The Joke Known As 3D TV 594
harrymcc writes "I'm at IFA in Berlin — Europe's equivalent of the Consumer Electronics Show — and the massive halls are dominated by 3D TVs made by everyone from Sony, Samsung, and Panasonic to companies you've never heard of. The manufacturers seem pretty excited, but 3D has so many downsides — most of all the lousy image quality and unimpressive dimensionality effect — that I can't imagine consumers are going to go for this. 'As a medium, 3D remains remarkably self-trivializing. Virtually nobody who works with it can resist thrusting stuff at the camera, just to make clear to viewers that they’re experiencing the miracle of the third dimension. When Lang Lang banged away at his piano during Sony’s event, a cameraman zoomed in and out on the musical instrument for no apparent reason, and one of the company’s representatives kept robotically shoving his hands forward. Hey, it’s 3D — watch this!'"
thrusting (Score:3, Funny)
Re:thrusting (Score:5, Insightful)
Thrusting is right. ( Though I usually refer to 3-D as "throwing shit at your face")
You can spot a commercial for almost every 3-D movie right away, even watching in 2D with no foreknowledge. You'll see spears, birds, balls anything that moves rapidly moving towards you, stopping just short of hitting the screen.
As with B&W movies, or even silent films, that survive and entertain today, it's about the content, not the technology. New features can possibly enhance the experience, but a crap show is a crap show, regardless if it's in HD, surround sound and 3-D.
Re:thrusting (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:thrusting (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:thrusting (Score:4, Interesting)
We're in the "blue LED phase" of 3D right now, where everyone is using it just because it's new. Once the novelty wears off it will start to be used more sensibly. Although I'd argue that we still haven't reached that point with blue LEDs either :)
Yeah. A couple of years ago at work we installed a new HP inkjet printer in our department. It went into its internal diagnostic/setup rouitne, and a bright blue LED started going back and forth like a demented Cylon. We all stared at it in awe, until it finally stopped. Then one of the guys reached out and pressed the self-test button again.
However, I'd argue that 3D movies have already gotten past the blue LED phase. Certainly Cameron's Avatar was a highly engrossing (both to the viewer and the bottom line) film even without the 3D, and without throwing somebody's yo-yo in your face (like "Journey to the Center of the Earth", which was nothing but a vehicle to show off 3D effects and little else.) Of course, few filmmakers are of Cameron's caliber, and many just depend upon special effects to try and carry the day (yeah, Mr. Lucas, I'm lookin' at you.)
Re:thrusting (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I'd argue that 3D movies have already gotten past the blue LED phase. Certainly Cameron's Avatar was a highly engrossing (both to the viewer and the bottom line) film even without the 3D, and without throwing somebody's yo-yo in your face ...
I've been telling people that Cameron got Avatar "right" in terms of 3D exactly for this reason. There is such a stark contrast between it and other 3D movies in that there were only a couple scenes where it was clear they were showing off the 3D. Even those had reasons where the scene kind of made sense (like refocusing on near/far during the diary videos). I think Avatar will be a real benchmark in 3D strictly because it shows you can do well with 3D without being an eye-poker movie. It will be interesting to see how many other directors learn from Cameron's willingness to try to do it right.
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It will be interesting to see how many other directors learn from Cameron's willingness to try to do it right.
Oh, I suspect they will. Right now they're still playing on the novelty aspect of 3D motion pictures (even though they've been around, in one form or another, for decades.)
Except it isn't 3D... (Score:5, Interesting)
With a real 3D display, there are so many things you could do... with stereo, you get exactly what you've been getting all along, that is, the single viewpoint they think you should have, and that's it. Yeah, you'll think you're perceiving depth, but that goes away the moment you move your head and the image doesn't change the way it should.
Because actual 3D isn't just about providing two different images (which is what stereovision does.) It's about providing the two images that match the viewing angle your position and head angle set up relative to the material being viewed.
Me, I'm good with 2D until 3D actually arrives. Stereovision... no thanks.
Re:Except it isn't 3D... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd throw all my mod points at you, if I had or could. Already the next commenter knows close to nothing about stereoscopy, but argues as if he did. You are right from a number of viewpoints (pun!, héhé):
1. At real 3D, when you move your head laterally, you can 'circle' around an object.
2. At real 3D, when you move your head laterally, objects hidden behind other objects become visible.
3. [You didn't mention this one:] Depth perception of the human eyes is done by a combination of biological effects:
- convergence of the eyeballs (like when you watch your finger and bring it closer to your own face, the eyes turn 'inward'
- adaptation of the lenses for a specific distance
The so-called '3D' that can be achieved by two cameras only fulfills one of these features: convergence of the eyeballs (by introducing a lateral offset of the two images on the projection screen).
This is why this so-called '3D' gives you some '3D-feeling', but mostly headaches; as the "3D-detection algorithm" in your brain cannot accommodate the incoming information properly; it defeats and contradicts what it has learned throughout your lifespan.
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Re:Except it isn't 3D... (Score:5, Informative)
You sound as if you knew what you are talking about, so I take it to try to answer your message.
Disparity is the most important factor in 3D perception in the human visual system
No doubt. This is why 3D 'works'.
Motion parallax however, cannot be achieved, since hidden content cannot be interpolated. It actually is unknown, eventually to both viewpoints. Even if it is known to one, depth remains unknown.
Head-mounted devices are worse, because for nobody the world doesn't turn when (s)he turns the head. You follow with the shown perspective, I guess. But from where do you get it? Think about a movie: Where do you get the information from, when the viewer turns the head?
Vergence and accommodation (focus) are secondary and always overridden by the other factors; this is a neurophysiological fact
Yes, see above. Override, though, does not mean trashed. It remains a sensory effect, that contradicts at least a distance virtually 'close' according to its disparity. -> Headaches.
