Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio, and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech and I'm a little under
Speaker 1: the weather today. But of course I don't want to
Speaker 1: leave you without a tech Stuff episode. So rather than
Speaker 1: skip a day, I thought we would have a nice
Speaker 1: little rerun episode. Uh. This one comes from August twelve,
Speaker 1: two nineteen, so not that long ago, and it is
Speaker 1: called the Death of three D Television. I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1: So in this episode, I'm going to talk a bit
Speaker 1: about three D and how three D works, and then
Speaker 1: transition over to why television manufacturers were so gung ho
Speaker 1: on the idea in the first place, and why ultimately
Speaker 1: it failed because spoiler alert, no major television manufacturer is
Speaker 1: currently including three D TV capabilities in their sets. All right,
Speaker 1: So let's begin with the way three D actually works. Now,
Speaker 1: in the real world, we can perceive depth, right, the
Speaker 1: real world around us, we perceive in three dimensions, and
Speaker 1: we can tell how far away stuff is in general,
Speaker 1: or at least have a good idea about which things
Speaker 1: are closer to us. Than other things. If something is
Speaker 1: within twenty feet of us are closer, we can do
Speaker 1: that pretty easily with our depth perception. Beyond that we
Speaker 1: start to rely more heavily on visual cueues outside of
Speaker 1: stuff like parallax, so we can perceive objects actually have
Speaker 1: depth as well. Right, it's not just that we can
Speaker 1: see that something is closer to us than something else.
Speaker 1: We can see that that something has three dimensions, So
Speaker 1: it's not like the world just looks like a bunch
Speaker 1: of cardboard cutouts to us. Our brains use a lot
Speaker 1: of different in form ation and cues to create this
Speaker 1: three dimensional representation that we're taking in, but one of
Speaker 1: those is stereoscopic vision. This applies to people who have
Speaker 1: vision in both eyes. There are some people who do not,
Speaker 1: and for those people the technology and three D films
Speaker 1: and TV doesn't work. But for those of us who
Speaker 1: do have vision in both eyes, we know that our
Speaker 1: line of sight is slightly different for each eye. This
Speaker 1: is just common sense, right. Because the eyes are on
Speaker 1: either side of the nose, the left eye and the
Speaker 1: right eye are peering out from different positions, so we
Speaker 1: get slightly different angles of vision, and our brains take
Speaker 1: these two streams of data and combine them into a
Speaker 1: single representation, and that's where we get our three dimensional images.
Speaker 1: It's our brain taking that information and combining it to say,
Speaker 1: here's how I'm making sense of the world around us.
Speaker 1: But stuff like traditional photographs or drawings, or films and
Speaker 1: television present two dimensional images to us. Their images on
Speaker 1: flat surfaces, and thus they have no depth. Our brains
Speaker 1: can try to judge depth based upon the qualities within
Speaker 1: the image, as in I can tell that in this image,
Speaker 1: this one thing is closer than this other thing. But
Speaker 1: that also means our brains can be fooled if we
Speaker 1: take advantage of that way that brains work. This is
Speaker 1: the principle behind tricks like forced perspective, in which you
Speaker 1: position subjects in an image in such a way as
Speaker 1: to create the illusion of a significant difference in size.
