3D televisions

[SavannahLion]

Most people can't keep the damn glasses on for the full length of a movie.

 Really?  Cause every single Imax movie Ive ever been to, and I dont see people taking off the glasses.  You tend to notice something like 70% of people taking off glasses for lengths of time. That would be like more than half of the people sitting near you.

First off, a movie really has to suck balls or the people have to be really annoying if you're paying more attention to the people around you than the movie itself.

2nd of all. Imax theater is usually 70% empty anyways. Oh wait, that's not really the point. My second point really is, if a person is "3D blind" they're probably not going to want to go to a 3D movie anyways. Your sampling is skewed. It's like walking into a Thai restaurant in the middle of the city and stating the diners there are an accurate representation of the city demographics.

[Xiaou2]

I imagine that the biggest problem isnt that 70% lack depth perception...

 But that their eyes are spaced further apart, or closer together, than what the camera was set up for.

[patm95]

I haven't really been big on these 3D tvs.  Looks like they are just trying to package something that has been around for a long time.  I don't like the idea of having to wear special glasses everytime I want to watch something in 3D.  Then if you have a bunch of people over, you need to buy these expensive glasses for each person that wants to watch the game or whatnot on tv.  Just not worth it to me.

[Malenko]

But that their eyes are spaced further apart, or closer together, than what the camera was set up for.

that sounds racist.


Anyways, I was in the local compusa with my GF, I popped on the 3D glasses for the 3D samsung TV, it was showing some college football game. The effect was pretty freekin amazing, like the depth of players and it looked like the score was sitting on top of it all. However after only a minute or two I had a killer headache. I dont plan on replacing my TV anytime soon anyway

[RandyT]

My take on it is "fad" as well.  The technology has been out for many years.  I have a pair of shutter glasses collecting dust somewhere that came with my many-years-ago-whiz-bang Geforce4 card.  It was neat to play with, and the games that used it were interesting a few times, but it was soon relegated to the heap of other interesting, but mostly impractical gadgets.  The fact that the technology uses (expensive) glasses pretty much tells you that it won't last.  I worked in the "glasses free" 3D industry for a few years, and it was pretty much a consensus amongst insiders that the glasses were the thing that prevented the technology from being viable.   The "glasses-free" approaches have finally hit the proverbial brick wall, as I predicted long ago they would, so this is literally the only way to do it.  It looks like they finally gave in to the approach they always said would fail.

So what we have here is 3D being used as a way to help revitalize the "theater experience" in the age of affordable, high-definition home theater, and now electronics manufacturers are using the only means possible to try to leverage some of that to boost stale TV sales. 

Just like shutter glasses didn't change the way we played PC games 10 years ago, I really don't believe they will change the way we watch movies.  It may stick around as a "once in a while" feature if it's cheap to implement on the sets, and / or a cheap add-on becomes available, and the glasses go way down in cost.  But I just don't think the demand is going to be there for the already huge installed base of large flat panel TV owners to want to upgrade for it.  It took 15 years for Hi-Def to really kick in, and there are still a lot of stragglers.  This incarnation of 3D technology isn't going to have that kind of staying power.

RandyT

[ChadTower]

Don't leave out that now we can supposedly have live events in 3D.  Movies are great and all but an NFL game in true 3D is a totally different thing than has ever been offered before.