How does a microlens array induce physical distance (adaptation)? You'd need a set of screens at various distances form the viewer's eyes, and using a shutter mechanism to project specific pixels from a 'credible' distance.
Physiologically, if you inhibit head/eye movement totally, the vision disappears altogether, as you probably know. So we all perform small quantities of those all the time, unconsciously. That's fine for a 2D-display (as I wrote elsewhere in this topic), because that's what we are aware of: a 2D-projection on a plane of finite, if not very limited size. Our brain 'expects' what it gets from watching a picture, or your 2D flat screen. Even a 3D-effect (compiz, e.g.) is nothing but a calculation of virtual distances and structures, projected - visibly - on a 2-dimensional screen. So our eyes get what they expect, with respect to convergence, parallax, focus, etc.
Not so, however, if you add real depth/disparity; but none of the others. Tiny, maybe subconscious, movements of eyeballs and/or your head do actually 'explore' the depth; not so in any 'disparity-is-everything'-projection system.
As long as we don't have a projection that makes appear an object in a real 3-dimensional space (what in theory a laser could do), so that the room is real, with a virtual object of real 3 dimensions projected into it, headaches will be the order of the day.
Re:Except it isn't 3D... (Score:5, Informative)
That's not "real 2D", that's single-view 3D. Because you cann move your head around off-axis, thus changing your viewing direction in 3D.
He doesn't say stereovision is worse than 2D, in fact it's somewhat better than 2D, by fixing one of the shortcomings (in the theoretical case where you double the bandwidth of every stage, rather than frame-alternating at the same frame rate, using leaky separation (e.g. anaglyphs), etc.), but way worse than true 3D, which resolves (almost) all of those.
Essentially, 2D is a perfect rendering for a viewer with fixed focal length at one point in front of the screen, and distorts as you move away from the viewing point, or focus at a different distance (which you've no reason to do).
Stereoscopic is a perfect rendering for a two-eyed viewer, with fixed focal length, a fixed interocular vector, and a fixed location in front of the screen. It breaks down slowly as you move both eyes away from the viewing point, and more rapidly with changes to either the length or angle of the interocular vector (humans have a fairly tight range of interocular distance, and that distortion is relatively benign, but head-tilt is a killer), and of course with the varying of focus (which is now a problem, because you're wired to focus at the same distance your eyes converge at -- with careful processing, this dissonance can be minimized, but there's more chance for things to go awry).
True 3D, means different things to different people -- one definition permits headtracking with stereoscopic display, which instaneously gives a perfect rendering for a two-eyed viewer, with fixed focal length, measured interocular vector, and measured location from the screen (which is typically a virtual image from a pair of goggles, but can be a screen with polarized/shutter goggles). This fixes everything except focal length, and there's even the possibility to measure and compensate that in real-time eventually. The good news is that this is technically possible right now, and relatively close to economic possibility for home users. The bad news is it's limited to one user per goggles/tracker/etc., and even CPU power goes linearly with the number of users -- it simply doesn't work for cinemas, at all, ever.
The more restrictive definition of true 3D encompasses volumetric displays, holograms, and the like -- it requires real-time simultaneous viewability from all positions in the designated viewer volume. Unfortunately, such things for entertainment purposes are a good ways out, though small and low-res volumetric displays are already on the market for technical applications (and priced accordingly...). The good news is multiple viewers add essentially no cost, but the bad news is that costs are through the roof, and even a decent resolution 3D stream requires the Devil's own bandwidth.
Re:Except it isn't 3D... (Score:5, Interesting)
Finally a great comment instead of all the pointless whining.
Just one thing to add: 3D in a movie theatre works pretty well, because distance to the screen (and thus the perceived scenery) is so large that movement of the head would not have much of an effect anyways, so it doesn't feel weird.
On your TV set, it would.
That's why 3D movies work, even though they aren't really 3D as you pointed out, but 3D TV doesn't.
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From Wikipedia:
Human vision uses several cues to determine relative depths in a perceived scene[1]. Some of these cues are:
* Stereopsis
* Accommodation of the eyeball (eyeball focus)
* Occlusion of one object by another
* Subtended visual angle of an object of known size
* Linear perspective (convergence of parallel edges)
* Vertical positio
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"true 3D" which you refer to is what we call volumetric 3D. Something we all want.
Stereoscopic 3D is what is currently being sold right now, it has its limitations, especially in the domestic environment where you are close to a small screen, compared to the cinema where you have a large screen far away. With cinema, your eyes converge straight forward and focus at infinity, and the image also converges to the same point in space so you have a natural perspective and depth perception. In the domestic enviro
Re:thrusting (Score:5, Informative)
It's been around since the early-to-mid 50s, not long after colour became cheap. Queen Elizabeth's coronation was filmed in 3D. Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder was filmed in 3D. You may or may not recall a character in Back to the Future (set in 1955) who wore 3D glasses everywhere as a nod from the filmmakers on just how trendy it was at the time.
What's new is digital cameras and digital projection (because synchronisation was always the hardest technical challenge) and cost-effective circular polarising filters which allow 3D movies to be seen in full colour in both eyes.
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Actually polarized viewing of 3D has been around since at least 1936 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarized_3D_glasses](see history). A bigger advance was made in the 1980's when IMAX started A) paying proper attention to the detailed mathematical accuracy required and B) had enough breadth of image to show interesting 3D content. But you are right about the digital technology aspects, which have arrived only in the last decade or so.
Re:thrusting (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry to break it to you, but 3D was THE dominant form of visual home entertainment from the 1860s until about 1915. The Holmes stereoscope was found in almost every middle-class household, and the production of stereo cards was big business. Visit the Library of Congress Stereograph Cards [loc.gov] site to get an rough idea of the popularity of the art form.