Speaker 1: But it's not necessarily the case that one object or
Speaker 1: person is significantly larger or smaller than another. Rather, it
Speaker 1: has to do with the distance to the camera and
Speaker 1: the angle of the shot. So an example of this
Speaker 1: trick in action is found throughout the Lord of the
Speaker 1: Rings films, in which Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf, would
Speaker 1: often be positioned so that he was closer to the
Speaker 1: camera than the actors who were playing dwarves or hobbits,
Speaker 1: you know, the smaller creatures. The crew created special tables
Speaker 1: and benches and other pieces of furniture so that when
Speaker 1: they were shot from the correct camera angle, it looked
Speaker 1: like a normal table, and this supported the illusion that
Speaker 1: you were looking in on, say a six foot tall
Speaker 1: human like figure sitting down with three foot tall human
Speaker 1: like figures, when in reality the differences in the actor's
Speaker 1: heights was really much less dramatic. This trick works because
Speaker 1: there's no true depths in the image we're looking at,
Speaker 1: so the filmmakers can take advantage of that and create
Speaker 1: this illusion. A three D version makes this trick harder
Speaker 1: to pull off, since it requires shooting the scene from
Speaker 1: two different angles to simulate the experience of a person
Speaker 1: looking in on that scene with their own eyeballs, and
Speaker 1: so forced perspective in three D films is a lot
Speaker 1: harder to pull off. So that's the first part of
Speaker 1: three D technology. You shoot a scene with two cameras
Speaker 1: position such that they mimic how the viewer's eyes would
Speaker 1: look in on that scene, or sometimes this is done
Speaker 1: in a computer generated environment for example pre c g
Speaker 1: I films or for converted films. Will talk more about
Speaker 1: those in the second. But now you have two sets
Speaker 1: of images to show an audience right, You have one
Speaker 1: set for the left camera and one set for the
Speaker 1: right camera, and you will only want one set of
Speaker 1: images to go to each eye. Right, the images from
Speaker 1: the left camera have to go to the viewers left eye.
Speaker 1: The images from the right camera have to go to
Speaker 1: the viewer's right eye. But you're showing all of them
Speaker 1: on the same surface. Otherwise this the three D effect
Speaker 1: won't work. You would just have a mess of images
Speaker 1: on the screen. It would be a big jumble. So
Speaker 1: how do you tell the light which way to go?
Speaker 1: How do you tell the light from the left side
Speaker 1: just go to the left eye and the light from
Speaker 1: the right side to just go to the right eye
Speaker 1: for an audience full of people. Well back when three
Speaker 1: D films were first really becoming a fad in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, it was typical to use filters on the
Speaker 1: camera's color filters. The left camera would have say a
Speaker 1: red lens filter on it, and that meant only red
Speaker 1: light could come through that filter. This is a matter
Speaker 1: of physics. A red object is one that absorbs all
Speaker 1: light except light that has wavelengths in the red spectrum.
Speaker 1: That light would reflect off the object. A red lens
Speaker 1: allows red light to pass through and absorbs all other light. Similarly,
Speaker 1: the right camera lens would have a blue filter on it,
Speaker 1: which meant only the blue light from a scene could
Speaker 1: pass through. So now you have two rolls of film
Speaker 1: of the same movie. They are shot from almost identical angles,
Speaker 1: but they are slightly offset, again to mimic the way
Speaker 1: our eyes are offset. One set of those images is
Speaker 1: from the camera with the red filter, and the other
Speaker 1: is from the camera with the blue filter. You take
Speaker 1: these developed pieces of film, you put them in a
Speaker 1: pair of projectors, also spaced just so, side by side,
Speaker 1: and you play them in sync with each other so
Speaker 1: that the sequence of images matches up. You have a
Speaker 1: red set and a blue set. So these are identical
Speaker 1: except for a slight difference in angle and of course
Speaker 1: their color. The audience puts on glasses that have red
Speaker 1: and blue lenses. The red lens will only let the
Speaker 1: images from the red filter camera pass through. The blue
Speaker 1: lenses on the glasses will only allow the blue images
Speaker 1: to pass through, and thus the brain gets two sets
Speaker 1: of images. If the cameras and projectors are properly aligned,
Speaker 1: this should create the illusion of a three dimensional image,
Speaker 1: and the audience will perceive depth and what is otherwise
Speaker 1: two sets of two dimensional pictures, which is pretty darn cool.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's the old way to do it, and
Speaker 1: it meant that you couldn't really get a full color
Speaker 1: film in three D. But there are other ways to
Speaker 1: get the same effect. The two main ways fall into
Speaker 1: the broad category of passive glasses and active glasses. Passive
Speaker 1: glasses work in a similar way to the red blue
Speaker 1: lens glasses, in fact, the same way, just through a
Speaker 1: different operating mechanism. They typically use polarized lenses, which will
Speaker 1: only allow light that is polarized in a certain way
Speaker 1: to come through the lens. Polarized sunglasses work in this way.
