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Ask Slashdot: Why Did 3D TVs and Stereoscopic 3D Television Broadcasting Fail?
dryriver writes: Just a few years ago the future seemed bright for 3D TVs. The 3D film Avatar smashed all box office records. Every Hollywood studio wanted to make big 3D films. The major TV set manufacturers from LG to Phillips to Panasonic all wanted in on the 3D TV action. A 3D disc format called Blu-ray 3D was agreed on. Sony went as far as putting free 3D TVs in popular pubs in London to show Brits how cool watching football ("Soccer" in the U.S.) in Stereo 3D is. Tens of millions of dollars of 3D TV related ads ran on TV stations across the world. 3D Televisions and 3D content was, simply put, the biggest show in town for a while as far as consumer electronics goes. Then the whole circus gradually collapsed -- 3D TVs failed to sell well and create the multi-billion dollar profits anticipated. 3D at home failed to catch on with consumers. Shooting genuine stereo 3D films (not "post conversions") proved to be expensive and technically challenging. Blu-ray 3D was only modestly successful. Even Nvidia's stereo 3D solutions for PC gamers failed. What, in your opinion, went wrong? Were early 3D TV sets too highly priced? Were there too few 3D films and 3D TV stations available to watch (aka "The Content Problem")? Did people hate wearing active/passive plastic 3D glasses in the living room? Was the price of Blu-ray 3D films and Blu-ray 3D players set too high? Was there something wrong with the stereo 3D effect the industry tried to popularize? Did too many people suffer 3D viewing related "headaches," "dizzyness," "eyesight problems," and similar? Was the then -- still quite new -- 1080p HD 2D television simply "good enough" for the average TV viewer? Another related question: If things went so wrong with 3D TVs, what guarantee is there that the new 3D VR/AR trend won't collapse along similar lines as well?
Fuck 3D. When they were showing 3D in theaters, I preferred 2D. Even if they had made 3D cheaper than 2D, I'd still prefer 2D.
1. I wear glasses.
2. Wearing 3D glasses over glasses is fucking retarded.
3. Having to swivel my head back and forth to see the screen is retarded.
4. Paying a premium to watch something in 3D is retarded.
5. Reasons: Retarded.
Yes, it does. The requirement that you focus in one plane on an image purporting to be in another is the problem. If you are young, it damages your ability to see properly, if you are old, and especially if you have had a job where estimating your position in space is important (driver, horse rider, athlete) then the mental stress is a killer (half hour exposure gives two day headache).
The technology was doomed in the 50's, doomed in the 70's, and remains doomed.
We bought a 3D TV, and now, four years later, no one has removed the glasses from the box they came in.
The technology is completely doomed, for ever. Always has been, and always will be.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Not just glasses, but COST of glasses.
Around here, an extra pair of active glasses cost around 5-15% of the cost of the original TV set.. which back then was not cheap.
You got one or two sets free, the rest were stupid prices.
And they are of course easily broken, misplaced, etc..
Glasses were bad, but EXPENSIVE glasses were much worse.
If they wanted adoption so much, then they should have made the glasses nearly free - would have been cheaper than all the marketing efforts.
Price isn't the issue, many TVs come with free 3D or the glasses are very cheap, and this was true even with the early sets. And I never noticed that 3D Blurays were that much more expensive than the regular ones. Content is something of an issue, as it takes effort and know-how to do 3D well. Cameron got it right in Avatar (but also Sanctum), few others really get it right, but if you like 3D movies the content is there. Lastly, the headaches and dizziness seem to affect a relatively small group of people only. None of that is what's stopped 3D TV from becoming a hit.
It's simple physics what stopped it. Look up "depth budget". This is the maximum distance that content can stick out in front of the screen or go behind it, and it is directly proportional to viewing distance. You may have been blown away by the 3D world of Avatar in the cinema, but sadly you will never recreate the same immersion at home with a 3D set, even if you get a huge TV and sit so close to it that it covers the same part of your field of view as a cinema screen does. Because of the puny depth budget.
The good news is that VR doesn't have this shortcoming. And it adds another level of realism that shouldn't be underestimated: the ability to look around in the scene. Provided that cinematographers are willing to deal with the added complexity, VR movies will provide a new level of immersion. Same as in certain types of games (shooters, MMORPGs, etc): 3D didn't add enough to make it worthwhile bothering, but VR probably will... for people who won't mind wearing a VR helmet for hours on end, of which there are plenty. 3D TV was destined to fail, but I bet VR will be viable when affordable, high quality VR helmets will hit the market, with reliable head tracking (and hand tracking for games), and high definition displays that provide a wide field of view.
By the way, please don't lump VR and AR together like that, they may seem similar but they are two very different things, in terms of both technology and application. And AR has nothing to do with 3D TV.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I disagree with most of the comments so far.
I've got two 3D TVs that use passive glasses, and I like them. When it seemed like every movie was coming out in 3D, I went to 3 or 4 of them over almost as many years and kept the glasses, so I've got a good stock. I can wear them while I'm doing other things and still see other screens just fine. With a 3D program in the background, it can take a second or two for your brain to switch back into artificial 3D mode, but that's not too bad.
Price wasn't a big deal. On one of the TVs, I went searching for a TV with specific features that I wanted, and 3D came along for the ride. The TV was maybe $30 more than a crappy one of similar size.
Content is poor. And not just selection. Tron Legacy is beautiful in 3D and has a great soundtrack, but the movie is just awful. And sadly, there are plenty others like it.
The killer app for 3D TV though, should have been sports. The Canadians did a 3D broadcast of a hockey game at least once, and it is amazing. It has to be seen to be believed. I play that game for skeptics now and then, and they get really, really excited about 3D TV. But then they deflate when the realize that nothing is ever broadcast in 3D, and specifically nothing in the sport they like (whatever that is).
See that "Preview" button?
Of a dozen or so middle-aged friends, only one has any problem watching 3D. Surveys seem to say only 14% of the population has this problem.
This round of 3-D had a few suckage points... I wouldn't blame any single one but they add up as to why it really "failed":
1) Too many competing standards for glasses, most glasses not fully tunable and many statically tuned for a specific model of TV. Use of crappy IR instead of RF... one well standardized Bluetooth broadcast frame was all they needed to do, but they didn't.
2) Glasses bulkier than necessary. Few good options for clip-ons to prescription glasses.
3) No minimum standard on pixel refresh rate... lots of low-quality ghosty sets. Would have been better timed to come out when DLP sets were not a waning market.
4) Failure of console game industry to utilize side benefits (even on PS3, next to no SimulView support)
5) Failure of TV/glasses manufacturers to do the same (two shows one set/earphones)
6) Failure of cable operators to integrate 3D content on normal channels rather than premium
dedicated channels or the free 3D demo channel broadcasting the same nature scenes over
and over.
7) Failure of online services to make 2d and 3d the same digital product so you didn't have to
choose.
8) Segregation of sensitive audience members... even to this day, theaters do not seem to offer ... you'll notice the lack of "true 3d" where you can "change your perspective" does not make my list. I literally know nobody who actually minded the "viewmaster" effect... just seems to be some very noisy individuals here on this thread.
2D glasses so a party with one sensitive person can go to a 3D film.
Someone had to do it.