As for 3D movies, there have been five major waves of popularity:
For recent films, you must distinguish between movies specifically photographed in 3D, such as Avatar, Coraline, and any of the computer-generated animated films, and the synthetic 3D done in post-production, like most of the really crappy cardboard-cutout abominations out there now.
3D isn't going to go away, although its popularity may wax and wane. Personally I hope this time it's finally here to stay. There are always idiot filmmakers going to throw things at the screen, and idiot studios who think you can use a computer to make a 2D movie 3D.
There have been less than a hundred movies originally filmed in 3D (not 2D conversions) since the invention of the cinema. It's an expensive process that requires a director able to visualize in three dimensions. How many silent films were made before we got Griffith or Eisenstein or Lang?
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I'm not sure your post does what you want it to do, which is to assure us of the value of 3d in cinema. I would even go as far as to say that your post does the exact opposite.
3d within the context of cinema (including this latest attempt) has always looked terrible and added little to the experience aside from novelty; hence it's lack of perseverance in each era. There are certainly exceptions where you can point to a minimal amount of value added to the cinematic experience but these are exceedingly rare
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Funny enough, even Avatar contains shots that are 2D to 3D conversions. These mostly in the last part of the final battle. Weta Digital did those and they may still have a short breakdown video on their homepage which proves that. The trick they used was to time-shift the same take to get a fake stereo effect out of it. I'm still surprised that this is working at all.
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It's interesting to compare 3d video to that other technology nobody actually seems to want; video phones. They have a similar time lines, with video telephony starting in the 30's, and going through several waves of hype with little adoption outside the specific fields where they have some specific utility.
Maybe we'll soon see a great superimposed wave of 3d video telephony, coming to an abrupt end when the hobby of thrusting things in peoples faces suddenly becomes excessively obscene.
Re:thrusting (Score:5, Interesting)
MOD DOWN, INACCURATE
"aside from the fact that it's actually bad for your brains (esp. children's brains)"
This applies only to a single type of 3D technology tested by Sega involving two screens placed right on top of the eyes. There is no evidence to support problems with other 3D technologies and no particular reason to believe there might be.
Re:thrusting (Score:4, Informative)
And this depth is a known problem with filming.
It's because the lenses that the cameras use have limits to their depth of field that cannot really be overcome without artificially altering the film itself to give *back* the lost depth of field and focus, especially at low lighting, that we normally see with our eyes.
What made Avatar so great from a visual perspective was that it gave the film a *realistic* depth of field as if you were looking at it in real life instead of the flat, blurry, and out of focus way that film tends to look. We've just become so used to the way that film looks that we're desensitized to it and think that it's "correct". The reason people thought that it wasn't anything special was because they were expecting "3-D" type cheesy effects instead of a barely noticeable but correct "fix" for the problem of flat projection surfaces and optical limitations of the lenses(cameras as well as the projector itself).
But to adequately pull this off, it almost has to be done at the pixel level so that it's not noticeable(the difference between Avatar with the glasses off and on while watching it was barely noticeable other than the increased depth of focus). This means non-digital filming will always look poor and incorrect. But digital filming is still horrendously expensive. Kind of a catch-22 for the next few years until it becomes affordable to shoot in digital.
Re:thrusting (Score:5, Insightful)
Film is costly for several reasons, including having a finite supply of it (when shooting a film you tend to shoot between 3-4x more footage than you end up using. On digital it's much closer to 15-20x more footage), having to scan it to work on it digitally in post production (optical effects and tints being very rare today), and increasingly in today's world, a lack of people trained to handle it.
Not to mention the fact that stock itself is very expensive, and for digital you're either shooting on magnetic media or SSD.
Finally, your assertion that "depth is a known problem with filming" is nonsense. You may be used to seeing films with a shallow field, but it's entirely possible to shoot films without any depth of field at all. There was a movment in the 1930s to this effect - some really classic films such as 'The Rules of the Game' are shot almost entirely in 'deep focus', where there effectively is no depth of field, and everything is in sharp clarity.
Too Scared To Not Try (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Too Scared To Not Try (Score:5, Insightful)
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I agree. I think we are looking at a Laser Disk or BetaMax situation here. Either it's going to establish an under-served dedicated niche market that will be viewed in the future as cutting edge pioneering technology, or it's going to establish an under-served dedicated niche market that is going become a laughing stock despite being cutting edge pioneering technology. Either way, this generation of 3D is never going to go mainstream.
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Either R&D will grind along, driven by a mixture of long term optimism and the occasional big simulator/data-visualization/etc. contract, until they eventually hit on something genuinely Good which will then be accepted. Or(and I suspect this is more likely):
Victory will, eventually, be conceded to whatever 3D tech's panel, interconnect, and data storage requirements are most similar to those of the 2D market, and
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While I agree with most of your post, I feel the need to get pedantic on one point...
Think back to the early days of USB: Slow, virtually nothing to plug in to it and what there was was buggy, not even supported by the OSes that most people were running; but Intel put it in their chipsets, so it cost the motherboard maker peanuts to drop the passives and the connector on the board. Everybody had it before anybody cared.
In the early days of USB, the choices were either serial (really really slow), parallel (regular slow), or SCSI (fast, but expensive, and manual mapping wasn't for the faint of heart). They all required reboots after installing things, and the number of expansion ports were quite limited. I remember sharing the serial port between my mouse and my Cybiko. Keyboard only syncing taught the keyboard commands REAL fast!
USB was i
Re:Too Scared To Not Try (Score:4, Informative)
Dude, if you saw my mother, you wouldn't make that joke. She's fucking hideous, and a bitch to boot. You'd probably rather stick your dick in a blender than her mouth.
Actually, the blender's probably safer, too.
