3D Is Dead And Buried

A new breakthrough came this year in 3D television, half a decade after James Cameron impressed everyone with the technology in Avatar.  Glasses-free 3D TVs have been ironed out, but it’s too late, because 3D as a format is dead and buried.  Sales of 3D Blu-Ray are petering out, less and less broadcasters are giving us things to watch on TV in 3D and 3D gaming, well, never even got close to the former.

Ideally, if 3D was to replace our (still current) 1080p standard, it would needed to have broken the floodgates by now, because 4k is flashing its 2160p 2D thighs at everyone.  It’s basically too late for 3D, no-one cares anymore.  Yes, it’s still somewhat strong in Asia and in western cinemas to some degree, but when home media (Blu-Ray, porn, games) shuts the door on you, you’re beat.  The real sign of the times now though is that the big TV brands are proudly showing off their new 4k TVs – without 3D capability.

What went wrong though?

Four Eyes

There’s just no getting around this.  There should be no need to don a pair of sunglasses to watch a movie.  Do you remember the first time you seen a 3D movie at the cinema? Shit, I bet some reading here still haven’t bothered to see one.  But aside from actually wearing them, there’s something annoying about asking for them, leaving them back and holding your head at a particular angle.  Or if you’ve dropped something taking them off and putting them on again.

Then if you’re watching something at home, you have to make sure that everyone else has a pair, otherwise it’s simply better to revert to 2D for the sake of convenience.  And what if you already wear glasses?  It’s unergonomic to say the least.

Glasses for an audio/visual format should only ever have existed in the beta stage.

Competing Formats – Eight Eyes

Right out the door, around 2010 when this stuff was all the rage, people were confronted with two different types of 3D TV to buy.  One, the type with passive glasses like those you get at the theatre and the second, the type with ‘active’ glasses.  Now one thing about casual consumers is, believe it or not, they don’t like options, not this type anyway.  Options means research, research is pesky, people just want a goddamn TV to space out on and de-frag in front of.  They don’t want to ‘back a horse’.

Worse, there was no clear superior type.  Passive glasses were light and cheap, but they didn’t give us a 1080p 3D picture, this is hardly technological progress.  Active glasses on the other hand gave us 1080p three dimensional images, however they were more expensive, required batteries and were much heavier.  Try sitting through the entirety of Avatar wearing something like that, at some point the discomfort on the bridge of your nose becomes noticeable.

Making Crappy Movies 3D To Make Sure They Profit

This may be the most important thing that killed 3D.  To me, the highlight of 3D Blu-Rar was Avatar.  That’s not a good sign, because it’s the first one I bought.  I stopped browsing for 3D Blu-Rays long ago because I noticed a trend, that there were two types of things on offer.  The first would be wildlife stuff, you know, polar bears in their natural habitat and stuff.  While I’m sure those were stunning pieces of work, they’re simply not my kettle of fish.  The second thing?  Usually animated movies, no interest.  The third thing on offer was the type of movie I simply did not want to see, in 2D or 3D, due to its reputation of being garbage.

It took me a while to realise what was behind that trend.  The studios would take movies that were poor in their own right, but looked good enough to gamble a box office run on.  And to offset their chances of a financial return, they’d make the movie 3D; a three dimensional movie makes more money simply because you have to pay more to see it that way.  So you’d have crappy movies with a gimmick stuck on, quite literally in many cases – post-conversion 3D being a big offender.  Now this may have worked at the box office, but the trade-off came with home media.  By the time the movies arrived on Blu-Ray, people were already wise to the scam.

So I eventually learned to stop looking for new 3D Blu-Ray movies.

It Still Doesn’t Work

One other big problem is the fact that too many things presented in 3D aren’t very good at being 3D.  For every Avatar there seems to be two or three movies that just don’t get it right, or a TV that can’t deliver it right.  Whether it’s a director who goes overboard with depth of field and makes us feel uncomfortable, or a television that makes us see double (‘cross talk’).  These problems are on top of wearing those stupid fucking glasses, which by the way, have that awful piss-coloured tint.

Look at 3D at the cinema.  You have two reels used to create the effect, however too often both of these reels are thrown over a bulb intended for the use of one.  This darkens the image, which is worsened by wearing those sunglasses.  This doesn’t improve at home, most TVs have a lot of shit to run, from aps to perfecting 2D… in the end they struggle to compensate for 3D dullness.  And for games?  Developers are probably breathing a sigh of relief.  3D is a major pain in the ass, sucks on processing power and often can’t keep up with fast paced action.

And by the way, all of these shortcomings appear to be getting worse, not improving.  To my eyes at least.  I looked at two TVs this month.  A top-end 4k Panasonic and 4k Sony, both were 3D, but the only 2016 models by each respective manufacturer to offer the feature – they’re being phased out by those two as well.  The 3D presented by both was terrible, even though it was Avatar in active 1080p 3D.  So now, it’s only a novelty feature and a neglected one at that.

3D Will Be Back

3D has screwed up for this generation.  4k will kill it off.  Why is that? Simply because 4k is easy to watch, there is no eye strain and it’s a natural progression.  However, the writing is on the wall for 2D.  At some point, the big format war is going to be between 3D and virtual reality; let’s say a glasses-free 8K 3D TV versus a headset that really does take you into another reality.  Which will win out?  Probably 3D.  Why?  We’re communal animals and the living room and cinema are king, one screen is important.

So maybe 3D is dead, but buried may not be appropriate for the title.