Stop Being Duped By The 3D Scam

[Julian2]

Stop being duped by the 3D scam

 

The entertainment and electronics industries keep trying to push 3D on consumers, even though a lot of smart people have caught on to the fact that it’s a scam. It’s time to stop the madness.

 

This was originally published on April 23, but we’re republishing it at the end of the year since it was one of TechRepublic’s most-read articles of 2011. Since this was first published, the 3D movement has indeed begun to lose momentum.

 

Last Friday, I departed from my normal business technology beat to talk about the geek entertainment event Game of Thrones. This week I’m going to plug into our Geekend theme again, but this time the topic is something more nefarious — the entertainment industry’s misguided scam of the public.

 

The 3D gimmick has sadly infiltrated movies and television and is now threatening to infect video games and smartphones as well. There’s only one reason why the entertainment industry keeps relentlessly pushing this at consumers — it’s a transparent attempt to bleed more money out of people. And, while a lot of consumers have caught on to the scam, not everyone is doing enough to stop it.

 

3D is definitely NOT about innovation, as the industry would like you to believe. In fact, adding the current 3D effects to a movie or video of any kind subtracts from the picture. It muddies the colors and unsharpens the images, and it has to slow down the action shots because it makes people sick if things go too fast in 3D. In fact, optometrists estimate that up to 25% of people get headaches or nausea from simply watching 3D at all.

 

My first hint at the 3D scam was in October 2009 when Toy Story and Toy Story 2 were re-released in the theaters as 3D movies. My kids were excited to see Toy Story on the big screen for the first time so we gladly ponied up the extra money to see the 3D version of the double feature. We weren’t very far into the first movie before I realized that the quality of the colors and images were actually worse in 3D. That was a big disappointment. Even my kids said that the 3D wasn’t as exciting as they thought it would be. There went an extra $24 down the drain ($3 extra for 3D for four people for two movies).

 

Of course, the Toy Story movies were standard 2D movies that were converted to 3D (which is actually the way most “3D†movies are still handled). So, what about movies that are natively shot with special 3D cameras, such as Avatar? I’ll admit that when I first saw Avatar in the theaters I was impressed at how well it wove in the 3D effects. But, my admiration wore off once I saw it on Blu-ray on a 240Hz LED TV and quickly realized that all of the colors and action shots suddenly came to life and really popped off the screen. That’s when it fully dawned on me what a horrible scam 3D really is. They are making us pay more money for a gimmicky, inferior experience. Sure, there are a few neat moments in most 3D movies, but the novelty wears very off quickly and it’s certainly not worth the trade-off in picture quality or action sequences.

 

I had started to see this coming a little sooner, and I should have pounced on it. Back at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, I was dazzled by the new LED TVs that Samsung showed off at its big press conference. The images were so sharp and the colors were so bright that the picture almost felt three dimensional. Plus the TV themselves were amazingly thin.

 

The next year, at CES 2010, I was surprised to see all of the TV manufacturers including Samsung pushing TVs with 3D glasses. I immediately felt like this was a step backward. I didn’t want to mess around with watching TV with 3D glasses. I wanted to see more super thin TVs with amazing pictures (at even better prices) like the ones I had seen the year before. After consumers rejected 3D TVs in 2010, the companies tried to come back at CES 2011 and pitch “no glasses†3D. I wanted to shake my head and do a face-palm every time one of these electronics vendors mentioned 3D.

 

This is a bad detour for the entertainment and electronics industries, and they stubbornly refuse to let it die. In fact, they keep trying to push 3D on us, since many of these new products have been in planning for a year or two (before consumers started catching on to the 3D scam). The movie industry and movie theaters try to force us to only be able to watch some of their top movies in 3D (and pay extra for it). TV makers are forcing 3D into all of their new top-of-the-line LED TVs (and trying to make us to pay extra for it). Content companies are now making their Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy bundles include 3D discs (and trying to make us pay extra for it). Game companies such as Nintendo are integrating gimmicky 3D into their new systems. Mobile computing vendors such as HTC and LG are even trying to put 3D into their smartphones and tablets.

 

There’s only one way to stop the madness. Avoid 3D whenever possible.

 

This is a bad experiment that the industry is forcing consumers to subsidize. And since they can’t create a better product, they’ve simply latched on to 3D as a marketing ploy that the entertainment and electronics industries can use to trick people into thinking that they are getting a superior experience. It’s only working because just enough people are falling for the scam to keep it alive.

 

A lot of smart people have already sniffed this out and are avoiding 3D entertainment. It’s time for the rest of the public to reject 3D and stop being cheated.

 

It’s not that we don’t want innovation in real life imaging. Of course, we do. We just want real innovation, and don’t want to pay for badly-overpriced gimmicks and half-baked experiments.

 

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/stop-being-duped-by-the-3d-scam/7983?tag=nl.e010

[The_Munchmaster]

KS, take note.

[khunsanuk]

Hi,

 

I have taken note, and I too am not 100% convinced I will really use 3D all that much. Hence my decision to buy a (relatively) cheap TV now, test the 3D / plasma for a year or so and then make a decision on what I really want.