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I'm not sure this is true anymore. You're absolutely right about the porn industry being the decider in the VHS vs. Betamax war, but you have to remember that this was pre-internet. Do you think the majority of consumers get their porn on video or online at this point? That's not a rhetorical question, I don't know that the data's been gathered, and it's a rogue element that will have a big impact on how this new tech will play out.
Personally, I think this 3D shit is a gimmick and it'll all blow over soon e
SCTV is on the air! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:SCTV is on the air! (Score:4, Informative)
What a GREAT skit. I still love it...
Consumer upgrade #4231844 (Score:2, Insightful)
3D TV reminds me of BluRay or HDTV. They're all marketed as the next big thing but all they do is make
it a bit prettier. What about spending more money on making it a better story? Making it prettier does
not make it better, it makes it prettier. Its only a distraction from the plot not an enhancement
and its only the stupid who fall for it but then they are just as likely to be impressed by a piece of
shiny foil.
Its worse than PhysX for games. At least that could be used to enhance gameplay but all they seem
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That being said, the thing is that we've always had poor quality movies and games, it's a question of what's availab
Re:Consumer upgrade #4231844 (Score:4, Informative)
Dont equate Blu-ray with 3D TV...
1920x1080p Blu-Ray Discs are incredible. I would never want to watch 720x486 NTSC SD interlaced footage EVER again. I work in post production/special fx, so i'm a videophile.
3D is a gimmick, but resolution is not a gimmick. Resolution is very important. Just turn on any HDTV sports broadcast and compare it to old SD sports broadcasts... Its not even choice, you have to watch the HDTV broadcast because the SD is just so pathetic.
Resolution increases are not the only benefit of Blu-Ray or HDTV... but also improved sound streams, uncompressed audio streams etc.
So support Blu-Ray... get out there and buy them because many HDTV cable/sat providers over compress their HD signals, and anything streamed over the net is equally over compressed. The best way to get a nice high bitrate, clean 1080p video is still on a disc. If we let Blu-Ray die... we let mediocre, sub par quality win.
Re:Consumer upgrade #4231844 (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nope. I wait. Quality makes it worthwhile, every time. Instant gratification doesn't win with me.
Unless of course you actually need your eyes checked.
Re:Consumer upgrade #4231844 (Score:5, Insightful)
Direct streaming is death for film ownership.
Why would anyone want Blu-Ray to die? I can understand the DRM concerns, but if Direct streaming takes over, you will have lost the right to own a copy.
The worst part of direct streaming, as it is now, and on fios (I'm a very early FIOS subscriber)... is that HD streamed content is heavily compressed when compared to Blu-ray video streams.
By heavily compressed, i mean that fast motion breaks down into compression artifacts. Resolution and temporal quality is lost by overly compressing the footage to fit within the bandwidth allocated for streaming. Blu-Rays all stand out as far better quality when compared.
Just turn on HBO. many of their films are overly compressed in HD. Put on discovery channel's how its made... and watch jelly beans racing across the screen by the millions in a factory and you will see the break down of resolution and temporal compression. The jelly beans will become pixelated as they move fast. The video compression blocks become obvious, because the bit rate is too low.
Now where this lowering of bitrate takes place is another issue. On TV, it can be compressed THREE TIMES before it gets to you. First the production company delivers the TV show to the TV channel, this is compressed, usually a very nice quality version (if they know what they're doing)... Then the TV network sends out their feed to cable providers... and that feed may be recompressed to fit their bandwidth. When the cable / Sat TV providers get it, they then recompress the video again to fit their band width allocation needs. Often the lessor channels get more compressed than others, but overall you can see compression very clear from program to program. Direct TV is notorious for having terrible compression even on their SD content. So much that even negated the entire idea of a digital signal.
So a disc based delivery format is still higher quality because the only bandwidth they have to wory about is disc space. They arent trying to squeeze 500 other channels of video along side your movie... Which is what happens on cable/sat and the net.
I can see how DRM is a concern... but again... digital delivery isnt going to get any friendlier in terms of ownership rights. But atleast you'll have a high resolution, high bitrate version on a disc... which you can easily remove the DRM if you so choose and store on a media server at home.
Digital delivery will always side with bandwidth over quality.... and control over freedom. A Blu-Ray disc with all its DRM, provides more freedom than any digital delivery. They want full control over your media.... So what do you think will happen when you no longer have a high quality version of the media in your possession?
Re:Consumer upgrade #4231844 (Score:4, Insightful)
Buy Blu-Ray? Because DRM is good for everyone! Blu-Ray is shit that happens to have high resolution. If they had some kind of high-res format without the DRM, I'd be all over it.
Re:Consumer upgrade #4231844 (Score:5, Insightful)
1920x1080p Blu-Ray Discs are incredible. I would never want to watch 720x486 NTSC SD interlaced footage EVER again. I work in post production/special fx, so i'm a videophile.
That's one of the troubles with the world of today. Some people get their kicks just from the resolution of the image. Go to any TV-electronics parlor. People will be excited about the crisp picture, the brilliant colours. Whenever I go there, I am infinitely bored with the crappy movies. And then I go home, and watch 720x486 NTSC SD interlaced with an enormous pleasure; Bunuel, Hitchcock, Marx Brothers. Even Kubrick's 2001 is great fun, in PAL. Murnau's Nosferatu (I guess, not more than 300x200 effective resolution) sends more shivers down my spine than Kinski's remake, even if it were in 1080p.
Because it is the art; not the resolution that counts.
YMMV, though.
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WTF does art have to do with HD res of SD res. That's a straw man if I ever saw one.
HD res of crap film = still crap film.
HD res of good film = better than SD res of good film.
So there are old films that will never be in HD, and many new HD releases are intrinsically bad films. Are you so blinkered to think that 'the world of today' will never produce new movies as good or better as the old classics?
