

3D TV is Dead - derpenxyne
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/145168-3d-tv-is-dead

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jonnathanson
_"To the objective, cynical observer, 3D TV has always come across as a fad
fabricated by TV makers and Hollywood to sell more TVs and Blu-ray discs."_

I'm perhaps a subjective observer, working in the entertainment biz, though I
consider myself cynical enough to pass similar judgment. 3D has been a
fantastic way to build sizable margin into box office ticket prices, and
presumably, the same logic compelled studios and electronics manufacturers to
push 3D technology into the home: to keep the home video revenue stream alive
for a few more, gloriously lucrative years.

Now I'll remove my cynic's cap. I think 3D is a very interesting piece of
technology. I can count on five fingers the number of movies I've seen that
make truly good use of 3D. Nonetheless, those that do seem to do it well. Say
what you will about Dances With Aliens, errr, Avatar. But the use of 3D in
that picture was pretty freaking cool. Same with (some) of the 3D in The
Hobbit. When used to convey a sense of depth and scale, especially in wide
shots over vertical landscapes, 3D can really bring a sense of majestic
proportion to a big-budget film.

Does that mean I want to invest in a 3D TV for my home? No. The calculus that
went into most consumers' purchases of 3D TVs was essentially "Eh, might as
well." It was a hedge against the possibility that the future really _would_
be all about 3D. If faced with a new TV purchase, some folks figured they
might as well spring for the model with all the latest bells and whistles. If
3D ended up going nowhere, well, at least the TV could still play 2D at high
def. There just weren't enough of these people to bankroll the 3D revolution,
and/or enough people who could be convinced that a revolution was actually
forthcoming.

As a consumer, as a production professional, and as a fanboy, I bear no animus
toward 3D. I just think it will end up as another tool in the filmmaker's
arsenal, rather than the Next Great Leap that Hollywood wanted people to think
it was.

~~~
cube13
As I was pricing out and comparing TV's, I found that in general, the 3D TV's
actually tend to review with a better 2D image than the standard 2D TV's.

So there was a benefit to it, even if you're never going to use it.

~~~
koffiezet
The reason for this is simple, for getting as much light to both eyes as with
a 'normal' 2D image, they need waaay more brightness - which means a more
accurate color-range, and to let it appear as smoothly, they need higher
refresh frequencies, certainly for active 3D solutions. This results in a much
better 2D-experience also...

3D tech is - as the article says, incredibly low-tech. Or you use polarized
filters, or you need a way to synchronize your shutter-glasses and quickly
alternate the images. Personally I'm absolutely no a 3D fan, but if I have to
choose a tech, please give me shutter glasses. Provided your TV can handle the
higher refresh frequency AND higher brightness levels, it's far superior. 3D
with polarized filters give me instant headache and it looks like all the
colors are bland and washed out, certainly in the movie theaters...

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jerf
Interesting times. 3D is dead, but... 4K and 8K aren't going to fare any
better. Few people sit close enough to the TV for it to matter, or want to.

It will be interesting to watch the TV manufacturers flail around for a while,
trying desperately to avoid the cold hard realities that come with becoming a
commodity...

~~~
nicholassmith
4K and 8K will suffer the same problem as 3D, poor amount of content
available. HD was an easy sell as TV streams all pretty much shifted uniformly
over to HD, plus there was two competing formats for home movies, plus with
upscaling it made old DVDs look a bit better. 3D was never going to gain mass
market traction as you paid a huge premium for...well, not a lot.

~~~
roc
Even with HD, it's worth noting how little 1080 content is consumed.

It's worth considering that a good chunk of HDTV market penetration may well
have been due to other factors: size/weight/power -- and the price quickly
reached a point where it was roughly on par with what people had paid for the
old tube tvs they were replacing. So why not?

3D/4k/8k -- these don't have _any_ advantages over their predecessors, except
that they deliver "more/better" on an axis that people demonstrably don't care
too much about.

~~~
j_baker
_3D/4k/8k -- these don't have any advantages over their predecessors, except
that they deliver "more/better" on an axis that people demonstrably don't care
too much about._

People don't care about picture quality? I mean, I get what you're saying, and
I get why these technologies may be stillborn. But I think it's wrong to say
that people don't care about these things.

