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A personal note to all 3D TV pessimists
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3D TV might look amazing, but who’s going to be producing all these fantastic 3D programs? I doubt very many of the people that contribute on these forums will be doing it. Here in the midwest, we’ve had a grand total of ONE client come to us with a project and ASK for HD.
We’ve suggested it to a few clients on certain projects, but 99% of the projects we do are STILL in SD. In fact, out of half-dozen HD projects we’ve done, exactly ONE ended up being played back in HD. That’s right, the others all ended up being played on good ole standard definition DVD.
I don’t doubt 3D TV will make inroads…but for facilities producing local/regional television commercials, corporate video, web video etc….it will be a LONG time before the production technology becomes affordable for us, and it will be even longer before our clients ask for it.
Let’s not forget that up until about a year or two ago, according to most accounts, something like 75% of ALL network programming (including cable networks) was STILL produced in SD. Ultra successful programs like Survivor only recently went to HD production.
My point isn’t whether 3D TV will be successful, I’m sure it will be. My point is that it will only affect a small number of producers and production entities due to the cost of entry (both technical and in “know-how”) and the HUGE lag that exists for small markets and corporate communications to adopt new technology. Small TV stations just finished spending a small fortune upgrading to HD. How eager do you think they’ll be to spend ANOTHER small fortune to implement 3D TV?? When I worked at local affiliates, they’d keep a piece of equipment for DECADES! Yes…you read that right. If it could be repaired, it got fixed and was put back in service. I worked at a TV station from 1992-1994 that was STILL using typewriters to type news scripts. It had ONE computer in the entire building. They were STILL using 2″ video decks up until 1995 and 1″ video decks until 2005!
I wouldn’t say I’m a pessimist when it comes to 3D TV. I’m a pragmatist. I just don’t believe it will be a technology that will come near the type of work we do anytime in the next decade.
Let’s also not forget the point made in this thread about the quality of it’s use. Let Hollywood produce a dozen or so poorly executed, poorly written 3D bombs and let’s see how enthusiastic the public is about it.
Remember when a Space Shuttle launch was a big deal? Now it only gets people interested when something goes terribly wrong! Yet it’s still an inspiring event, especially in-person. The public tires quickly of technology driven events. If 3D TV programs don’t have great stories and the 3D elements don’t serve the story, people eventually won’t watch. 3D in sports? Yeah..that could be cool…but again…how many people will that affect on these forums? Not many.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
[Chris Blair] “3D in sports? Yeah..that could be cool…but again…how many people will that affect on these forums? Not many.”
Well, I think discussion of 3D tv in the home is like discussing the 1st generation iPad, HTML5 video streaming and questions why the adoption of brain implants for video playback has been so slow.
In other words, the tech industry loves talking up the next big thing, even if that next big thing is years away. Early adopters always pay a lot and have to wait for a big payoff.
Back in 1992 Cine-Med produced one of the first HD videos in the US. It was on a now defunct 1″ HD tape format. It would be 15 years before we would touch an HD camera again, and by then it was a viable tool for makin’ money.
Back in 1995 Cine-Med produced a 3D video – we had a specially made Zeiss lens adapted to a stereoscopic video endoscope – I think we managed to mount it to a tripod. The audience all needed to wear Crystal Eyes LCD glasses at $250/unit to see the result. Only now in 2010 are people actually talking about 3D being a viable tool for mainstream imaging.
We bought a CD-R burner around 1996 for something like $2500 – it took 30+ minutes to burn a CD. But we actually started selling CD-ROM products almost immediately – the market was asking for it.
The 3D and HD projects were contract jobs.Shall I talk about our foray into virtual reality? I think you see my point.
It is fun learning about new technology, but like the DVD player, until your grandma has one attached to her Zenith, or until it costs the same as the current technology demanded by the market, or both, it is not yet mainstream!
But the outliers are having a blast no doubt.
I recently had an e-mail dialogue with a distant relative who is heavily involved in 3D – he believes it is the future of entertainment and that Avatar was the kick in the Navi that the industry needed.