HD wins every time, only issue is budget.
Re:Consumer upgrade #4231844 (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course you are right if you take my words literally, and to that extent.
However, if you care to infer the message, it is about the focus with which movies are shot. There is only that much of funding, and in these days, I'm afraid, the average investor is more concerned about resolution and brilliance (of the shots), than in the artistic quality of the undertaking. And all this 'over-technisised' appreciation of the audience will actually lead to movies being shunned because of a perceived lower technical quality, despite of potentially higher artistic quality.
I personally have overheard people who refuse to buy any non-BlueRay movie, because "Blue Ray is the future". Content seems to disappear behind technicalities, including for the consumer.
And if you please read the message of the OP, I would never want to watch 720x486 NTSC SD interlaced footage EVER again., you might understand my urge to point out what a nonsense this implies. And that one was modded +5, Informative. I was only trying to say, that my primary argument for selecting a movie is its artistic content; not its resolution.
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Huh?
I've work in film, tv and videogame production as a 3d animator. I've also worked on two pilots for television, one of which is in talks right now with a major studio.
Film investors do not sit around and say "The story isnt great, but what matters is, what resolution are you going to shoot this?"
That doesnt happen. EVERYONE working in major production right now and in the past, has been working with material that produces resolutions well over home delivery capabilities. Film stock itself can easily be
Another short-lived gimmick (Score:2)
This latest crop of 2D-to-3D technology is best used in 5-minute amusement park rides, where all the other 3D tech belongs. At best, it provides a few cool moments during the action scenes. At worst, you have a headache after too many blurry shapes try to trick your brain into seeing depth that isn't there and have to stop watching.
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"counting how many times Cameron ripped off his VASTLY superior prior movie, Aliens."
Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver in a skimpy tank top
Alien Sigourney Weaver
Alien Sigourney Weaver in a skimpy tank top
On a planet they have no fucking business being on
Looking for OMFGT3HULTIMATE *SOMETHING*
I stopped watching. I grabbed Aliens and did a thorough 5x5 pipeline cleansing of my brain.
Early days of stereo audio.... (Score:5, Insightful)
.
When you add another dimension to a playback medium, the first temptation is to exploit that new dimension to the point of exaggeration. That is where 3-D TV is now.
Give the creative types a few years and 3D TV will look very differently. Heck, it may even work without those awful glasses........
Re:Early days of stereo audio.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Everybody needs to stop whining right now and give it time. No-one is forcing you to buy it anyways, f'ing hell...
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Would the technology advance without whiners?
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What's your point? That unless someone has a terminal illness that they should just shut the fuck up and buy whatever overpriced shit they're told?
Go fuck yourself.
Re:Early days of stereo audio.... (Score:4, Insightful)
No-one is forcing you to buy it anyways
It's true, if you get headaches from 3d, you will never be forced to get a 3d TV, since consumers are never forced into upgrading their equipment ever.
Now if you excuse me, I have to go buy "Inception" on VHS...
Re:Early days of stereo audio.... (Score:5, Insightful)
No-one is forcing you to buy it anyways
It's true, if you get headaches from 3d, you will never be forced to get a 3d TV, since consumers are never forced into upgrading their equipment ever.
Now if you excuse me, I have to go buy "Inception" on VHS...
VHS died because DVD was obviously better. The quality wasn't as good as DVD, there weren't as many features as DVDs and you had to rewind your movies (hey, it was annoying).
I don't see 2D television going away any time soon as 3D isn't exactly an obvious improvement. It will probably become a niche, like vinyl in the audio world.
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I just hope that trideo* matures fast.
* Hey, Shadowrun described this stuff ages ago so why not stick to their nomenclature? It's handier than "3D TV".
Re:Early days of stereo audio.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Stereo Beatles (Score:4, Interesting)
I tried visualizing the waveforms via Audacity:
My copies of Please Please Me and Hard Day's Night are in mono, but I notice a very pronounced difference in channels for Beatles For Sale, and only a slight difference in the channels on Help!
[Just tested track 1 of each album: I Saw Her Standing There, A Hard Day's Night, No Reply and Help]
Yes, I noticed that modern music tends to have less-radical differences between the channels; the first time I saw/heard noticeable difference between channels was earlier Zeppelin material - Whole Lotta Love, for instance.
I suppose, like any audio effect, it can be used effectively or ineffectively.
The brain doesn't like what doesn't make sense (Score:5, Informative)
If 3D content creators would stop making window violations and (my favourite) changing the convergence point of the screen without zooming (and vice versa) the idea that 3d is going to give headaches wouldn't have as much fact to go on. I'm sure some people get headaches anyway, but the majority of the people get them because of this stupid filmography. Also, stop changing the 3d depth every shot. I'm looking at you, Avatar.
If you give the brain realistic input that could actually happen, people would be more comfortable with it and it would be more likely to sell.
Also, the ghosting on some glasses is terrible. I could even see it in RealD, but it wasn't nearly as bad as some systems I've used (especially anaglyphs).
I hope it gets good before everyone becomes disinterested, because I'm actually excited for 3d to become kindof standard.
Re:The brain doesn't like what doesn't make sense (Score:5, Interesting)
If you give the brain realistic input that could actually happen, people would be more comfortable with it and it would be more likely to sell.
This is why 3D gaming makes much more sense than 3D movies.
A lot of film techniques rely on changing between multiple cameras, and that dramatic, angled close-up that is so effective in 2D results in a depth-of-field change that's going to fatigue people in 3D. Many games, especially racing, FPS, and platformers, rarely do that sort of thing. 3D would add lots of immersion with fewer drawbacks. There's always room for abuse, but it doesn't seem as inherent to the medium as in film.
I think this could become more evident pretty quickly with the launch of Nintendo's 3DS, depending on how many developers they get on board.