~~~
cube13
People do care about picture quality, but the problem now is that there's very
little content that's actually in native 1080p. A lot of content is being
consumed through Netflix, Amazon, or other streaming services, and most of
those don't offer 1080 streams for everything. Add in the fact that most homes
in the US literally cannot stream 1080p content, which is really the main
barrier to all of those.

I really don't think that the 4k/8k techs are stillborn. It's just going to
take a long time for the content providers to catch up.

~~~
brigade
Well, 1080p requires theoretically 2.27x more bits than 720p. Though in
practice it's a good bit less. HEVC promises to halve bitrates relative to
H.264, so 1080p HEVC would need about the same bitrate as current 720p. So it
shouldn't be too long before bandwidth isn't a significant issue for steaming
1080p.

Of course, 4k needs another 3-4 times the bitrate, so it'll probably take
another codec standard (~1 decade) before it becomes as widespread as 720p is
now.

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vidarh
"Only 20-30% penetration" (according to the article) apparently means it is
"dead". 20-30% in that short timespan sounds amazingly _high_ given how long a
typical TV lasts, and the wide range of form-factors (presumably "nobody"
cares about 3D on the lower sized screens that are rarely used for movies).

And it explains the de-emphasis on 3D somewhere like CES: You won't easily
sell lots more new high-end TV's if you emphasise on something all of your
competition has, including the low end. And when I went to Amazon to check
right now, the _cheapest_ 42" screen on offer in their UK store is a 3D tv...

~~~
objclxt
The problem with market share stats is that they don't always correspond with
usage. People with 3D TVs don't simply seem to be very interested in watching
3D content on them.

Case in point: in the UK 27 million people watched the Olympic Games opening
ceremony on TV, but only _0.4%_ of that audience (just over 100,000 people)
watched it in 3D[1]. For a technology with 20-30% penetration this is pretty
dismal.

[1]:[http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/46728/3d-tv-viewing-
update-b...](http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/46728/3d-tv-viewing-update-but-
still-small)

~~~
vidarh
I think that's a poor metric. Why in the world would the Olympic opening
seremony be something worth caring about 3D for?

Also note that the numbers in that article does not mesh with 20-30%
penetration - according to Ofcom there was ca. 60 million TV's in the UK end
2011. The article cites 1.3 million 3D TV's sold in the UK at the time of
writing.

So rather than a mismatch with usage, it seems prudent to question where the
20-30% number the article cites comes from....

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jamieb
My 2c. I have a 3D TV and I buy 3D blu-rays. Its the only reason I buy blu-
rays now. Otherwise I buy online on Amazon or iTunes. We don't go to the
movies ever. I do, however, enjoy the kind of silly, action movies, such as
Transformers, that many of my clever friends turn the noses at. Not
coincidentally these friends don't see the value that 3D adds to a movie. "The
Piano", or "Withnail and I" probably wont ever benefit from 3D treatment.
OTOH, action movies like Transformers, and gag movies like Despicable Me, are
ideal for 3D and we now have about 10 glasses in our house for like minded
friends and sleep-overs. I sincerely hope that there are enough of us to keep
the 3D market going.

~~~
sliverstorm
I buy blurays exclusively now; I tried buying online, but I have not been
particularly impressed by the quality. Bluray discs approach cost parity after
they have been out a year or two, so I don't pay all that much more either.

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swalsh
Seeing as the food network is about 80% of the television I watch, i'm really
hoping smell-o-vision becomes the next big thing ;)

~~~
vyrotek
And then you accidentally switch the channel to "Dirty Jobs" and immediately
regret that decision. :)

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sk5t
TheVerge has a similar article titled "It's official: 3D is dead":
[http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/8/3852452/death-
of-3d/in/3608...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/8/3852452/death-
of-3d/in/3608257)

3D had always struck me as a shallow gimmick to get folks with lots of
disposable income to think about upgrading their already-very-good 55" LCD
TVs. Come on, it hangs on the wall, is less than an inch thick, and looks
great all the time--what more do you want?

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clux
From near the end of the article: "This isn’t to say that 3D TV is dead — but
it’s certainly no longer the next big thing."

Linkbait title.

~~~
biot
Nietzsche was known to use linkbait phrases as well, much in the same spirit
as the article.

