[mythtv-users] OT: Why 3D TV won't work.

[Douglas Peale]

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On 05/26/2010 08:36 AM, Daniel Kristjansson wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-01-11 at 10:32 -0600, Justin Johnson wrote:
>> I'm also interested in what people think about 3D TV from a general
>> viewing standpoint. Is it going to be as groundbreaking as HD? My
>> thinking is that it could be, for some content, just as HD doesn't
>> make a huge difference for many shows. Sports is where I see the
>> largest benefit, same as HD. What do others think?
> 
> I've done some work with stereo 3-D in the past and there are a few
> reasons I don't think it will be groundbreaking in the home. The first
> problem is that to have real depth you need the focus plane to be five
> meters or so from the viewer. This is not difficult in the Cinema, you
> only lose a few seats at the front of the theatre which weren't great
> to begin with and with $20 tickets you make up for that loss fairly
> quickly. In the home very few televisions are mounted that far from
> the viewer, so you need to reduce the amount of depth you use.
> Note: Age matters for this issue, if you are under 25 you can probably
> watch a 2 hour movie in stereo only 2-3 meters from the screen without
> getting a headache, but this isn't something you get used to -- you
> are able to watch fewer and fewer minutes of content as you age.
> 
> The second reason affects cinema as well. You can't use depth of focus
> to indicate what the viewer should be looking at. Everything must be
> in focus. This means closeups don't look realistic at all. You also
> can't make cuts where the depth changes, which severely restricts how
> you can tell a story. For this reason I think it will only be used for
> successfully for animation and action movies and perhaps some nature
> documentaries and sports. If you've seen BBC's Seas of Life, I can
> imagine something like that being absolutely stunning in 3-D. I don't
> think American football, or hockey will work unless they drastically
> change how they capture those events. Car racing, football and baseball
> might work, although I don't think baseball in the 3-D will work from a
> cultural standpoint. I've seen both American football and golf in
> 3-D, it was nauseating at four meters and also did not look compelling.
> 
> I also don't think it will work in the home because it requires you
> to sit straight and stare directly at the screen. Aside from "movie
> night" this is not how most people watch TV.
> 
> I do look forward to the 3-D content Discovery will produce, but I don't
> expect it to be financially viable in the long term.
> 
> -- Daniel
> 
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You do realize that everyone spends all day every day viewing 3D content. Real life is in 3D.
If young people can handle 3D longer than older, than the one thing that is different from Real life in 3D TV, the focus
distance, is not the problem. Us old guys can only focus at one distance anyway. The only thing left then to cause problems, is
mistakes in the photography. Just because they are doing it wrong now does not mean they won't learn to do it right in the future.

The saving feature of 3D TV is that you can turn off the 3D, take off the glasses and watch it in 2D.

So far, every new technology for entertainment has suffered an avalanche of haters and dire predictions of its demise at its
inception. This was true of the cassette tape when it replaced real to real and 8 track, CDs when they replaced LPs, and most
recently HTDV.
I personally think that 3D TV will be great for video games.
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