3D TV – Pros and Cons
If you didn’t know, there’s recently been an influx of films in High-Definition 3 Dimensions (HD 3D). Both TV and Cinemas are keen to adopt the new technology. With Piranha 3-D, Alice in Wonderland, and Toy Story 3-D versions all in the making, we’ve got a lot to look forward to.
Youngsters try out 3D glasses. Photo by LG.
Similarly to the advent of colour, sound, and flat screens, the necessity of 3-D in the cinema is being brought into question. Yeah, it’s a great concept, but the reality is that we go into the cinema, put on some stupid glasses – at least they work on polarisation instead of colour now – and sit and strain our eyes at ’3-D’. Why bother? Simple: 3D is the next logical step. It’s much closer to how we see, and the payoff when it works is fantastic.
So why has it taken so long for stereoscopic 3-D to arrive on our screens? The technology has been around for some time. A quick search for “3DTV” or “stereoscopic TVs” in Google will definitely find a few articles about the hardware that’s available; but still it’s not available outside the cinema yet. Sky is going to upgrade their HD boxes to have 3D capability, set for release ambiguously “sometime in 2010”. ESPN sports are releasing a 3D channel in June. According to industry sources, Sony, IMAX and Discovery Communications are working together to produce a channel exclusively for 3D, planned for next year. You’ll need a 3D-Ready TV to play these channels, which annoyingly seem to continue the trend of ‘glasses’, despite the fact that the technology to make the screens without the glasses is already available.
Regardless of the hardware, the format has taken so long to arrive. Only now have companies like Sony and Samsung decided to release these ’3D-Ready’ screens. Clearly, it was always going to take a big film, something influential, to show the potential of 3D; Avatar appears to be that film. Avatar actually uses the technology well, because it doesn’t attempt to be ‘gimmicky’ with the 3D. Some films, like the upcoming Piranha 3-D in August, decide to shove chainsaws into your face, and poke things right up to your eyeballs. This doesn’t work. We know it doesn’t work. It looks blurry. We can’t see it. Stop doing it.
Thankfully, Avatar avoids cheap shots, but despite its relatively subtle implementation, objects sometimes appear strained and blurry. So why do certain things still look out of focus, even with a production budget of half a billion dollars?
It’s actually quite simple. Stereoscopic cameras record two images at once, like a pair of eyes. The glasses you wear in the cinema filter the image, using polarisation. Simply put, the left camera is directed to your left eye, and vice versa. The result? 3D. However, the problem lies with the fundamentals, and how cameras work. As in standard cinema, the Director wants to focus on a specific object; the actor, the flying spacecraft, or the weird alien monster. With 3D, both cameras have to focus on this, and are angled towards it. This makes everything else blurry. Obviously it does, when you think of it. It’s like trying to look at something in your peripheral vision. The problem is, on 2D cinema we don’t notice – or care even. If we look into the distance, we accept that it’ll be a bit out of focus.
With 3D we’re less forgiving. Our eyes try and look into the distance, attempting to look past the screen, and the image becomes distorted and blurry. Even if you manage to get over the strangeness of not looking beyond the image, and focusing directly on the 2D screen, the image is still distorted. The only way around this is to focus on what the Director wants you to focus on. Then, suddenly, the image looks real, and you can feel the depth of field. 3D suddenly makes sense. It looks great; so natural in fact, that there’s a chance you won’t notice it’s working at all.
Just don’t look off to the side, don’t try and look at all the fancy little things that they’ve put into the movie. They’ll just look blurry and out of focus. They’re meant to be seen out the corner of your eye, not directly.
For now there’s nothing we can do about this. In the future perhaps they’ll discover a way of making the image fully 3D, like a hologram: there are scientists working on the problem right now, I’m sure.
But, just remember – it’s only 3D if you look the right way. If you want to look at the nice landscape in the background, watch the 2D version.
