A lot of time, energy and marketing dollars are being poured into the concept of 3D HDTV. The truth is that televisions have been 3D ready for years, yet nothing much has come out of it. The technology hasn’t been perfected, you still need glasses, and content is almost non-existent.
With so much riding on this new technology is anyone going to be bold enough to point out that this is nothing more than smoke and mirrors? It doesn’t look that way so unfortunately I’m going to have to come out as an early dissenter and say that 3D isn’t going to be a “game changer” or “mainstream technology” until at least 2012 or 2013. Here’s why:
- Customers won’t upgrade. Even with 46% of households with HDTVs, the idea that these same people are going to dig deeper into their pockets to get another, more expensive HDTV is laughable. No matter how impressive 3D may be or how great the idea may seem there will be little desire to spend another $1,000.
- No free content. As of the time of this article being written there isn’t one channel available for you to watch 3D content. There is a lot of talk and rumor about 3D channels with movies or sports, heck – it might even be porn but it’s not going to be free. Free is the carrot dangled to help people test out the waters and make sure it’s safe enough to actually jump in and spend. Blu-ray player prices are coming down sharply, so are the prices of movies but until people are able to actually see the difference in video and audio quality there’s no reason to go out and spend the money to upgrade. The same is true when it comes to 3D HDTV. Even when channels become available very few people are going to be willing to start paying for it without there being some trial period or the ability to access this content.
- Expensive add-ons. People have grown accustomed to only having to buy the end product in order to be able to use what they need to use. No one goes in thinking that they’ll need to buy the memory after they’ve bought the computer in order to use it. Upgrades are one thing but telling someone that they’ll need to spend an extra $100+ in order to even test drive 3D HDTV (if that were an option) is going to make this technology a non-starter for many. 3D HDTVs range in prices with some costing less than $600. For those people, you aren’t going to be able to convince them of the upgrade. Cable and satellite companies are able to update firmware to set top boxes to make people consider the option but none of that means anything as long as homes don’t have 3D glasses. Either the glasses become free or the technology improves so you don’t need them. There is little chance that either of those things are going to take place in the next 2 to 3 years.
- Motion blur. Motion blur can be used as an effect to increase the realism of images. It can also improve the quality of animations. The issue arises when people are able to detect this artificial realism and it impairs their ability to focus on the content. Many of the hit movies coming out include action and that may prove to be a problem with 3D. Here is what someone said when they went to see the movie Avatar:
But when you add 3D glasses into the mix, it’s not just “annoying”. It’s “cerebrally disruptive”. Any shift of your eyes has to reorient your brain, and since you’re constantly shifting your eyes, you get a series of fleeting illusions combined with a lot of image jolts and jerks. Taking off my 3D glasses, I realised that the typical crappy front-row experience would have been peaceful and easy by comparison. Get this straight: Front row for 3D is 10X worse than front row for other movies.
There was another problem. I was wearing 3D glasses on top of my own glasses, which I need to see. I am not the only person in the world who chooses to wear eyeglasses instead of getting contacts or Lasik surgery. You’d think the 3D industry would plan for this sizable segment of the population. But the light playing between my glasses and the Dolby 3D glasses created weird holograms, floating text and images. I thought at first it was Cameron pulling a JJ Abrams and throwing a bunch of lens flare streaks into the mix, but no, if I adjusted the relative position of the two glasses, they images would move or disappear, at least momentarily. It was reflections of the movie projection bouncing off of my glasses and back onto the inside of the 3D glasses.
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