Mike Cohen
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Looks like 3D may bring Kodak back to the front of the imaging industry:
https://www.camerapedia.org/wiki/Kodak_Stereo
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Coupla notes responding to various posts:
1) While DRW saw a state of the art presentation with an expensive monitor, there are already nearly 200 million 3D-capable sets out there, and have been purchased for perfectly reasonable prices.
How’s this: 63″ Mitsubishi, 1080p, 120 Hz, for $1399 at Best Buy. Hurry, you can still get yours delivered by Sunday, although these things are LIGHT – two people can easily get one in the back of a pickup or van.
The 2D picture on these things is staggering, and among scores of models that are 3D-ready. All of Mitsu’s sets have been 3D ready for years…and again, there are already 200 million from many mfrs already in homes.
2) 3D home viewing has been around for quite some time for gamers. NVIDIA has a wonderful system with their own glasses. Far less expensive than Real-D, completely compelling (super-high refresh rates, as gamers demand), their games come with FOUR pairs of glasses (multi-person gaming has been huge for years), and those glasses come with multiple configurations, including a couple specially designed for people who already wear prescription glasses.
News flash: NVIDIA’s market research indicated that gamers wear glasses at a much higher rate than the general public!
3) There will be people complaining about glasses for as long as there are glasses….but the audience is voting with every dollar: more and more of them are willing to spend more and more money on repeat viewings of higher-priced 3D offerings, glasses and all. This is absolutely NOT going to be an impediment to any meaningful part of the potentially paying audience.
To put it another way, producers can’t hear your complaints about glasses because of all the noise from people banging on the door for more 3D screens, and all the noise from those bags of money falling from the sky, as so many people are watching so many movies…with glasses.
3a) Yes, plenty and plenty of research being done to get rid of glasses, but absolutely NO incentive to do it soon.
Don’t forget that the one company to invest heavily in auto-stereoscopy was Philips, and had to drop it when they couldn’t get anyone, including their own stockholders, excited about the current state of the art. It simply wasn’t looking good enough. People would rather pay for better 3D with glasses than less persuasive 3D without glasses.
This is a business forum. Never forget: money talks.
3b) Which is why Armani is one of many design houses that has already announced designer 3D glasses – superior comfort, superior optics AND fashionable.
4) The first televised 3D experiences will not look good enough. They don’t need to. It was decades before color TV looked better than nightmarish. Depending on your reception method and display, it took 3-5 years before HD looked genuinely higher D. And yet, sets sold on the PROMISE that it would look better. And it did.
Again, there are already 200 million 3D sets out there, but that’s a fraction of overall TVs installed. There’s a massive upside…
4a)…and sports will drive it, just as sports have driven TV sales for a long, long time. It used to be Milton Berle. Now, between games and football, John Madden may well be the new Mr. Television.
5) Poke around the Cow. People here ARE doing 3D, NOW. Many of them are in sports, many of them are in movies, many of them in DVD. This is part of our world NOW. 3D DVDs have been out for a while, made by some people who post here, and all that sports stuff – those people are at work NOW. There are crazy numbers of people here, many many thousands in fact, from ESPN, the NFL, NFL Films, the NFL Network, Discovery, Sony — I mention these because they’re coming online with 3D in less than six months.
Make no mistake. This is NOT a future story.
5a) Perhaps not so much in this forum, which is disproportionally owner/indie and video driven, but seriously, this stuff is in bunches of forums – AE, FCP, camera forums, the Stereoscopic forum, Nuke, etc etc. Some of it just curiosity, but some of it is from people who are doing it already.
If it’s happening in this industry, it’s happening in the Cow. Although, as I said, not necessarily in this forum.
No disrespect intended – that’s just the nature of the conversation here, a focus more on MY business than THE business. A critical service that we are proud to provide better than anyone else in the industry, but it can skew some discussions about the industry as a whole.
6) What does “HERE” mean? Is 3D “here”? Yes, beyond doubt or debate. Unless YOU are someplace that it is not, in which case it is not here for YOU…but it’s “here,” even if it’s far from ubiquitous. And when it was launched, there were just over 1 million HD sets already in homes.
