Huge Shocker — 3D TVs Not Selling 535
itwbennett writes "It comes as no surprise to the vast majority of us who haven't rushed out to buy a 3D TV, but according to a DisplaySearch report consumers aren't doing their part to make 2010 the year of 3D TV, says blogger Peter Smith. And the stats are even worse than Smith imagined they'd be: 'DisplaySearch estimates that 3.2 million 3D TVs will be shipped in 2010. Note, that's shipped, not sold. 3.2 million equates to 2% of all flat panel displays shipped (as far as I can ascertain, that's worldwide shipments). So yeah, there are not many 3D TVs being shipped this year. But wait, that's not the end of the bad news. In Western Europe (the only region where they offered this data point) sales of 3D glasses are less than 1 per 3D set sold. In other words, a lot of Western Europeans who buy a TV with 3D capability don't even bother to buy the glasses to use that feature.'"
Re:Price and glasses, most likely (Score:4, Informative)
You have the technologies mixed up a bit. The TV's that need the active shutter glasses have a very wide viewing angle, whereas the ones such as the new Toshibas and the screen on the 3DS have the small viewing angle.
Re:Price and glasses, most likely (Score:3, Informative)
Once the prices dropped under a certain threshold the CRTs disappeared off the shelves virtually overnight.
Actually, CRT's dropped off the shelves for three reasons:
#1 - Collusion by the "beige box" computer manufacturers (Dell, Gateway, etc) to only offer LCD monitors.
#2 - Collusion by the "Big Box" retailers (Worst Buy, Circuit Scammy, etc) to no longer sell CRT's because they got better margin on higher-priced, but same sized, LCD TV's.
#3 - Bought-and-Paid-For legislation in states like California creating regulatory nightmares that basically ensured only LCD/"flat panel" monitors could be sold. Remember the uproar over crap like this [latimes.com] last year? What you forget is that a number of states passed earlier legislation that made nightmares for CRT's in relation to disposal and components.
LCD TV's are not being pushed for any other reason other than that they are what the retailers want to sell - higher margin, more prone to breaking down (average life of LCDTV: 5 years, average life of CRT: 15+).
Re:I know why.. lack of standardization (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling (Score:3, Informative)
No but apparently the people sitting 6.5' from a 52" screen must be.
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-btv1k8ewsdn/learn/learningcenter/home/TV_placement.html [crutchfield.com]
52" 6.5-10.8 feet
Re:Cumbersome (Score:1, Informative)
The answer to all of your rhetorical questions is "some people".
I totally agree with you about games though; if Sony or Microsoft could make every single game for their respective consoles 3D-ready, I think that would be sufficient to start the avalanche.
Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling (Score:3, Informative)
Or the math is correct... since Crutchfield recommends sitting 6.5 feet from a 52" screen if you have a high quality signal and no more than 10.8 feet even with a terrible analogue signal.
Re:It's just not that compelling (Score:3, Informative)
Kids don't really struggle with projecting a 3D scene onto a 2D plane. They just start drawing what they see on paper. They don't even think about vanishing points and projections. That interpretation is natural as our vision is really based on 2D sensors.
Actually, that's not true. The naive/untrained method is to draw everything from a flat 2D perspective. You can see this both in art by children (or people with no formal art training) as well as in pretty much all art from the Middle Ages and prior. The development of perspective [wikipedia.org], which is an application of mathematics/geometry to art, is why paintings from the Renaissance Era on simply look so much better and more lifelike than paintings from any earlier era. The rules of perspective (that is, mapping a 3D world to a 2D surface) are not obvious, are not simple, and learning how to draw perspective well is a skill that is hard to master.