3D TV? (Score:2)
All those TVs look pretty flat to me.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you're looking for one of these. [wikimedia.org]
These definitely don't look flat, I assure you. :P
Re: (Score:2)
lowering costs of HD (Score:2, Insightful)
Poorly aimed vitriol (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine if colour TV had started of with everything in bright block primary colours only.
Re:Poorly aimed vitriol (Score:4, Funny)
Imagine if colour TV had started of with everything in bright block primary colours only.
Wasn't that why Star Trek the original series had everything in bright block primary colours only?
Not to mention, they can ruin your eyes. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Fundamental problem: Close images far to one side (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the fundamental problems with 3D movies and TV is this: Close-to-the-viewer images that appear far to one side of the screen. The problem? You go blind in one eye. To create the appropriate binocular disparity, the "other" image would need to appear in a direction for which there is no screen, thus, no image is presented to one eye. The result is jarring and upsetting.
James Cameron seems to have figured this out in Avatar and avoided doing it for the most part.
How else to avoid the problem? Use a really big screen (in terms of angle subtended at the viewer's position) such as Imax. What does this portend for 3D TV? Nothing good, since TVs almost universally, even with "large" screens, do not subtend an adequate angle.
Remember the 1960's? (Score:5, Insightful)
When color TVs became affordable for the consumer market and television programs started broadcasting in color the amount of garish costumes and set designs and other "look ma, its in color" gaucherie was lampooned mercilessly. The technology was refined and eventually turned out alright, even though it went through a stage at the advent of color when it verged on the psychedelic.
Discounting 3D at this stage of the technology is a patently absurd prognostication given the history of the TV.
Re:Remember the 1960's? (Score:5, Informative)
Same thing with TV to HDTV (Score:5, Informative)
When HDTV came out, there were a lot of production problems revealed. I remember one of the first CSI episodes where George Eads looked orange. Reason was not that he'd overdone a tan, but that they used really intense makeup. NTSC has much poorer colour handling, so makeup was overdone. HDTV is better at dealing with colour capture and transmission.
When moving to a new technology flaws in your old process can show up.
Re:Remember the 1960's? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, and no. Your argumentation discards a relevant fact; one that you are probably not aware of.
Black and White photos are a proper representation, or mapping, of a 3-dimensional space on a 2-dimensional plane. Adding colour adds information. The human eyes can be tricked into perceiving a rate of above 16 images per second as 'motion', and an ever higher rate as 'smooth motion'. You add colour to it, everything fine.
Over the years, this has been refined, and we can all enjoy coloured moving images without trouble.
Stereoscopy as it is being done, cannot produce a proper mapping. (I gave some initial arguments elsewhere in this thread, so I don't want to repeat myself.) This is why 3D hasn't taken off despite of very early efforts, in red/green, of some generations earlier. The problem is not one of technology, resolution, not even left/right separation. The problem is, and there is plenty of research available if you are interested, that - contrary to the mapping of 3D to 2D - two cameras - even if mounted with the proper interocular distance - cannot map the 3D-impression properly into 2 electronic channels. Therefore, it is physically/biologically impossible to regenerate the original 3D impression with lateral cameras.
why it misses (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes there are crowds other than than sports fanatics that are actually to spend time glued to the tv for hours on end wearing these glasses. But I think the time when this is status quo, at least in the US, is long past.
Many would say that the going to movies is in decline because TV is catching up to major budget movie quality and because the experience is not what it used to be. I would say the reason for this is that people are less willing to sit idly for an hour or so and passively consume entertainment. The 3D tv is part of that passive consumption, and if we won't do it theaters, why would we do it at home, where are not prohibited for texting on our phones or loading up a video game on our portable player, simply because so relic for the 20th century thinks it is rude.
Re:why it misses (Score:4, Insightful)
You do that at the cinema during the movie? Don't you realise how distracting it is for every single person sitting behind you to have a bright little screen waving around in their peripheral vision, in an environment that's deliberately as dark as possible?
Damn right it's rude! If you don't want to watch the movie, leave. The rest of the audience paid to see the movie too, and don't need to have their experience ruined by selfish behaviour on the part of one person in the audience.
Glasses = death of 3D TV (Score:5, Interesting)
People accept glasses for watching 3D movies in theaters because they are there for the experience of watching a film on a giant screen with other people while eating popcorn and drinking soda. The same goes for other specific, controlled environments, like 3D CAM in an office; people accept it as part of the experience (or job in this case).
3D in the home will never succeed until and unless glasses are not needed. It doesn't matter whether the glasses are disposable or expensive, or if today's multiple competing standards congeal into one. No one will accept needing to constantly put on and take off 3D glasses to watch TV. Period.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, that's a damn good point. Generally, when you go to a movie, you're there to *watch* the movie, so you don't mind glasses on your face so much. But at home? What if I'm laying down? Got friends I wanna chat with while the show's on, and look at them while I chat? Look away to grab the phone? Get up to answer the door? Grab a snack? Go to the washroom? Grab the remote? Read a book during commercials/dull parts of the show? There's dozens of little moments while watching TV that you're not going to
They also make it annoying (Score:4, Interesting)
In the home, a TV is usually not in a special room, just for TV watching. Some high end homes have home theaters, but in most homes, even one with nice TVs, the TV is out in a public room. Ok well with any new 2D TV technology, this hasn't been a problem. People can wander in and out and they all see the same image. However with 3D TV, it is a problem. When the 3D mode is on, only people with the glasses on get a good image. Everyone else sees a blurry mess. So if you are walking through to stop and chat, it is highly annoying and the person watching has to either disengage the 3D, or you have to pick up glasses to fix the problem.
Probably be easier just to leave things 2D, over all.
