So, at work during lunch from time to time the guys and I talk about HDTV and movies and stuff to watch. and even though we all understand HDTV 1080p and blu ray and all the token words that keep Best Buy in business, we still marvel at the technology and question it, and wonder where it will go from here.
Ive been saying two things from the get go. #1. Discs and physical media are on the out, some day you will aquire your movies either online (already happening) or by going to the local "red box" type oulet and inserting a flash drive, it uploads a movie, music, photos, etc... It could be purchased or rented this way. More on that thought later, but #2 is that now that we have 1080p HIGH DEFINITION, where do we go from here? My answer to this is not smell-o-vision, no, I've always thought it would be 3D in the homes. There have been a lot of strides toward this recently. Panasonic has tvs that are already "3D ready". As you have probably noticed there a lot of movies available at your local theater being shown in 3D. Most recently "Avatar" which I saw in 3D and it was awesome. But there are a lot.
Ive also heard about
ESPN broadcasting a whole football game in 3D sometime this year. Folks, 3D in the home is upon us. Now, we just got to get rid of those
darn ugly glasses. So, the infusion of HD and 3D is whats important, because people aren't going to go backwards in deffinition just to get 3D. Also, 3D is tricky, a little bit like surround sound. You can make things 3D just for the effect and people go wow, but then its sort of annoying, or you can use it tastefully. Its important that it is used tastefully.
Today I learned that one of the biggest sources of 3D content isn't what it could be. The first thing that could, should, be better is the limited support for frame rates. Movies have been recorded at 24 frames per second for longer than our parents have been alive, and for about the same amount of time we've had to endure frame rate interpolation to make movies play back on our 30Hz TVs -- you know, like 3:2 pull-down. That changed recently with
120hz LCDs and 72Hz plasmas because those numbers share a common denominator with 24 (so the same frame is just shown three or four times). Well so much for that because the frame rates of the new 3D displays don't share a common denominator any more (either 30 or 60 hz per eye) -- admittedly this can change. But honestly the worst part is that some 3D cameras can capture 3D at higher frame rates and even if the director wanted to, the new 3D Blu-ray spec doesn't support it. The other issue with the new spec is that contrary to early reports, it is possible to create a 3D Blu-ray Disc that won't play on 2D only players. This next one isn't a big deal, but still disappointing is that even if the creator goes through the trouble to encode the movie in both formats, depending on the 3D player, you may have no choice but to watch it in 3D -- say if you lost your glasses or whatever. Now don't get me wrong Im pretty excited about the new 3D technology, but the way I see it is that anything worth doing, is worth doing right the first time.
If you want to read more about 3D being infused into our lives
click here for some good links.
