Count how many people are grimacing
and/or looking at the other movie watchers.
Then see point 4 below.
I've seen a lot of stories in the news talking down about 3D in the home, saying that consumers aren't figuratively or literally buying it. The literal part is somewhat true, and they have numbers to back it up. But I have some objections.
1) When they talk about 3DTV sales, they always say something like "disappointing" or "less than analysts expected."
*My Objection: Analysts saw the set, and thought, "This is AWESOME!!! EVERYONE will be buying these soon, despite the expected higher-than-not-3D costs." Eventually, however, sales are modest. Modest, but not nonexistent, and not nonsignificant.
To me, the big predictions are a testament to the awesomeness of 3DTV.
2) When they talk about why people don't buy 3DTVs, people usually start in on a laundry list of 'sometimes reported' problems like nausea, not being able to see it, etc. The not being able to see it part is pretty clear, but nobody seems to report numbers for nausea, headaches, and so on. The problem I see is that most every article I've seen in the news, etc. is written by some random person who saw a demo at a store for a few minutes.
*My Objection: Remember the seizure warnings on video games? Some people have serious problems with that. Some people also have serious problems eating gluten, while the rest of the world lives our happy gluten-filled lives. MOST people see 3D just fine, no headaches, nausea, or anything of the kind. And that the people hand down a sentence on technology they saw for 1-2 minutes in a showroom is ridiculous.
3) People keep saying 3D is a "gimmick".
*My Thoughts: Sure! In fact, I've been meaning to wear an eyepatch around to abolish this gimmickry from the rest of my life too! You know how it is, it gets so distracting when you're trying to watch a perfectly flat football game on your perfectly flat TV and you suddenly realize that your kitchen appears further away than your sidetable. In fact, I've thought about turning off color on my TV to stop those darned hues distracting me from the powerful human drama that is "Everybody Loves Raymond".
To be serious, sometimes filmmakers put in gimmicky things, like swords in your face. Some amusement park rides are rollercoasters, where the motion is manipulated to throw you off guard because you find it more exciting that way, and some rides are Ferris wheels where the motion just adds to the richness of the experience. If my Ferris wheel took a deep dive, I'd think 'Who the heck made this thing?', not 'I've about had it with these moving amusement park rides.'
4) Well those goofy glasses are just so uncomfortable and weird looking.
*My Objections:
A-Uncomfortable? WHAT? Okay, maybe the active shutter style ones are uncomfortable, but I wouldn't know as I've never used them. My passive ones, on the other hand, I've worn all the way down the stairs and into my car before I remembered I was wearing them. And I don't wear glasses. These things are designed to be light weight, relaxed fitting, functional glasses. Which leads to my objection to the goofiness argument :
B-Remember how people watch movies in the dark? And they, most surprisingly, watch movies when they watch movies (as opposed to looking around the room judging everyone). 3DTV is for home use. Home, you know, where you sometimes walk around in your underpants. Where you get upset about whether somebody did or did not eat out of your tub of cottage cheese. Yeah, wouldn't want those 3D glasses to cramp your style. I'm sure, when you're sloshing your bowl of Cheerios on your Spongebob PJs and "I'm With Stupid ->" shirt that isn't pointing to anyone while watching a movie at 10pm you silently think to yourself 'Thank goodness I don't have those glasses, those might make me look goofy!'
5) There's not much content.
*My thought: Partly true, and what's there is is expensive. Just like VHS was. Just like DVD was. Just like Blu-ray was. Just like the internet was.
MAJOR EXCEPTION: Have a PS3? Great! A ton of new games are in 3D, and let me tell you that regardless of how you think 3D in movies is, 3D in games is AWESOME times about 10,000 ±2. And given that (good) games generally last for hours and hours and have excellent replay value, you suddenly have HUNDREDS of hours of wonderfully immersive 3D content.
Conclusions:
*Anti-3D hype is way more unfounded than 3D "hype", or "recognition of the awesomeness of 3D" as I prefer to call it.
*Seriously, 3D is really awesome.
Qualifications:
*I actually OWN a 3DTV, and use it to play 3D Blu-ray and 3D games, both of which are awesome. Both of which I've seen bad examples of, but I could also say that about movies, food, or people in general, all of which I'm still very fond of.
No comments:
Post a Comment