After seeing Avatar in 2D, you know. (Score:4, Interesting)
I sat a few of my friends down to watch some scenes from Avatar in 2D, and one of their jaws dropped at how much worse the CG looks. 3D corrupts the live actors just enough to make the CG look of similar quality -- when it's in 2D, that effect goes away. I didn't do this to rag on Avatar's CG, but to show them how 3D destroys image quality even on something that is filmed specially for it.
I'm not looking forward to the day when the first 3D-only movie comes out.
3DTV here to stay (Score:2, Insightful)
I love 3 Dimensional TV done well. We have two eyes and see in 3D in the real world ... without having things shoved in our faces. Calm down content producers ... we get the point. 3DTV is here to stay - so start doing it right ...
Film like its a window into the world your watching - not like its a threshold for all sorts of stuff to poke out of.
Problem Solved (Score:4, Insightful)
Informative! (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's hear lots of comments by people who haven't seen 3D TV. And then let's have poorly-woorded descriptions of a visual medium than can only really be appreciated by experiencing it.
This is the Internet at it's most Internet-like.
"Clearly, 3D TV sucks because it's expensive and I haven't purchased one yet. If I decide to buy one, it is because it has improved and no longer sucks."
New technologys always fail (Score:4, Insightful)
Early "new" technologies show the worst at the beginning (anyone else remember the age of animated
3D is the future...but it's not here yet. (Score:5, Interesting)
Accommodative input is the future. Period. We will eventually have technology which allows us to adapt content to the human receiver. This is not in dispute. Presentation and interaction methods which use these techniques well will dominate over those that don't. You can already see examples of this. The experience of watching a movie on a large theater screen is vastly different from watching it on a cheap 19" TV. Cruddy audio equipment doesn't have the same impact as a live performance. A real book is much easier to become absorbed in than the same content on most e-readers. Video games with poor camera behavior and non-intuitive controls aren't as fun to play. Psychologists and technologists have studied the hell out of it - immersion, emotional design, adaptive interfaces...they make up new names for different aspects of the problem almost every week. But for the most part, this is the future. There is a lot of promise, but for the most part we have to settle for emulating "real" versus contrived input and interaction to some functional level of fidelity which we can tolerate in order to pick up additional functionality (often portability) which the technological approach enables. Other cases do work better, but only if you're talking about expensive research prototypes which address a single aspect of a broader frontier.
The problem is that this leads to the mistaken assumption that our current implementations are accurate representations of their eventual successors. In most cases, they're not. 3D is probably one of the biggest culprits here. It's too easy to go "hey look, 3D displays - it's just like looking at real objects!"...but that's not really it. We've managed to come up with a number of technologies which give decent approximations of several depth cues beyond those available in a static 2D image (e.g. shadows, object occlusion, perspective methods). This is wonderful. But it's important to keep one point in mind, a point which is constantly overlooked.
All current 3D display technology falls well short of producing fully "believable" input.
Yeah. And that's setting aside the whole "movie producers keep producing trashy fake 3D pictures to raise ticket prices" issue - which is a major complication of itself. If you use good current 3D hardware to display a well-made 3D picture which was shot for 3D and where the medium was used intelligently...it will still degrade the image quality over 2D, people will still get simulator sickness, and a fairly large slice of your audience will even still see it in 2D.
The first problem, degradation, can be minimized through special screens and top-end equipment, but you can't really eliminate it since there it provides a much more complex problem compared to doing the same thing in 2D with the same grade of equipment - or worse (and more realistically), the same budget. This is orders of magnitude worse if you want your 3D installation to be a theater setting since you have to serve many people sitting at many distances and viewing angles, each of whom is using different eyes and different brains to process the input. Honestly, with any existing technology, the only thing you can do in a 3D theater is try to minimize how bad it is and minimize how much it costs you to set up. There is no good solution here. Polarized light projection is really the best way...but it's quite vulnerable to off-axis viewing. Alternating frame projection is better in that sense - off-axis problems are comparatively minor - but the headsets are quite expensive (polarized glasses can be effectively disposable) and many viewers will perceive constant flickering which is annoying at best but more likely a quick trigger for simulator sickness (above the already inherent risk with 3D from conflicting visual cues).
The second and third problems are more or less related. The human visual system relies on a large set of visual cues to create a 3D model of your environment, and stereoscopy is only one factor. Admittedly, it's a fairly major factor, and a
The "sweet spot" problem and the "edge" problem (Score:5, Informative)
Stereoscopic 3D has two very serious problems that have never been solved. The first is the "sweet spot" problem. Imagine a person standing so that they are lined up exactly with a flagpole. In real life, if you move to one side or the other, the relationship changes and you can now see the flagpole... and you no longer see the person exactly in full-face, but slightly in profile. In a stereoscope 3D presentation, the relationship between the screen elements cannot change. You will see the person exactly lined up with the flagpole no matter where you sit. This sounds trivial, but if you work out the consequences, it means that if a person is standing on a square-tiled floor, the tiles must become skewed into rhombuses if you move to the side. And the depth relationships change, too. The picture becomes squashed or flattened if you sit too close to the screen, elongated with exaggerated depth if you set too far away.
This means that a 3D picture only looks right when viewed from one, specific seating location, the sweet spot. And, worse yet, it only looks right if the cinematographer eschews the use of wide-angle or long lenses, but films the entire movie only with lenses of the single correct focal length, which means throwing away a century of film grammar.
The valid appeal of 3D is to add the realism of depth. But unless you are sitting exactly in the sweet spot and the cinematographer has used only one focal length for the whole film, you do not get realistic depth, you get warped geometrical distortion--and worse yet distortion that changes from one shot to the next.
Have you ever watched a movie from the extreme left seat in the front row? Unpleasant, isn't it? Well, 3D has the same problem, but greatly amplified.