Speaker 1: Most polarized sunglasses will only allow light that is vertically
Speaker 1: oriented to pass through the lens, because horizontally oriented light
Speaker 1: is typically glare caused by light that's reflecting off of
Speaker 1: horizontal surfaces like the hood of a car. So by
Speaker 1: blocking that kind of light, the glasses eliminate glare. It
Speaker 1: also means that less light is coming to your eyes
Speaker 1: more than a second. So you can polarize light and
Speaker 1: lots of different ways, not just horizontally and vertically, including
Speaker 1: in circular patterns that are clockwise or counterclockwise or witter
Speaker 1: shens as I like to say. A clockwise polarized lens
Speaker 1: won't let light with a counter clockwise polarization through the
Speaker 1: same lens, and vice versa. The clockwise approach is important,
Speaker 1: by the way, because if you polarize lights so that's say,
Speaker 1: the left lens only allows horizontal oriented light to come
Speaker 1: through and the right lens only allows vertical oriented light
Speaker 1: to come through, it would require the audience to sit
Speaker 1: upright to watch the image to get the proper feeling,
Speaker 1: the proper effect. That might work at a movie theater,
Speaker 1: but at home it could be an issue for people
Speaker 1: who might say, lounge a bit while watching television. So
Speaker 1: if your head is at an odd angle to the screen,
Speaker 1: the lenses might not align properly with the light coming
Speaker 1: from the image, and thus the circular polarization helps bypass
Speaker 1: that particular problem. Otherwise, the process is pretty much the
Speaker 1: same as the red and blue version. Each camera has
Speaker 1: a special filter to only allow light polarized in a
Speaker 1: particular way to pass through the lens, or the projectors
Speaker 1: are fitted with special filters to polarize the light that
Speaker 1: they're projecting. These match the glasses, and we again get
Speaker 1: the two sets of images that, when viewed through this
Speaker 1: pair of glasses with the proper polarization, creates that illusion
Speaker 1: of a three dimensional image. Then we have active glasses.
Speaker 1: These are glasses that have liquid crystals in the lenses,
Speaker 1: and the liquid crystals can change shape and a fraction
Speaker 1: of a second, so in one orientation they block light
Speaker 1: from coming through the lens, and the other orientation they
Speaker 1: allow light to pass through the lens. They're kind of
Speaker 1: like very tiny window blinds that open and shut at
Speaker 1: an incredible speed. And the left lens and the right
Speaker 1: lens have crystals alternating these two orientations, so that when
Speaker 1: the left lens is letting light through and the right isn't,
Speaker 1: then you can get the left side, and then vice versa.
Speaker 1: The right side will let light through on the left,
Speaker 1: won't you get the right side. The shuttering is in
Speaker 1: synchronization with the film or the three D television, Otherwise
Speaker 1: that method wouldn't work, So you're only getting the left
Speaker 1: images when those are on display, You're only getting the
Speaker 1: right images when those are on display, and otherwise the
Speaker 1: the opposite lens is blocking light. So with these glasses,
Speaker 1: rather than having two sets of the same image projected
Speaker 1: on a movie screen simultaneously or on a television display,
Speaker 1: you only have one set displayed at any given instant.
Speaker 1: So let's say it's the first fraction of a second,
Speaker 1: only the image for the left eye is on display.
