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?

Comments

Glasses

[Ryanrule]

Glasses

Re:Glasses

[Anonymous Coward]

Not because glasses. It failed because it wasn't 3d. It had a fixed point of view. You couldn't look anywhere but where the camera was pointed. It a View-Master toy with moving pictures.

When 3D is really here, and you can look around the stage and behind characters and into car windows (and down blouses and up skirts, because really, porn drives everything), that's when it'll take off. Not before.

Because

[DivineKnight]

Because in movies like 'Avatar', the 3D is done well. In some other movies, it's a cheap parlor trick ("Let's have something jump out at them, that's worth the 3D tax for this movie"). And in other movies, it's obvious the director doesn't care / doesn't know how to make use of the 3D element: I guess they just film in 3D, keep the existing Z-axis values, and hit upload ("What is the foreground, what is the background, should my actors / characters have very flat Z-values or should I try to 'HDR' that, highlighting what's really impressive").

No capes.
No 3D jump-out scare scenes.

Re:3d fails about every 10-15 years.

[Anne Thwacks]

It doesn't _have_ to suck,

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.