Hi Folks

         Susan’s younger, smarter, better looking, honest and modest brother here…. (ya know the drill).  Today I wanted to talk about something very very important to my friends and I.  Something that matters a lot to them and makes them frustrated and angry sometimes.  However, I realized I needed to do a lot more research on this one and wouldn’t have anything ready until the weekend.  So instead, I’m going to completely geek out and talk about…

3D Televisions!!!!  (yes, non nerds can tune out now….)

I’m writing this to help educate anyone who wants to know and clear up some questions that they may have.  Hopefully it helps at least SOMEONE….. 

We were led to believe that the next big step in home entertainment was going to be 3D televisions.  Now I admit, when people think about 3D, the memory of those horrid red and blue glasses comes to mind.  However, 3D has progressed a lot since then.  No longer do you have to watch movies with more messed up colours than the worlds weirdest acid trip! (no I never took acid, I’m just taking a guess).

Now days, there are 3 major types of 3D in the market.  However, only 2 of them are used in 3D televisions at the consumer level.  So here’s a breakdown of the types and the bullsh*t to avoid from the people who want to push it to you…

1:  Active Shutter Glasses.   Would you believe this tech has been around for quite some time?  However, it seems to have mainly been reserved for the PC gaming market.  These really do give you the best picture.  You get the full 1080p picture in each eye, minimal ghosting or crosstalk and really are “the experts” favorites.  However the downsides to this tech are as follows.  In daylight, you will notice a “flicker effect” from the glasses.  Enough to be slightly annoying.  You really want to view movies at night in a dark room.  Also the glasses tend to be a bit heavier since they require batteries and they will also need to be charged.  Finally, they tend to make movies look a bit darker.  So night time scenes in movies can be a bit hard to view sometimes.  They are also expensive to replace.  Between $85 and $150 per pair

2:  Passive 3D glasses.  These are lightweight, don’t require batteries, are very cheap to buy, and you can “borrow” a pair from your local theatre and use them at home.  They are a popular choice because with kids watching 3d movies, glasses are bound to get destroyed.  However, the bad part about these glasses is that you lose resolution from your movie.  Each eye only gets half the picture.  This means that your 1080p blu ray movie, is rendered in 540P per eye.  You will notice that the edges of smooth objects can appear staggered or pixilated.  Also there is a good bit of ghosting and cross talk to be had with this method.  Now what p*sses me off, is that I’ve heard sales people actually claim “no, you DON’T get half the image, because your left eye and right eye both see 540p, so therefore, both your eyes together, see 1080P!!!!”.  By that dumb ass logic alone, Active shutter glasses give you 1080P in your left eye, and 1080P in your right eye, so therefore you must be watching a 2160P movie!!! RIGHT???   If you want to have friends around to watch a 3D movie, or if you have a family who you want to watch 3D movies with, this solution is the cheapest.  However, if you have a TV over 46”…. You will really notice a drop in quality.  If a sales person tries to tell you that you’re getting a full 1080P picture, slap him, hard, across the face!  (by the way, I do not actually recommend slapping him across the face hard as I’m being sarcastic and it’s more than likely likely illegal, and you will go to jail).

3:  Parallax Barrier 3D.  This works be literally having one screen on top of another.  (it’s the simplest way to put it).  Both screens show an image from slightly different angles therefore giving you a 3D view with no need for glasses!  This is what the Nintendo 3ds uses.  So why not use it in home cinema?  Well, some very very very expensive sets do, however, there is bad news.  You have to be sitting in a very particular spot, and pretty much not move away from it…. Even slightly…   And for now, it’s as expensive as hell..

So will 3D television take off big time? 

So far……… no…..   And with the current technology….. no…    Don’t get me wrong, 3D is amazing to view, however, there are problems with it.  For instance, when you view something in real life, you continually look around and shift your focus.  With 3D, you want to look around the screen, but since the camera filming the scene is fixed focus, you’ll just end up staring at some blurred objects in your field of vision and give yourself a headache trying to focus on them.  This is uncomfortable for a lot of people.

There is also a lack of decent 3D movies to watch.  Some people have tried to “post convert” 2D movies into 3D with some pretty bad results.  While some 3D features… have frankly just been crap. 

Pricing is also an issue.  When they made 3D Blu-ray a standard, each Blu-ray had to come with both a copy of the 3D movie AND the 2D version too AND they usually throw in a digital copy too.  For some reason, movie studios have felt this justifies a 3X price increase on some movies.

Online movie services such as iTunes, Amazon or Hulu don’t support 3D movies.  For them to do this, it’s possible that another hardware upgrade will be needed for 3D to work with current 3D televisions (if at all). 

I’ve watched a couple of 3D movies now and while I’ve been very impressed with the results that I saw, I just wasn’t impressed by either the quality of the movies (be it script or other), or the expense involved with purchasing them.  After all, if people can illegally download 2D movies for free, why on earth would they spend $30 just to watch it in 3D?

If 3D is to survive and be a major dominator in the home theatre market, three steps need to happen.

1:  Film the movie in 3D.  Don’t do a lazy post conversion, it always looks terrible.

2:  Drop your price and make it more attractive for the average consumer to purchase.

3:  Don’t think you can make a horrible movie with a terrible script in 3D and expect consumers to have faith in future 3D movies from you (Green Lantern anyone?)

Well hope the above proved to be helpful or at least a good read.

Bye for now!

Ian