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

[Daniel Kristjansson]

On Wed, 2010-05-26 at 10:26 -0700, Douglas Peale wrote:
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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.

In real life you when you converge your eyes to look at something
close up your also focused on something close up. With the current
crop of LCD/Plasma stereographic TV's you need to focus on something
2.5 meters away while your eyes converge and diverge to view material
at various distances. The wiring in the brain for doing this for
reality is formed in the first six weeks of life and is henceforth
fixed. So your brain basically needs to override the visual cortex
and focus at a different place than you are looking. As far as what
you are doing to your brain it's analogous to those random dot 3-D
images that were so popular in the 1980's or 1990's (First popular
in the 1840's, but of course neither of us remember that fad).

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

Yes, and it will still look unrealistic because of the infinite depth
of field and other unrealistic attributes forced on the cameraman by
the demands of filming 3-D ready material.

> So far, every new technology for entertainment has suffered an
> avalanche of haters and dire predictions of its demise at its
> inception.

The first 3-D TV broadcast was over 80 years ago, were all the
people who said it would never work then wrong? The NYT said
3-D TV would be in the home in two years, in 1980, was I wrong
to think the NYT technical writers were yet again dead wrong?
3-D filming was the hot new thing in the early 1800's. There
are applications for this, and there are better sterographic
display technologies, some invented almost 200 years ago to avoid
the problem I have feebly attempted to explain. There were good
reasons that Hitchcock swore he would never make another 3-D movie
after Dial M for Murder. This technology has it's uses and I
plan to buy on of the 3-D sets, but I doubt it will have anywhere
near the impact HDTV has had on the consumer electronics sector.
If I'm right with will be more like laser-disk. It is always
possible I will be proven wrong.

At least they are doing circular polarization on some of these
sets now so the glasses are cheap and you can tilt your head.
FYI You can set up a projection system with two $20 filters and
two DLP's and if your throw is great enough enjoy 3-D as good as
the stuff in the theaters. The filters will die eventually, but
it's not worth it to buy the $200 glass filters for a home
system.

-- Daniel