Speaker 1: The glasses worn by the audience open the shutters on
Speaker 1: the left lens and close the shutters on the right lens,
Speaker 1: so that the light only gets to the left eye
Speaker 1: of all the viewers. In the next instant, the image
Speaker 1: for the right eye is displayed and the glasses switch
Speaker 1: the shutters, so now the light can pass through the
Speaker 1: right lens but not the left. And this goes on,
Speaker 1: with the glasses shuttering over and over in sequence with
Speaker 1: the images on the screen, and it's all happening fast
Speaker 1: enough that our brains can't detect the changes. To us,
Speaker 1: it just seems like a continuous series of images coming
Speaker 1: right into our brains, like we're looking in unbroken sequence
Speaker 1: with both eyes at the same time, and our brains
Speaker 1: again construct this three dimensional representation. This approach helps correct
Speaker 1: a problem that a lot of other three D films have,
Speaker 1: which is that they tend to be pretty dark. You've
Speaker 1: got two sets of images on the same surface with
Speaker 1: the other methods of three D presentation. So if you
Speaker 1: read a lot of tech blogs or a lot of
Speaker 1: movie review sites that talk about the differences between three
Speaker 1: D versions of a film and the two D versions
Speaker 1: of the film, you'll often see commentary about how dark
Speaker 1: the three D version is in comparison, and that has
Speaker 1: a couple of things with it. That's partly because you
Speaker 1: have projectors with these polarized filters on them, so less
Speaker 1: light is coming from the projector to hit the screen.
Speaker 1: You're wearing glasses that also have polar rized lenses on them,
Speaker 1: so they're preventing some of the light from the screen
Speaker 1: to getting to your eyes. So that means the image
Speaker 1: is going to look darker to you, and it can
Speaker 1: make it challenging or even impossible to tell what's going
Speaker 1: on with a dimly lit scene. There's some filmmakers who
Speaker 1: try to counteract this by using, you know, actual effects
Speaker 1: in the making of a three D film to make
Speaker 1: a very bright image in the first place and avoid
Speaker 1: doing darker image stuff. But you can also get around
Speaker 1: this by actually just boosting the amount of light that
Speaker 1: the projectors is putting through the lens. You can essentially
Speaker 1: turn up the brightness on the projectors. That requires training
Speaker 1: a projectionist to be able to do this sort of thing,
Speaker 1: to calibrate a projector so that it is ideally working
Speaker 1: with the three D content, and a lot of places
Speaker 1: just don't do that. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: projectionists who just they don't have the training to tweak
Speaker 1: things and make it calibrated so that you get a
Speaker 1: really good, uh, three D experience, And so the result
Speaker 1: is you get this kind of dark, muddy, out of
Speaker 1: focus almost experience. It's not ideal anyway. Uh. You you
Speaker 1: realize that there's not really a one size fits all
Speaker 1: approach to projecting films properly. You need to have that
Speaker 1: kind of training to really get the most out of it,
Speaker 1: and it's just just a fact that not a lot
Speaker 1: of places do that. Active glasses, however, which again don't
Speaker 1: have quite the same problems. They are the most technically
Speaker 1: complicated version of three D televisions and three D films,
Speaker 1: and it also means that the glasses themselves have to
Speaker 1: draw power from something which is typically a chargeable battery,
Speaker 1: and that means if you want to watch a three
Speaker 1: D film or TV show with active three D glasses,
Speaker 1: you need to make sure that those glasses are charged
Speaker 1: up first, or they may not work, they might conk
Speaker 1: out before the movie is over. And it also means
Speaker 1: they tend to be more expensive. So if you lose
Speaker 1: a pair of polarized glasses, that's already pretty expensive, but
Speaker 1: losing a pair of active three D glasses can really
Speaker 1: set you back a bit. When we come back, i'll
Speaker 1: talk about why the industry pushed hard for three D
Speaker 1: televisions and three D content and three D films, But first,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Okay, I gave you a
Speaker 1: quick rundown on how three D works, and I could
Speaker 1: trace the history of three D back to early stereoscopic
Speaker 1: photographs up through the gimmicky tricks of the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: designed to lure more crowds into movie theaters because of
Speaker 1: a fear that television was going to rob theaters of
Speaker 1: their audiences. But honestly, I've covered that in other episodes.
