Shifting strategies, Samsung is pushing its BD-C8000 portable Blu-ray player, which provides access to the Internet via an HD set with downloadable widgets and apps.
It seems like it’s been a long time since “Avatar” launched the current 3-D movement by taking in $2.73 billion at the box office, but that was only last year. This year has not been so successful with the flop of “Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore” and “Step Up 3D,” the dance film.
With 3-D tickets priced as high as 50 percent more than comparable 2-D films, analysts have expressed doubts about whether consumer appetite for the format can be sustained.
“The studios and theaters are overpricing 3-D films, and there’s too much of it out there,” Richard Greenfield, an analyst with BTIG Research, told the Financial Times. “They are converting all of their movies into 3-D without any regard to quality.”
The studios have packed their release schedules with 3-D films including “Tron: Legacy,” “The Green Hornet,” “Megamind” and “Yogi Bear” set for release in the coming months, while “Avatar” will be rereleased (with new scenes) in 3-D at the end of this month. Analysts say the studios are playing a risky game by betting on unwavering consumer enthusiasm for 3-D and for higher prices.
“The studios are guilty of short-term thinking,” said Brandon Gray, president of Box Office Mojo, a firm that tracks film box-office performance. “They all jumped on the 3-D bandwagon, but they’re avoiding the real issue, which is their bankruptcy regarding storytelling.”
Meanwhile, TV set manufacturers are hedging their bets in the current cutthroat environment amid a slow U.S. economic recovery. Many retail outlets feature one or two 3-D TV set displays among more than a dozen 2-D HD models. Consumers still consider 3-D TV an expensive gimmick, and there’s not much more the manufacturers can do to produce better hardware with higher specs.
At January’s upcoming Consumer Electronics Show, some manufacturers are talking about shifting their strategies from 3-D sets to interactive applications that reside on receivers. These set makers have discovered they can create continuing income streams by working with content providers to create their own app stores.
Take, for example, the Samsung BD-C8000 portable Blu-ray player. It offers Internet TV on an HD set with downloadable widgets and apps. Owners can shop online, share pictures, catch up with friends and connect to a wide range of streaming digital content using the machine. The player also has wireless LAN capability built in that allows users to connect multiple sets in a home and play files stored on their personal computers.
Of course, the finger pointing has begun. Set manufacturers blame content providers for dropping the ball on 3-D. After extensive backlash against poorly rendered 3-D effects in movies like “Clash of the Titans” and “G-Force,” the phenomenon may have begun to wane. On the manufacturing side, the antisocial nature of 3-D sets, with expensive active-shutter glasses and incompatibility between different manufacturers’ sets, hasn’t helped sell the format either.
Most people do not realize that parallax viewing used on 3D capturing fails to consider unknown parameters on 3D rendering.
As can be read on books on 3D physiology, there are some difficulties posed by stereopsis.
Most critics of 3D like oftalmologiest and doctors coinside that extended 3D viewing can manifest on head and eye aches .
They’re reasons vary, but one thing is known, the 3D technology has failed to capture all the parameters needed by the human eye to reconstruct a perfect volumetric rendering of the 3D world on a FLAT screen.
In doing so, 2 mayor problems can be perceived.
Carboarding effect, is the notion that objects appear flat renderings , disposed at various distances , like carboard in front of a carboard in front of a wall, simillar to those books that after they’re open has cut out displays to render a scene .
The second problem is the continuous strain that the viewer experience when his or Her eyes is forced to do movements that normally docent do in real life.
The result is an experience that a big percentage of viewers cannot tolerate.
The latest attempt to resolve this problem as exposed somewhere else in this newspaper has made me wonder if the experts know exactingly what the problem is.
Using different range of colors to separate a bad 3d experience can only lead to a waste of time and money, and possible arrive to the false idea that the problem has no solution, as many has anticipated .
Like in the realm of sound , for many years vertical perception was relegated to psycoacustics, and we were told that Holophonics Tm can not exist.( listen to the vertical matchbox shaking on the wwwacousticintegrity.com downloads).
Now Holorama Tm can produce 3D renderings for photos and video, and is indistinguishable from reality as holograms are , but with standard compatibility( cg video low and hi resolution, photography and video capture).
The question is , will Holorama Tm make it to the market, before the industry kills the golden goose ?