1 million HD at launch vs. 200 million 3D at launch. Which adoption rate will be faster? Please. This isn’t even an interesting race.
It will of course be “here” far earlier than it is “universal,” just as was true for color, HD and indeed TV itself. But it all started somewhere, and work on the 3D for the home has been underway for years. It’s only the wide-ish-scale deployment that begins in June.
Which is why thousands of Cows are already working on, and in, 3D.
Peace. Out.
Timmy -
[Tim Wilson] “While DRW saw a state of the art presentation with an expensive monitor, there are already nearly 200 million 3D-capable sets out there, and have been purchased for perfectly reasonable prices.”
I have grinned as I helped a number of friends of ours swap a cable or two on their set-ups, and pop in a disc and show them 3D working on their existing set.
Most common reaction?
“I didn’t know it could do that. It didn’t say so on the box.”
We have a 42″ flatscreen made by Polaroid that cost us about $1,500 a couple of years back. It works fine.
Is it as cool as seeing Real-D at the theater? Not even close. But for the cost of an HDMI cable between the TV and the player, not bad at all.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
CEO, CreativeCOW.netCreativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint ExupéryFirst they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
– GandhiBetter is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure than to rank with the poor spirits who neither enjoy much, nor suffer much because they live in a gray twilight that knows no victory or defeat. – Theodore Roosevelt
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Steve –
In order to see 3d imaging each eye has to look thru polarizers turned at 90 degrees to each other – so having both eyes looking thru the same sheet of polarizer just won’t cut it. If it did, you could just put the polarizer on the monitor.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions -
[Ron Lindeboom] “We have a 42” flatscreen made by Polaroid that cost us about $1,500 a couple of years back. It works fine.
Is it as cool as seeing Real-D at the theater? Not even close. But for the cost of an HDMI cable between the TV and the player, not bad at all. “
Although I didn’t see it, many here on this and other forums saw and have commented on the 3D commercial broadcast during last year’s Superbowl. So, rudimentary 3D is capable without any technology other than a set of red and blue lens in cardboard frames. Great, that’s cool for a quick thrill.
However, the point I was trying to make is that the technology at it’s very highest level is so good that there will be no stopping it, and it will be implemented almost everywhere before you know it. And, it’s no gimmick either, it’s just a better way of viewing almost anything.
Ultimately, unlike HD, which many laypeople still don’t really appreciate, I believe 3D is going to make it’s way into our lives and our culture quite rapidly, because it is substantially different and substantially better. And, once you see it at it’s very best, I think you will all agree.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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I’ve read that roughly 20% of the USA households replace their TVs in a given year. I don’t know the accuracy of that number and I suspect households who bought HDTVs (roughly 50% give or take) aren’t going to spend huge sums to replace them that quickly. Maybe not even at that 20% rate. This is compounded with the fundamental change in the USA economy which means people have less disposable income than they used to. Being great, wondrous, even desired does not ensure market penetration will be fast.
Of course if all it took was a $150 hardware add on to modify the TV, that could fly off the shelves for a 3D Super Bowl.
To put it another way, without a TV mod, 3D growth is only going to be a subset of that 20% of a given year and the size of subset may depend on a combination of price and the USA economy.
Sorry that I’m only mentioning USA here but thats the only numbers I’ve seen. I’m not sure what the impact 3D would have in TV purchases in the rest of the world.
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[Craig Seeman] “3D growth is only going to be a subset of that 20% of a given year and the size of subset may depend on a combination of price and the USA economy.”
Don’t forget: there are approx. 200 million 3D-capable sets in people’s homes right now. Compare to the 1 million+ HD sets available at the launch of that format!
(Or thereabouts, with rounding.)
So there doesn’t need to be one single person buying one single new set for 3D programming to have a clear path to massive adoption. The displays are already in place.
Sorry to be repetitive about this, but the number of 3d-ready displays already in place *has* to be the starting place for any discussion about the format’s deployment and viability.
I guarantee it was a huge part of the starting place that led the suits to believe that they could make more money than they spend to launch all-3D networks this summer.
There are issues related to 3D adoption. TV sets ain’t one of ’em.
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