Speaker 1: And it's not really that relevant to this conversation about
Speaker 1: modern tell visions and the effort to get three D
Speaker 1: adopted as a standard feature in TVs. So what gives Well, First,
Speaker 1: it helps if we look at the rebirth of three
Speaker 1: D at the cinema. Now, apart from some fairly gimmicky
Speaker 1: films like Jaws three D, the three D craze had
Speaker 1: proven to be just sort of a fad from a
Speaker 1: bygone eram But that started to change in the first
Speaker 1: decade of the two thousand's, particularly with a film that
Speaker 1: came out in two thousand nine. So you do have
Speaker 1: filmmakers who are interested in using three D to enhance
Speaker 1: the experience they want their audiences to have while they
Speaker 1: are watching one of these directors films, and these filmmakers
Speaker 1: are exploring new ways to create movies and to tell stories.
Speaker 1: A great example of such a filmmaker is James Cameron,
Speaker 1: and in fact, his insanely successful two thousand nine film
Speaker 1: Avatar is a large reason why three D films took off.
Speaker 1: Shortly afterwards, Avatar smashed box office records and the effects
Speaker 1: were rightly louded by critics. People said the three D
Speaker 1: effects of this movie are like nothing we've ever seen before.
Speaker 1: It's not really an exaggeration to say that Avatar helped
Speaker 1: usher in the modern three D cinema age. A three
Speaker 1: D film requires different considerations than a standard two dimensional film,
Speaker 1: which can hide a lot of stuff just through lighting
Speaker 1: and camera angles and other simple tricks. A three D
Speaker 1: film requires a slightly different approach, often using the same
Speaker 1: tricks but tweaked for the three D filming process. It
Speaker 1: also requires twice as many people. You've got two cameras
Speaker 1: to run, not just one, so you have two camera crews.
Speaker 1: You've got a much larger staff. It's more expensive, and
Speaker 1: because it's more technically complicated, when things go wrong, it
Speaker 1: can take a lot more time to fix stuff. So
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily a better approach, but it is a
Speaker 1: different approach. Stuff like force perspective is a lot harder
Speaker 1: to pull off that way. It just means that you
Speaker 1: have to go about things in a different way if
Speaker 1: you want to get the most out of creating a
Speaker 1: three D film versus a two D film. Other films
Speaker 1: get converted into three D after they've already been shot
Speaker 1: in two D, so these movies were not shot in
Speaker 1: three D natively. So with this approach, you're taking a
Speaker 1: single two dimensional set of images. You know, that's what
Speaker 1: a film is. It's just a long sequence of two
Speaker 1: dimensional images. Then you have to take that and turn
Speaker 1: it into two offset series of images, one for each eye.
Speaker 1: Now this can be done, it could even be done well,
Speaker 1: but it's also really easy to do it poorly, and
Speaker 1: in any case, it can result in a movie that
Speaker 1: seems to be shot in three D for no apparent reason,
Speaker 1: like there's no thing in the film that benefits from
Speaker 1: the three D ness. With movies, a big motivating factor
Speaker 1: for studios and movie theater chains is that they can
Speaker 1: charge more money for a three D screening of a film.
Speaker 1: It's a premium experience. So if it's done well, it
Speaker 1: can be a really great experience for the audience. They
Speaker 1: can feel like it was worth the money. But whether
Speaker 1: it's done well or not, it drives up ticket prices.
Speaker 1: You can charge more for those tickets, and driving a
Speaker 1: ticket prices is a good way to generate a lot
Speaker 1: more revenue, particularly in the early stages of a film's release,
Speaker 1: and that means you can turn up the hype machine,
Speaker 1: because if your film breaks some box office records. You
Speaker 1: can use that to try and get more folks who
Speaker 1: haven't yet seen the film in theaters to come check
Speaker 1: it out. And you don't necessarily need to sell more
Speaker 1: tickets than the previous record holder if the tickets you're
Speaker 1: selling are more expensive. So, in other words, let's say
Speaker 1: you are selling cookies at fifty cents each and I
Speaker 1: swoop in on your turf and I start selling cookies
Speaker 1: for a dollar each. But I also say that my
Speaker 1: cookies have some feature about them that makes them superior.
