3d films are dying in the cinema, and there's only the very odd program on TV that's 3d
I can't comment accurately other than to say if they are dying in the cinemas how come they are still making them when a feature film costs several millions to make? It's not like Hollywood to waste money.
which is almost exclusively football
and rugby, and darts, and snooker, and golf, and ballet, and the Strictly Come Dancing final, and movies on TV, and wildlife docs, and and and... the fact is though that it is very heavily sports biased - on average 1 out of every 2 football matches I cover is simultaneously covered in 3D at this time. There are two dedicated 3D trucks on the road now with a company called Telegenic and the main OB facilities provider is also knocking out 3D albeit from their conventional HD trucks. It's sad that Sky have decided to put the technology to use on football as of all the sports it is the one which singularly fails due to the angles of coverage but their logic is that football reaches out to something like 8 out of 10 sports subscribers.
the technology is far too expensive (both to produce the programs, to buy the TVs and to subscribe to 3d channels)
At the moment the subscription is not an issue as Sky 3D broadcasts are free to anyone with the HD channel. That's not to say it will stay that way as Sky are NOT altruistic. As soon as they have a sufficient number of subscribers hooked they will make it pay per view in all likelihood - they are robbing *******s. But currently it's FOC. The BBC 3D output is free and will remain so. At this time no other broadcaster is putting out 3D in the UK. As to the cost of making the programmes it is less about a difference in cost, more about the quality of covereage in terms of things like replays etc. On a typical 2D football shoot we use upwards of 20 cameras at this time (last night for example at Newcastle we had 23 cameras on the game in 2D) and we are stopping just short of 30 on big games like the Champions League final. The same match in 3d is covered with around 12 cameras so the number of replay angles suffers dramatically and the speed of panning is dramatically reduced (it doesn't workj with fast, tight panning shots) - the reality then is that 3D coverage is rather dull. The cost of a 3D TV is comparable now with the cost of buying a conventional HD screen a couple of years ago. But the problem is that the smaller 3D TVs just don't cut it. In order to enjoy 3D properly the viewer needs an immersive experience and so a 42 inch TV is far too small unless you sit a few feet away! So you have to go for 50+ and sit closer. But remember, a 3D TV is only a hi end HD screen with an extra decoder built in and as such they will and are falling in price constantly. My TV was close on £2300 (60" Samsung) but it is already a quarter cheaper in 12 months. And you can buy a 50" now for as little as £549 - my first 42" Panasonic COMPONENT plasma (a long way short of HD let alone 3D!) was over a grand around 6 years ago!
People don't have much spare money at the moment and by the time they do in a few years time it will already have failed.
That's a distinct possibility.
So long as they rely on stereo images and glasses they will never be mainstream (not that there's any other way of doing it short of hologram technology!
Hmmm... I agree partially with your comment - polarised glasses are a major bugbear and in the main the people reporting problems or dislikes are those using the polarised glasses. We see visible light in all polarities at the same time so restricting one eye to one polarity and the other to a polarity at 90 degrees has got to mess with the brain! The old 3D films at places like Alton Towers where you watched standing up caused some very extreme nausea. But shutter glasses do NOT cause any perceiveable "wierdness" as the eyes are being "switched on and off" at 100hz. The perceived 3D effect is far better too with shutters as the polarised glasses bleed some of the opposite image into the wrong eye as they are nothing like 100% obscuring of the wrong polarity - does that make sense? The shutter glasses suffer only from making the picture somewhat darker but then the screen compensates by winding up the output level. We can't perceive flicker at anything much above 60 Hz so it's an artifact free system.
As to 3D without glasses it is already here, albeit in a very limited prototype capacity. Philips have a screen which uses bars of tiny prisms on the screen front to offset images to the left and right and it needs no glasses - think if you will of the old seaside 3D postcards. The problem is, it will only work if viewed from a very narrow "sweet spot" and I think it is a 3D only screen rather than an "also 3D" screen.
