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3D 101 on Amazon

The James — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:43:20 +0000

Just a quick post… Amazon.com has published a series of short videos called 3D 101. The videos are brief explanations of 3D topics including the following:

Introduction to 3D
What is 3D?
How does 3D work?
Polarized Glasses and Passive Technology
What do you need to get 3D at home?
3D Content on your TV
3D and video games
3D with no glasses (great info here)
Plasma vs. LCD
Sequential vs. Side by Side

3D game shows come on down…

"Mitch" — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:05:44 +0000

The Hollywood Reporter has a little piece about how the game show industry is looking at 3D to improve or revitalize the viewing experience. The first show to really toy with the idea in the next year or two is Wheel of Fortune. A 3D clip of “Wheel” was screened Friday morning at an open house for Sony’s new 3D Technology Center on the Sony Pictures lot. It looks like Sony is really going all in when it comes to getting people warmed up to the changes in developing content for this new format. Off the top of my head, I’m not sure what could be added or handled differently that could make 3D standout as a ”cool” feature for game shows, at least if glasses are required. However it’s nice to see that people are considering the potential for 3D content, and I think we will see people approaching and developing game shows for autostereoscopic TV sets that will be rolling out in the next 5 years. 3D in the home, as we keep saying here, will be a different experience and have a more subtle visual utility to it at least when it comes to passive content like watching a TV show.

Harry Friedman, executive producer of “Wheel” and “Jeopardy!,” introduced the clip.

“One of the biggest challenges is keeping a game show fresh — by changing the show without changing the game,” he said. “We do that with enhanced production value, such as set design. We typically do dimensionalized sets, which are made for 3D.”

He added that there is no set time that this could be rolled out. But we could see some novelty in game shows using 3D on passive 3D tv sets.

Will 3D in sports pubs work?

"Mitch" — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:43:58 +0000

Not all group entertainment settings are the same. These setting come in a couple of typical varities, a 2 to 6 person living room family setting, 30 to 500 person theater setting, and a 5 to 25 person home theater and entertainment room setting. Then there are restaurants, sports pubs, museums, science centers, conference rooms, and auditoriums. So after UK’s SkyTV put forth the idea of hosting 3D TV in 9 sports pubs in the UK, to give the public a sample of what they plan on rolling out in April to most of their subscribers, it got me thinking about when 3D TV is practical for a group of people and in which social settings. And how much 3D glasses play a part in the limitations of the experience. As an obvious PR move, could this really damage people’s expectations for 3D in the home?

Lets face it, pretty much everyone knows that if you are going to be in a non-fixed entertainment setting (pretty much anything outside of a Movie with no commercials) that glasses don’t seem like an appealing option. Of course soccer is one of the rare sports that don’t have commercial breaks every 5 minutes. However people are considerably more social in a pub environment. Often times people are not close enough to the TV for the 3D experience to be of any real value. What all of this means is that the glasses are just going to be a burden to deal with, unless you are seated at the perfect spot in front of a high quality projector screen.

In my opinion, the current non-passive 3D experiences will be successful in dedicated movie and gaming settings where the screen size take up a fair amount of a person’s direct point of view. This may seem obvious to most people, however in their excitement to promote new products I have a feeling 3D media companies could be shooting themselves in the foot by getting bad press for these staged events that don’t represent an environment where today’s 3D technologies really shine.

Once passive 3D screens start rolling out over the next 3 to 5 years, 3D will start to really take on a different meaning. An autostereo screen in a bar will look more like viewing the game through a window. Depth is key here, and as you may know already, depth is something we cannot emphasize more. 3D on a television really should be compared to looking through a window, with only a slight effect of “things coming out at you”.

So my basic point here is, the smaller the screen is in front of you, and the more social distractions around you, the greater the chance that you will be taking off your 3D glasses and asking the pub owner if there is a non-3D TV that you can view.