Home entertainment
29 April 20103D or not 3D?
Marketers can be demanding. No sooner have you ditched your trusty CRT TV and replaced it with a high-definition LCD screen than they want you to ditch that and boldly go where no household has gone before … into the third dimension. Will it be worth it this time? Or is it simply a gimmick that will come and go, as it has in the past?
The latest wave of 3D in cinemas
3D is the latest marketing ploy to get people away from their home DVD collections and to a movie theatre. Most of the latest blockbuster action movies have been available to watch in 3D and it’s allowed ticket sellers to charge a premium.
But not all 3D is created equal. Avatar was shot entirely with expensive 3D cameras, with three dimensions in mind from the technology to the type of camera shots used. The result are genuinely impressive.
Then there’s Clash of the Titans. Originally shot in plain 2D, it was re-engineered in post-production at vast cost to give an illusion of depth. The result? As one reviewer put it, “I walked out of Clash of the Titans exhausted, as if I’d just fought the Kraken myself, after the struggle of squinting through it. I found relief only in the moments when I took off my uncomfortable 3D glasses to take a break”.
Coming to your home?
But before you can sit and watch projectiles flying out of your TV, you’re going to need …, a new TV.
Even if you’ve just bought an HD TV, it won’t display images in three dimensions. To do that, the TV needs to be capable of displaying two separate images near-simultaneously – something that no TV can do.
Samsung will be one of the first manufacturers to release 3D TVs in New Zealand this year, but you can bet companies like Sony will be hot on its heels. No prices have been revealed yet, but at a guess I’d expect them to cost to be similar to high-end LED models –around $4000 for that extra dimension.
You’ll need more than just a new TV – you’ll also need a blu-ray player capable of reading 3D blu-ray discs. It’s a good bet your current model won’t be upgradeable, so you’ll have buy a new one.
PlayStation 3 owners might escape all this. It’s rumoured a firmware update this year will allow it to play 3D movies, although it’s uncertain whether this upgrade will work with Sony TVs only.
Either way, it sounds like a lot of money just to watch 10-foot tall blue aliens in the comfort of your own home, right?
Eyewear required
But it’s not the new hardware that has me feeling so cautious about home 3D. It’s the glasses. If you’ve been to a 3D movie at a cinema, you’ll know you have to wear one of several kinds of eyewear to see 3D images. The glasses filter, the otherwise jumbled onscreen image making your brain think you’re viewing something in 3D.
The problem is you’ll need to wear these glasses at home. In a cinema, it’s not such a problem – you’re there for the movie and nothing else. But in your living room you’re likely to get distracted or want to perform other tasks while watching the movie. What happens if you want to invite guests to watch something – or if you have a large family? How much will these glasses cost? And can you really expect your guests to bring their own?
Not sold, for now
Who needs it? I don’t think the bother and expense is worth watching the latest Toy Story movie in 3D at home. Couple this with the fact that New Zealand won’t see much 3D content anyway, and you’re left with a lot of money frittered away for a handful of 3D-enabled movies.
Soon I’ll look into an upcoming tech that might one day allow for 3D TVs without eyewear – something that makes me far more interested.
Comments
To early for 3d at home. I think the big seller will be 3d sports broadcasts and the rest will follow
This whole 3d tv debate is a bit over simplified. Anyone who lived through the Dolby Prologic years of shame should be more sceptical.
3D means that a picture has the characteristics of an object. Not only does each eye have a different image of an object (which is emulated in current 3D experiences), objects also have focal lengths, and when you move your eyes, the view changes. Current "3d" is probably best described as 2.1D. It provides one extra gimmick to fool our eye, and make some elements of movies better. The current tech is more than likely just another 3d fad. There have been other 3ds in the past. There will be more 3ds in the future. Let's hope the next generation offers more than just ridiculous marketing based on the false beleif that anything new is the way of the future.
I just watched the World Cup semifinal between Spain and Germany in 3D at the Event Cinema in Westfield mall, Albany, Auckland. It was almost unwatchable due to the amount of crosstalk between the lens. That is, each player had a very visible shadow (especially in long shots, which constitute most of the game) that was due to some of the light intended for the right eye also entering the left eye (similarly for the right eye). This was especially apparent for the Germans, since they were wearing white (higher contrast against the green field). This made the picture appear like a very highly ghosted traditional TV signal. The only parts of the action that looked great in 3D were shots from the sideline or behind the goal, since then the two images of each player were almost merged and so the ghosting was less obvious. A particular evident artifact was that there were always 3 balls (rather than just 1) flying through the air
This is a fatal flaw of the current technology used at the Events Cinema (old Skycity). The idea of live 3D sport broadcasts is a great one, but they won't become popular among potential viewers until a better system is installed. I certainly will be recommending to my friends and colleagues that they do not attend any 3D sport broadcasts at these cinemas until this problem is fixed. Perhaps the cinema owners could consider using polarized lenses rather than chromatic ones?
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