The_Wierd
Prominent Member
I'm a huge fan of stereoscopic 3D even back to when comics had special anaglyph editions and green and red glasses stuck on the front. Every TV in my house still supports 3D. They are all pretty old and in 2016 I couldn't afford an OLED, so I got one of the last LCD models with 3D. The 11 year old Samsung 3D plasma in the bedroom was one of the first TVs on sale with 3D and still refuses to die and I can't bring myself to scrap it because the picture is still excellent), and I selected a 4K projector that still supports the format. I have a couple of hundred 3D discs. Even as an enthusiast, I still don't always watch movies in 3D, and I don't expect every piece of content to be presented in 3D.
I think the main problem with 3D at home is that it only benefits dedicated movie or TV watching, by which I mean you have to sit down, get comfy, put your glasses on and concentrate on the content. While I am happy to watch anything in 3D from a critical point of view - it is still interesting to me how well or poorly the 3D is executed - for most people the content needs to benefit from it, and the 3D needs to add some value to the experience.
4K, HDR, Atmos and other new AV technologies work any time, anywhere in any context. You can appreciate a great 4K HDR picture or good sound even if you are watching in a group or family setting with all the normal interruptions of life.
So I understand why the industry dropped 3D - it just doesn't reach enough people, it was always a tough sell and badly marketed even at that in the beginning. I think it did find it's niche with home cinema enthusiasts, but that's still a niche within a niche as we see from the responses here.
What surprised me was how rapidly and completely it was dropped. One year every TV had it, the next pretty much none. I expected that it might become a more niche feature for higher end enthusiast models, but still hang in a for a few years. While passive 3D is better, it needs a special filter over the screen, so it adds to the build cost, but as I understand it, active 3D is pretty much trivial to implement only needing signal processing and a bluetooth transmitter for the glasses, so I thought it still be there in top of the range models, but I guess sales have proven that it didn't need to be.
Seamless, no compromise, glasses-free 3D is technically really hard to do in a way that piggy backs on to existing display technologies, so I don't think that is going to happen soon, in the home anyway. I can imagine it coming to the cinema in some form, although no idea how that would work.
I think the VR route is more likely if VR headsets can get down the the size and weight or a normal pair of sunglasses, and AR technology allows the content to be overlaid on the real world. They might even eventually get to the point where any kind of fixed display technology is redundant - if you can just create a virtual display of any size where ever you are then that's the end of cinema as we know it! It's not that long ago that the idea of carrying a what is basically a pocket computer around seemed impossible and no one could even imagine why you would want to, but of course everyone has one now.
I think the main problem with 3D at home is that it only benefits dedicated movie or TV watching, by which I mean you have to sit down, get comfy, put your glasses on and concentrate on the content. While I am happy to watch anything in 3D from a critical point of view - it is still interesting to me how well or poorly the 3D is executed - for most people the content needs to benefit from it, and the 3D needs to add some value to the experience.
4K, HDR, Atmos and other new AV technologies work any time, anywhere in any context. You can appreciate a great 4K HDR picture or good sound even if you are watching in a group or family setting with all the normal interruptions of life.
So I understand why the industry dropped 3D - it just doesn't reach enough people, it was always a tough sell and badly marketed even at that in the beginning. I think it did find it's niche with home cinema enthusiasts, but that's still a niche within a niche as we see from the responses here.
What surprised me was how rapidly and completely it was dropped. One year every TV had it, the next pretty much none. I expected that it might become a more niche feature for higher end enthusiast models, but still hang in a for a few years. While passive 3D is better, it needs a special filter over the screen, so it adds to the build cost, but as I understand it, active 3D is pretty much trivial to implement only needing signal processing and a bluetooth transmitter for the glasses, so I thought it still be there in top of the range models, but I guess sales have proven that it didn't need to be.
Seamless, no compromise, glasses-free 3D is technically really hard to do in a way that piggy backs on to existing display technologies, so I don't think that is going to happen soon, in the home anyway. I can imagine it coming to the cinema in some form, although no idea how that would work.
I think the VR route is more likely if VR headsets can get down the the size and weight or a normal pair of sunglasses, and AR technology allows the content to be overlaid on the real world. They might even eventually get to the point where any kind of fixed display technology is redundant - if you can just create a virtual display of any size where ever you are then that's the end of cinema as we know it! It's not that long ago that the idea of carrying a what is basically a pocket computer around seemed impossible and no one could even imagine why you would want to, but of course everyone has one now.