So long, 3DTV - we will miss you

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So long, 3DTV - we will miss you

 

Both LG and Sony have now stopped making 3D-enabled televisions. The firms follow Samsung - the world’s biggest TV maker - who confirmed the move last year. It means there are currently no major manufacturers making 3DTVs.

 

At this year’s CES trade show, there was barely a whimper of 3D TV, compared to just two years ago when it was being heralded as the next big thing.

 

But you could argue that 3DTV was never about the home experience. Where it would come into its own was in huge cinemas with full surround and the kind of environment that would do the new(ish) medium justice. But here, too, things have ground to a miserable halt.

 

Despite the moderately promising start made by Avatar, no single 3D production ever became a must-see.

 

LG and Sony, the last two major TV makers to support the 3D feature in their TVs, will stop doing so in 2017. None of their sets, not even high-end models such as their new OLED TVs, will be able to show 3D movies and TV shows.

 

Samsung dropped 3D support in 2016; Vizio has not offered it since 2013. Other smaller names, like Sharp, TCL and Hisense, also failed to announce any 3D-capable TVs at CES 2017.

 

The 3D feature has been offered on select televisions since 2010, when the theatrical success of "Avatar" in 3D helped encourage renewed interest in the technology. In addition to a 3D-capable TV, it requires specialized glasses for each viewer and the 3D version of a TV show or movie -- although some TVs also offer a simulated 3D effect mode.

 

Even James Cameron, who directed Avatar, is fed up of 3D. It has "become a studio-driven top down process to make money”, he said (as if Hollywood has ever been anything else).

 

The cinema-going public was immediately sceptical - knowing that the more the movie industry told them it was the next big thing, the more it felt like a pathetic gimmick. To quote The Oatmeal, “saying that 3D movies are the future of cinema is like saying that Magic Eye books were the future of literature”.

 

Despite enthusiasm at the box office and years of 3D TVs being available at affordable prices, the technology never really caught on at home. DirecTV cancelled its 24/7 3D channel in 2012 and ESPN followed suit a year later.

 

There are plenty of 3D Blu-ray discs still being released, such as "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," but if you want to watch them at home you will need a TV from 2016 or earlier or a home theatre projector.

 

Why 3D TV failed

There were a number of reasons why 3D TV failed in the market, and some cautionary lessons for VR fans (including myself). First and foremost, 3D content was gated to expensive equipment purchases.

 

It wasn’t enough to have a Blu-ray player; you had to have a Blu-ray player with 3D support and a TV that offered the same. Many 3D TVs required you to either have a pair of glasses for each person or, in the case of TVs that didn’t require glasses, had limited viewing angles and distances.

 

A certain amount of living room finagling is nothing new to TV watching, but this was a larger problem than just rearranging a few chairs. It was difficult and expensive to rig a living room for multi-person 3D viewing, and you had to have enough 3D glasses to fit your entire audience.

 

Another major problem? Content. A handful of movies made for and shot in 3D, like Avatar, may have popularized the format, but few movies were filmed to take full advantage of it. Many limited themselves to using 3D in specific scenes and were filmed in 2D before being converted for 3D.

 

It’s cheaper (or seems to be, based on how many people went this route) to convert films in post production than to film them in 3D from the beginning.

 

It’s one thing to ask people to pay for The Next Big Thing, and something else entirely when they’re shucking out premium cash for a TV, a movie, and extra goggles, all while knowing that only 20-30 minutes of a film may be truly 3D in the first place.

 

In addition, 3D is also prone to giving some people headaches and motion sickness, which again, can make it harder to watch a film or 3D content. The third time Grandpa runs for the bathroom or your kid decides to paint the 3D glasses black because it makes them look cool, you’ll wind up wishing you’d saved money and just bought the regular TV and Blu-ray instead.

 

What does this mean for VR?

The story of 3D’s rise and fall is a cautionary tale for the VR industry as well. Many love VR and would like to see it shape the future of gaming, but many of the issues that doomed 3D TV and 3D content could also kneecap VR adoption e.g.:

• Like 3D, it requires expensive, personal peripherals.
• Like 3D, games need to be designed explicitly for VR in order to showcase the technology to best effectiveness.
• Like 3D, VR can cause nausea and headaches.
• Like 3D, working in VR has an entirely new set of best practices, some of which aren’t intuitive to people who spent their careers working on conventional design.

There are two major differences between VR and 3D. 

1. VR is a stronger, more immersive experience. If 3D was more immersive than 2D by virtue of having things leap “out” at you, VR is more immersive by virtue of making you feel like you’re actually there.
2. VR is debuting as a gaming peripheral, and gaming is still much more of a solo activity than TV watching (and PSVR even tries to solve this issue by allowing output to a second screen). That alone may make the difference, provided the gaming industry can push content that takes advantage of virtual reality quickly enough for people to want to buy it. 

But either way, it’s worth remembering that many of the forces that killed 3D TV could wind up killing VR as well. If game developers want to avoid this problem, treat 3D as a cautionary tale of a new technology whose promise and potential never justified the cost and headache in the eyes of the general public.