You may not notice it consciously, but your brain has to work overtime to prevent you from noticing it, and it is fatiguing.
The second problem involves any object whose 3D placement is in front of the screen but is near the edges. It is a little hard to explain, but remember that without glasses the object shows up double, as a pair. If it is well in front of the screen, it is a widely separated pair. The glasses make sure your right eye sees only the left image of the pair and vice versa, but the problem is that as the object moves toward the left edge of the screen, one image moves offscreen and disappears before the other does. So, as these objects approach the edge, you see them only with one eye. This actually happens in real life for objects behind a rectangular opening, as in a proscenium theatre stage, so you are used to it and it seems natural. But in real life it never happens for objects that are in front of a rectangular opening, and it is weird, unnatural, and fatiguing. The only way to solve it is to have a screen so huge you don't really see or notice the edges. This probably explains why IMAX 3D is relatively successful--it takes a giant screen to avoid the edge effect.
Together, these two problems mean that 3D cannot just make a scene look realistic and more natural--not unless you project it on a giant IMAX screen and sit exactly at the sweet spot. Under any other conditions, it looks goofy, unnatural, and distracting.
There's no way to fix it. Four people sitting in a four difference seats in a live theatre have eight eyes and views the scene from 8 slightly different points of view. Showing the person in the left seat of the fifth row the pair of images that would be seen by a person sitting in the center seat of the twentieth row isn't going to work. If there are four people sitting in your living room in four different chairs, they need to have four different pairs of image shown to them, a different one for each seating position.
Ya (Score:3, Informative)
To me, a more convincing 3D tech was one demoed at TED. It was a head tracking technology that did just what you describe on a normal 2D display. In fact when the tracker was on a TV camera, you could see it on video. So no depth like you get with a 3D display, but it looks better and needs no glasses. Of course it only works for one person.
I'll personally be sticking with 2D displays for now, until something better comes out.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Though with audio it generally just sounds a bit different / giving effect in the direction of "lower" standard; not terribly obvious when not in the sweet spot.
With "3D" it's just more wrong (sweet spot is pretty wrong in itself...), not really in the direction of discarding "3D" & appearing flat.
Hubble 3D (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I think you can already get QuadHD/4k camcorders & stuff in Japan.
It wont matter by then. By the 4th or 5th generation of 3DTV we'll all be locked-in to getting our media
fed to us PayPerView style from the likes of Apple & Google. They'll get to charge you to watch it twice
too as the extra bandwidth will cost more.
There will be no point in increasing resolution or features because its not like you'll have any
alternative anyway. They'll also have phased out analog connections by then and all media d
Re:More anti-3D trolling (Score:5, Insightful)
If Sony can pour millions into telling everyone that 3D is the bee's knees then I can take 2 minutes to voice my opinion that no, it ain't.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The folks at Sony have actually seen and used a 3D TV though.
Re:More anti-3D trolling (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, it takes a lot of people screaming DO NOT WANT to get manufacturer's attentions.
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I can still eat with someone who orders an upsized fast food meal even if I order a regular meal.
I can't watch a movie with someone who wants to see it in 3D.
Re:The joke known as color TV (Score:5, Insightful)
Color TV had an obvious and significant benefit and didn't require you to wear silly glasses all the time. 3D is a gimmick that only works well in a limited amount of footage that I've seen, and does require you to wear silly glasses all the time.
Until you can make 3D TVs which don't require glasses and do allow you to show objects which go outside the screen, it will always be a gimmick.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Name one time, ever, that it has paid to be an early adopter of electronic tech.
Nuclear bombs. Computers. Heart pacemakers. Telegraph. Radar. Oscilloscopes.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not new. It's over 50 years old.
StereoScopic 3d is way over 50 years old, but the tools to create compelling experiences + the market demand is brand-spanking in your face new.
Re:Amazing lack of foresight here... 3d will win. (Score:4, Insightful)
If they can give a 3D experience without the glasses, I think a lot of 3D TV complaints would fall away, especially as content creators stopped treating it as a gimmick and more as the status quo. But until the shutter glasses are gone, I don't think it matters *how* cheap the glasses and TVs get, I just don't see it gaining much ground. The glasses just cause too many issues on their own. The easiest to point out, and the most difficult to hand-wave away is: what if I have a large group of people over to watch a movie, and I don't have enough glasses to go around? I'm a bachelor, so I really only need one pair of glasses. Should I really need to buy three, four, or more pairs to have hanging around for bad movie night? And when they're not being used, they're taking up more space, and can get lost or damaged without much notice. Oh joy. Then I have to hope that the battery doesn't die since I didn't charge the glasses since the last time they were used, because my friend just tossed them where I didn't notice. Then there's every other issue with the glasses that regularly comes up, which can probably be found elsewhere in the thread.
Remember, the public, above all else, wants convenience. That's why automatic transmissions became popular while they were still less efficient than manuals, why CDs were more popular than cassettes, why you can sell a person a $120 package to set up their new laptop that consists solely of running windows update and burning recovery CDs for them, why three-colour ink tanks in printers persist, and why HDTV took off once you could sell them the "complete" HD experience of the TV, the Blu-Ray player, and the High-Def cable package all at once.
Do not confuse foresight with hindsight (Score:3, Insightful)
Five years later, with the HDTV penetration of US households creeping up from 1/3, and Nintendo the hands-down winner of the last console wars, it
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh, dude, 3D without glasses using as standard tech as LCD displays has been around for over a decade. Lenticular arrays and parallax barrier are very old tech by now.
Only really works well for a single person sitting in the sweet spot. That's a reasonable assumption for an LCD display, where use is typically solitary, but doesn't do so well with TV where there's more likely to be multiple people viewing it at once. (And of course it's useless for projection.)