More Bad 3-D News, Samsung snubs Real-D - Page 2

But it isn't.

2010: Almost exactly one year ago, EA boss John Riccitiello said that 3D may very well be one of the next and most important drivers of growth.

2011: Riccitiello says that EA havh not seen a big uptake [in 3D gaming] and that they have not seen a big uptake in 3D TVs in the home.

Saying that EA is not here trying to drive a market, choosing instead to react to what customers want...[EA] sees very poor returns focusing on 3D, so (is) allocating [their] resources to new innovations.

Is it possible that growth in 3-D gaming will get interesting? Yes. Same for growth in watching 3-D TV at home. Currently, neither is growing in an interesting way -- period.

5.1 is a giant market failure. Most people listen to the speakers built into their TVs. Don't even get me started on how many 5.1 soundtracks have virtually nothing in the surround channels.

I'm glad movie theaters use variants of surround sound so we get something on our BluRay and DVD -- and sometimes it's really good and immersive. But let's not pretend it's a hit.


Since you felt this was worthy of post spam, the industry has been pushing 5.1 sound for more than a decade. Yes, they believed everyone would buy in. The same idiotic way they believe most people will sit in their living room with battery powered glasses on to watch television in 3-D.

What's funny to me is when people like you conclude that you knew surround sound would fail to be mass market -- which is blindingly brilliant hindsight by the way -- even though once the system is installed, there really is nothing much troubling about it. In our house, for example, one button turns on the TV and the sound. The surround speakers are so small and unobtrusive they take up no space in the room. But you knew most people wouldn't bother, despite inexpensive home theater in a box solutions, etc.

Yet somehow....


... you can start expressing opinions for me. Listen, here's my reaction to you putting words in my mouth: Go to hell. Don't you dare put opinions in my mouth or purport to know what I'm thinking or feeling.

You're the wizard who knew people wouldn't incur a one-time installation of surround sound and a universal remote, but you're the one who is convinced that people will regularly put on glasses to watch TV. And for good measure, those glasses will be rechargeable, somewhat costly, ugly, somewhat heavy, suffer from occasionally spotty communication. etc.

I'm not anti-3D. I'm anti-terrible technology. I'll give you a great example. There is some gaming stuff that allows you to play like 3-D MMOs in 3-D. Fine, that's cool, right? Totally immersive. Well, no, because much of the UI layer is stuck in not just 2-D, but an immovable plane that requires you to constantly refocus your eyes way off from where you are gaming back to the UI plane. Terrible experience.

Active-shutter 3-D is a terrible experience. The fact that it will never be usuable at little Timmy or little Sally's birthday is just one of many examples. The fact that a not atypical Mormon or Orthodox Jewish family would need to invest in a dozen pair of active-shutter glasses at great expense (and that it's not clear many of these sets are even designed to support that many users at once -- especially now as they switch to Bluetooth) is just another. The fact that you need to remember to recharge or that if you sit on the glasses, you're out $30, 50, 100...

I want to be crystal clear, passive 3-D still sucks, but at least the glasses are under $1. At least they require no batteries and are lightweight. At least you can be assured that no one will walk between you and the IR emitter or that your Bluetooth pairing won't become undone. Current passive 3-D is a serious bummer because in the home, it blows up 1/2 of your resolution. That's pretty unfortunate too.

It's pretty obvious you like 3-D and want it to catch on. It's also true that the cost to keep adding it to TVs is low and much in gaming is built on a 3-D --> 2-D model already so having 3-D gaming is doable for some time regardless of the very very slow uptake. But pretending this represents market success is like saying electrical cars are a huge hit because Nissan has sold a few Leafs. (I like electric cars and the Leaf is important in establishing them; but electrical cars have a looooooooooooong way to go before we'd call them a hit).

Listen, GregLee, critical reading skills are important.

Nothing says "3D is dead" nothing says "surround is dead". 5.1 surround sounds is a market failure that we fortunately get to enjoy -- to the extent the surround channels actually have anything in them, which is honestly not all that often.

HD is an unmitigated success -- nearly everyone has it, nearly everything is broadcast in it, nearly everything is available on BluRay. And you are correct, the lack of programming is the problem... and new programming isn't coming. Why? Because people are voting with their wallets and their public statements: The technology -- at least as it currently exists -- simply doesn't interest them.

And for every person like you that would "use their 3-D glasses more" there are probably 5 that will never use them at all.

Airion, if I put a few words into your mouth, forgive me. And as for the rest, you make my point entirely: 3-D is a market failure. "It seems obvious most people won't bother with it" is not a recipe for getting a lot of content. Or really much of any. Will there still be a few games? Yes. Is it going to be a focal point for gaming companies? It sounds like no and if the 3-D versions keep getting played by <10% of the playerb-base, even that future will be one of tepid support and very unimpressive results.

I actually don't post spam. For example, I don't respond to the same post in consecutive posts like you do.

You had an apology. After what you wrote below, consider it retracted.

Because your "conclusion" is ridiculous. You do what a lot of small-minded internet people make a bad habit of. You read my criticisms of the implementation of 3-D and decide for yourself that I am anti-3-D. I don't insult 3-D anywhere. I don't say "3-D makes for bad movies". I don't say "3-D adds nothing to the viewing experience". I don't say "3-D is garbage." Yet you decide you can characterize my position as anti-3D. And that's garbage.

