and many people accept paycheck cuts in order to keep their jobs. How are we supposed to buy expensive new cool stuff?

Yes.

[jotaeleemeese]

"When I listen to music I stop doing everything, otherwise I don't pay attention to what I am doing and niether do to the music I am suppossed to be listeneing to" Rene Aviles Fabila, Mexican writer.

If you have a problem with concentrating don't extrapolate your issues to the wider population.

Many (most?) of us will interrupt a movie once or twice at most, otherwise what is the frigging point of sitting to watch?

Or maybe you watch rubbish movies only that do not make any intellectual demands on their audience.

Sky charges for HD signals.

[jotaeleemeese]

No joking, here in the UK Sky broadcast HD TV at a Premium.

And now they want to flog a sickly 3D horse?

The current TVs (pre HD, but capable of HD) with DVD content look perfectly mine to me.

And to top it all I actuall can do stuff with the contents of a DVD (rip it, archive it, use in more than one device) which can't be done with 3D TV.

So what exactly is the incentive to use 3D TV? A substandard movile like Avatar? (my faourite film critic gave 2/5 stars, he saw about all the hype and after having seen the movie I have to say he was right on the money).

Shit : not given

[RockDoctor]

I've been dragged, protesting, into the wasteland of having a TV in the corner of the room since I got married.
Last year I was dragged, unwillingly, into replacing a perfectly functional 28" TV with a perfectly functional 40" TV (OK, I'll grant that that does display the holiday photos off a memory stick quite well, but that wasn't a purchase criterion but something I found out when I RTFM'd. Was that side-effect of the purchase worth the purchase price? I don't think so.)
Last year I also had a friend try and fail to convince me that the difference between standard definition and high definition was noticeable - he's the hi-fi and hi-def buff, so if he doesn't have it set up properly, I don't care ; no sale.
Went to see a 3-d movie last year too. Crap storyline and a headache. No sale.

So, next TV purchase around 2015 or 2020. Sounds good to me. By that time I ought to be able to unroll the TV from it's shipping box and just tape it to the wall.