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S_A_P
3D will certainly never gain favor with me until the requisite headache
inducing glasses are eliminated. Polarized glasses reduce my field of vision
to about 25% of what it normally is so I feel like Im watching through
telescopes. I have yet to see a 3D movie that makes me think "I am so glad I
am wearing these glasses".

I think that it will require a radical shift in display tech (a'la holographic
projections) to make me rethink this position, and even then, I would probably
much prefer a 2D screen for television shows or most movies. Games and virtual
reality simulations would be a different animal for me.

~~~
kalleboo
How close are you sitting to your TV that you can't see the whole screen
through the glasses?

~~~
S_A_P
Its not just TV, I was at a 3D IMAX movie the other day, same effect sitting
2/3rd the way back.

~~~
kalleboo
This article was about TV though.

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xpose2000
3D tv would be amazing if two things happen:

\- We no longer need glasses

\- The FPS is increased to provide smooth a smooth viewing experience. Without
a smoother 3D experience, people will still feel fatigued eyes when the motion
is going too fast.

Here is a bit more info about 3D and FPS in Hobbit.
[http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682085/will-the-hobbit-
start-a-...](http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682085/will-the-hobbit-
start-a-48-fps-movie-revolution)

~~~
noiv
Obviously glasses are superfluous. The frame rate thing is a straw-man. Why
perception of 3D really fails is it allows the director to override your field
of depth. Whatever depth you choose to focus it is not up to the physics of
your eyes to determine what's sharp or not, instead it was already decided
during the shot. This is like someone else changes slightly the dioptries of
your contacts at random. Very annoying.

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JabavuAdams
Increasing resolution to 4k is silly for movies. It may make sense for sports,
documentaries, or educational shows where you can show dense (computer-screen-
like) data with the picture.

This same discussion comes up a lot in games, but the experience there is that
increasing resolution just shows that you're using shitty digital puppets with
bad acting/writing. Increasing pixel-throughput for post-processing or faking
an "analog" look _can_ lead to more creativity, though.

~~~
cjensen
The resolution in any digital theater already is 4k. 1080p would look silly on
a large screen.

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Quizz
A better sell is cheaper quality projectors or larger screen Larger screen
size for less. Consumers will buy more 60" TVs if they drop to sub-$500
territory. More 60" TVs mean more "smart" content can be stuffed along the
margins. Hardware is a commodity, but viewership on smart TVs will be the
rage. TV manufacturers will be like phone carriers - subsidize the hardware in
order to hook them on the software.

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stcredzero
Why extremetech isn't dead is a point to ponder. Seriously, adding 5 seconds
to page load time on their mobile site? (On new iPads, even.)

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taeric
I do still think using the 3D glasses to give full screen multiplayer games a
run is a great idea. Did that just not take off?

~~~
jcromartie
The PS3 uses this for various games, but they are few and far between. It's a
decent effect but it can impact the framerate that each player sees.

~~~
cocoalovethax
Black Ops 2 is a phenomenal 3D experience, and I have a lot of other games for
PS3 that support 3D as well. Extremely stupid article, I plan to play 3D games
for years to come, and watch more 3D movies in the future. I think 3D > 4K. I
would MUCH rather watch a movie in 3D than 4K, but that's just me, but I'm
sure it applies to a lot of other people as well.

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jfb
Neither high-res or display technology will do squat to "push the envelope of
content creation". The desperate scramble to escape the commoditization trap
will throw up more and more and more of these "breakthroughs", of declining
marginal utility.

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bhewes
Seems like Moore's law is hitting all hardware now. But it still takes years
to make a decent movie or any creative work no matter the hardware.

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jfb
Well, changes to e.g. cameras (like the GoPro) that drive the cost of creation
down will continue to make a big difference; but 8k TV? Nobody has the
bandwidth. Nuts to that.

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brennenHN
ONLY 20-30% market share?! How much turnover is there in the TV market
normally?

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sageikosa
Lacking stereoscopic depth perception, I fail to be drawn towards 3D anything.

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baddox
3D printing should still be of interest to you. ;)

~~~
sageikosa
OK. Correction: any 3D rendering illusion that requires con-focal ocular
capabilities.

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mikec3k
Good riddance.

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madaxe
Colour is dead. Nobody's talking about their colour TVs any more.