Again, I made what was a relatively minor mischaracterization of your position about the chance of market success of technologies that I thought was backed up by your hindsight "prediction" on surround sound. You stated otherwise; I apologized for that. You, by contrast, go back and again insist I'm anti-3-D because "it looks that way". Stop telling people what I'm saying. Just stop it now.

You need to stop telling people what they think. You can disagree with me all you want. I can get angry with you all I want. What you can't do is keep deciding what I'm saying. I'm not putting up with that for a second.



Yes indeed, and thank goodness! HD is the best thing to happen to TV since color. How many years has it been since HD was introduced? How about 3D? I'll bet if you judged HD a few years since it's introduction, you would have had no choice but to declare it a market failure. It all depends on how you define it. If 3D success means lots of 3D capable TVs in homes, then it may yet be a success as I wouldn't be surprised if all TVs will be 3D capable if active shutter glasses is the solution For consumers, this would be success. Those who want 3D could easily buy in. Those who don't care for it wouldn't have to pay extra for a new TV. It's the same situation as surround sound. To declare it failure because those who wanted to sell tons of it projected they would sell tons of it and didn't sell tons of it is silly. This line of thinking gives the most weight to the most self servingly unreasonably optimistic projections, is unscientific, and lacks common sense.[/quote]

When what we did is parallel, your point will be a lot more valid. I actually took responsibility for the small thing I did. You still think it's cool that you entirely decided to take a position for me because "it seemed like my position". And much worse, you used your assessment of my position to impugn everything I had to say.

Like I said, when what we did is remotely parallel, your point will be a lot more valid.

5.1 surround sound is awfully close to that however.

DVDs and BluRays are bought and or rented by a majority of Americans. That's not exactly "hardly anyone".

Sorry, that's not a definition of success.

Consumer interest remains... low. I think we can warm up the "You failed!" banners.

Um, believe whatever you want. The fact that a small minority of HDTV owners are idiots doesn't mean it's not an unmitigated success. Again, every TV sold is HD, nearly 100% of broadcast content (that includes cable) is in HD, nearly 100% of disc-based content is in HD. It's an unmitigated success.

Even if I believed this was based on some scientific survey (I don't), so what? HDTV is all of those things. It's an unmitigated success.

Surround sound, by contrast, has an installed base in the low double digits in the U.S. The reason it's still manufactured at all, is because (a) the R&D is done and (b) because the margins remain high.

The business of selling surround sound into homes is still a failure. (Home theater in a box sales total ~3 million units a year. The entire "rest of the audio component industry is on the order of ~2 million units, which includes all types of components.) Consumers were never convinced it was a must have. Nearly no companies have made significant (or any) profits selling into the surround-sound market. Many companies, in fact, that centered on audio have gone under or merged over the decade-plus of the surround era. It has basically done nearly nothing to reignite the audio business.

Audio is weird so there are still hundreds of companies selling speakers. But this doesn't mean many of them are making real money.

We could make an argument that in higher-end homes, built in speakers have been a reasonably successful market over the past decade. And, yes, many of those system (although by no means all of them) are set up to support surround sound. But surround sound is a failure in the marketplace, as much as the AVS crowd values it. Home audio as an industry is smaller today than it was 10 years ago.

(The one time this was discussed on AVS I could find, most posters felt that the actual penetration of 5.1 surround sounds was actually even lower than I think. Most of them knew nearly no one with 5.1 sound. Not shocking really.)

Cineramax, as usual, I get about 90% of what you're saying. I should be crystal clear, I never extrapolated it with the "death of 3-D". I speculated, in fact, that the building of the installed base -- even of these relatively crappy current generation sets -- would eventually lead to a possible content renaissance a few years down the road. At that point, it's possible that manufacturers will bring next-generation 3-D to market and create the world you hope to see. Until then, when the Samsungs announce they are sticking with their really really crap technology instead of moving up to somewhat less crappy technology, I'd call that "yet another blow for 3-D".

As for you Airion, we're done. You can keep stating what you think I'm thinking till the cows come home. I'm done responding to it.

I dunno, about 25% right now?

Only 3-D BluRays can, which is a subset. There are technologies that "upconvert" non-3D sources to 3-D, but the technically correct answer is "only 3-D BluRays".

Virtually nothing.

See above.

Avatar is a great example of 3-D done right. There aren't enough such great examples. Sports in theory could be very popular in 3-D. It's a great example of my theory: "When a lot of people have 3-D TVs, there's a chance for a 3-D rebirth". The big flaw with my theory is when you invite 10 guys over to watch the game and you need 10 pair of the active glasses for your 5-year-old TV to make that happen and you can't.

Yes, it's true that eventual the cost to implement will be approaching zero. It's likely at that point most TVs will come with 3-D support. The real question is whether anyone will still care by then.

It's easy to see the content tipping point never being reached and the market going backwards from here. And with the growth of streaming-based rentals, it's even easy to see relatively few 3-D streaming options. I'm not actually saying this is the way it's going to happen, it's just easy to see it playing out that way.

At year 3 of the HDTV transition, there was no way to imagine it turning back.