 

Sanuk!

[Coss]

I've never seen any supposed 3D anything that actually had me looking at it and saying "Wow!" everything I've seen is blurry, and not 3D, it's two disparate images, hoping to trick the eyes and brain into believing they are one.

 

That's the trouble, real 3D (life) sends reflected light to our eyes from an almost infinite number of sources, not two, our brains know the difference.

[Julian2]

I, too, have never personally witnessed the 3D effect.

I ran this past my neighbour who has a 3D TV and he confessed he rarely used the 3D bizzo.

For one thing, he said the movies are few and far between and 3D TV programs seem to be a none event.

He seemed to think that football would be spectacular.

He knew (of) the writer of the article and said he was a long term critic of 3D.

[Wallenda]

Stop being duped by the 3D scam

 

 

 

The original writer of the article seems pretty extreme and given to hyperbole. "Bleeding money out of people" means earning profits, which could be said of any movie, or tin of baked beans. "Defniitely not innovation" -- no the idea of 3D goes back centuries, I think they were onto it as far back as the Renaissance. The specific technology being used in this latest round (for projection, I think) is new and an attempt to improve its presesntation. The recent round of 3D never claimed to have invented 3D -- I think any one who doesn't live in a jungle village in the Amazon is aware that there was already such a thing as 3D movies. There was a boom of 3D movies in the 1950s and a smaller one in the late 70s (Jaws 3, etc.).

 

If anyone wanted to see Wow moments, they were in Avatar. Shooting a proper 3D movie is much more expensive, and the kind of craftsmanship needed to make a movie like Avatar is pretty few and far between. Was Avatar worth the extra $2 or $3? Absolutely. The rest of the 3D movies? Mostly not. Few of them are made properly, as a 3D film from conception. Any time they take an existing film (or one that was shot for 2D, like Alice in Wonderland or Clash of the Titans), the results are going to be that unimpressive murky picture described by some people here. The only exception I'm aware of is Scorcese's latest "Hugo", but there may be others. Whether they're done as well as Avatar, probably not. It's rare for a film director to be as technically perfectionist as James Cameron.

 

So I think the writer does have a point -- the majority of 3D films are hack jobs that are just trying to cash in on the 3D phenomenon. But some aren't. So filmgoers just need to choose carefully, read the reviews of a film when it comes out to find out if it's that rare gem or just one more hack job. If you missed Avatar in big screen 3d, you missed something special. So if you follow this guy's advice, you would be denying yourself some of the best damn filmgoing experiences you're ever going to see.

 

As for buying 3D tv's and whatnot, I wouldn't. At home on a tv screen, you would never get the same big-screen experience of 3D like you had when you first saw Avatar in a cinema. It's not the kind of thing you want for your everyday tv viewing -- it's more of a novelty experience. Rollercoasters are fun, but you woudln't want to commute to work every day that way.

 

There have been limited broadcasts of sports -- American football was one I read about -- and it got very good reviews from those who saw it. So if they ever get that going, maybe then 3D tv's might be worth it. But even then, you would be hearing from friends how great it is first, so that would be the time to opt in.

 

As for 3D video games, I haven't heard one way or the other, though I suspect that if it was very good, I would have heard about it by now.

 

One more thing: 3D is not "more realistic" than 2D. It adds a dimension there, but even in Avatar, which is the very best example of it so far, the 3D does have a kind of super-realistic appearance. One early scene has astronauts floating in a weightless training facility. It looks much different than 2D, but not what I would call realistic or more like what you would see if you were there. For this reason I don't think it can ever replace 2D film and tv. It will always distract from the story, etc. because it is an attention-grabbing effect, one that does not look natural. So I feel pretty sure that 3D is not the future of film and tv.

 

But it does make for a great rollercoaster experience every now and then.

 

PS: if the next 3D film that's as well done as Avatar does come along, go see it -- and try to sit towards the back of the cinema -- the 3D effect is more pronounced the farther away you are from the screen.

[think_too_mut]

Stop being duped by the 3D scam

 

The entertainment and electronics industries keep trying to push 3D on consumers, even though a lot of smart people have caught on to the fact that it’s a scam. It’s time to stop the madness.

...

 

For me, I don't need any TV, 3-4 or 5D, i would not watch anything. What I bought (2 identical Sharp Aquos back in late 2008) is for my home in BKK and for my family in Japan, they may enjoy TV or playing whatever DVDs on it.

 

Although the article is not totally wrong, it is more of a kind as if someone, in late 60-ies, is telling people not to buy color TVs as most of the programming is still in black and white.

 

3D would hardly ever become such a "game changer" as the color TV was but still.

[Julian2]

I remember walking into the Millicent community club in South Australia back in the 70s and the Test cricket was showing on the new colour TV with every member present looking at it in stunned silence.

I think most of the town had one before the year was out.

[TheCorinthian]

I agree. We have a couple of the 3d tv's here for testing and the teck is just not quite there. I will not buy one.

 

On a personal note, I have enough trouble keeping up with the blasted remote, so keeping those glasses easy to find is another deal killer to me!