3D’s Future May Already Be in the Past

 

The New York Post published an article this month questioning 3D Television’s ability to stick around for the long haul. While ESPN and the Discovery Channel were enthusiastic early adopters of 3D, both announcing their new 3D programming last summer, a year later it seems they have both taken residence on a sparsely populated bandwagon with limited programming. “3-D on TV is a bust,” Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and head of HDNet, told the Post for its September 5, 2011 story.I agree with Mark Cuban and I’ll tell you why.

Did you know that 56% of people ages 18-56 may not be able to even experience 3D? This is a big deal, especially to those brands heavily invested in the development, marketing and sales of 3D television units. According to the American Optometric Association over half of this age group have symptoms related to a binocular vision problem. It is this vision that allows us to experience 3D. Therefore, those that have problems with binocular vision may need to wear prescription glasses along with the 3D glasses in order to see the effect.

Speaking of glasses, there is just something about having to put gear on that makes the act of watching television less relaxing. You don’t kick back, put your feet up, and reach for your 3D goggles. It could be fun for the occasional movie (though a recent article published in Slate found that 2D movies fair much better in theatres than 3D) and the novelty is short lived for many people.

 

The timing for 3D television is all wrong. Unemployment has been consistently high since the economic bubble burst in 2008. While people may have more money than they did 3 years ago, I’m doubtful there will be a big crush to Best Buy to buy the latest and greatest 3D television set, and data from Best Buy confirms my theory. Purchasing a pricey 3D television is risky, it’s still a novelty and there is not enough 3D content to make the investment worthwhile.

From a production standpoint, creating 3D content is a cumbersome request to ask of producers. We were approached a year ago by someone looking to produce live-streaming sports events in 3D to sell to ESPN. Investing in the technology to create such content did not seem practical to our production house and when we reached out to ESPN to see what we could do with their equipment we were thwarted by roadblock after roadblock. They weren’t interested even if we offered the programming in a finished form.  It seems they had their hands full with the production they had internally and were not looking to expand it any time soon.

The equipment is specialized and expensive. There are not many pro-sumer options as 3D video cameras go. If you decide to go that route you should be prepared to spend close to $2,000 for each camera. Now, $2,000 may not sound like a large amount of money to drop, but when you buying a piece of equipment with only one purpose, trust me. It’s expensive.

3D production requires additional overhead in an already expensive game. You can’t run the signal through standard equipment and there are not a lot of people that can edit 3D programming or professionally operate 3D camera rigs, and if it’s a live-event, like boxing or wrestling, there’s the issue of bandwidth to consider. If it’s a 5 camera production then 10 streams of video need to be processed.  In a world where sporting events are routinely covered with more than 10 cameras, 5 camera angles seems like a sacrifice the fans aren’t going to be happy about.

There is some good news however, the extreme sports contingent has discovered an inexpensive way to shoot 3D. GoPro created a innovative 3D HERO system by mounting two GoPro cameras together in one case. One camera shoots right-side-up and one camera shoots upside-down. But therein lies the rub: two streams of video must be edited, one angle needs to be flipped vertically in post, and once the project is finished it still needs to be specially formatted to view properly.

Finally, the 3D effect isn’t universal. If the content doesn’t have foreground, middleground and background then 3D won’t work. Producers need to consciously set up shots to ensure that each scene contains these three elements to make the effect work, changing the nature of the coverage.

And even then, there are some events that just won’t work well with 3D. Take soccer for example. The master shot is positioned too far back for 3D cameras to work effectively, and adding a telephoto lens actually diminishes the effect because it creates major changes to the depth of field. To make it look 3D you would essentially have to reinvent sports and live television coverage.

In conclusion, 3D is expensive to shoot, expensive to edit and expensive to post, there is a wide scope of content that is not 3D compatible, a large population are unable to view 3D comfortably, if at all and it requires special, expensive equipment – 3D television sets and 3D goggles to view.  I see a place for 3D in specialized experiences, perhaps movies and video games and some interactive experiences, but given that most markets of television aren’t even fully HD at this point, 3D’s future may already be in the past.

Erin Hayes is a guest blogger. She is the COO of broadcast media, full creative, video production company and entertainment label, MediaBoss Television.