Speaker 1: Let's say I'm using the claim that the ingredients in
Speaker 1: my cookie are all natural, for example, then I can
Speaker 1: make more money than you, even if you sell more
Speaker 1: cookies than I do. If you sell five dozen cookies
Speaker 1: at fifty cents each, well you netted yourself thirty bucks,
Speaker 1: which isn't bad. Now, let's say I sold four dozen cookies,
Speaker 1: so twelve cookies fewer than you did, but I charge
Speaker 1: a dollar each, so I met myself forty eight bucks.
Speaker 1: You sold more cookies, but I brought in more revenue.
Speaker 1: Three D films can help studios and theaters achieved the
Speaker 1: same thing. If we were just looking at the number
Speaker 1: of tickets sold. The story would be different. So there's
Speaker 1: a strong business case for three D content in movie theaters,
Speaker 1: particularly in an age where the average person is going
Speaker 1: to the cinema less frequently. Since two thousand one, the
Speaker 1: per capita tickets sales in the United States has been
Speaker 1: on a fairly steady decline, with a couple of bumps
Speaker 1: every other year or so. One way to combat this
Speaker 1: is to offer up an experience that is hard to
Speaker 1: replicate at home, a high fidelity experience with booming surround sound,
Speaker 1: crisp images, and occasionally three D effects that can help
Speaker 1: convert someone from I'll just watch it when it's available
Speaker 1: for streaming to let's go to the theater and check
Speaker 1: this out. Another motivation for three D films on the
Speaker 1: studio side is that they seemed like a good solution
Speaker 1: to a problem of debatable magnitude. That is the problem
Speaker 1: of movie piracy and bootlegging. Now, I've done episodes in
Speaker 1: which I've talked about movie piracy in the past, but
Speaker 1: let's do a quick overview. First. Piracy isn't cool, guys,
Speaker 1: that's just you know, true. My philosophy is that if
Speaker 1: you think something is worth the price, then you should
Speaker 1: pay that price in order to experience whatever that thing is.
Speaker 1: If you think something is not worth the price, if
Speaker 1: you think they're charging way too much for that, then
Speaker 1: you don't pay the price and you don't experience it.
Speaker 1: That's how you can get the prices to come down.
Speaker 1: You just say like, well, I just don't think it's
Speaker 1: worth it, so I'm not gonna bother if it was.
Speaker 1: If you feel like it wasn't worth it, why would
Speaker 1: you worry about it? Now? If you think it's worth
Speaker 1: the price, but you're not willing to pay that price.
Speaker 1: So in other words, you're just saying, it's probably worth
Speaker 1: the twenty bucks to see it, but I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: pay twenty bucks to see it. I'm just gonna steal it. Well,
Speaker 1: that that makes you a jerk. That's that's all that
Speaker 1: works out. So pirating isn't really cool. Now that being said,
Speaker 1: the movie studios have a narrative around piracy that isn't
Speaker 1: really supportable. So well, I agree that piracy is not good.
Speaker 1: I also say that movie studios have blown it way
Speaker 1: out of proportion. See, the narrative is that movie piracy
Speaker 1: directly translates to lost revenue, and that's just not really supportable.
Speaker 1: If someone bootlegs a copy of a movie and then
Speaker 1: makes it available in people who otherwise would never go
Speaker 1: see the movie download the film to watch it. You
Speaker 1: can't really claim that the movie studio is out any revenue.
Speaker 1: After all, those pirates were never going to pay to
Speaker 1: see the movie at all, So, in other words, there's
Speaker 1: no difference to the movie studios bottom line if those
Speaker 1: people pirated the film or they didn't, because they were
Speaker 1: never going to buy a ticket in the first place.
Speaker 1: Either they were going to pirate the film and watch
Speaker 1: it for free, or they weren't going to pirate the
Speaker 1: film and not watch it at all. Either way, you
Speaker 1: don't get a ticket sale. Now, some of those people
Speaker 1: might have been willing to buy a ticket before they
Speaker 1: got hold of a pirated copy. Those people could potentially
Speaker 1: represent cases of lost revenue, but it's impossible to determine
Speaker 1: how many of those pirates would have otherwise bought a ticket,
Speaker 1: which means it's impossible for movie studios to give an
Speaker 1: actual amount as to the magnitude of lost revenue. And
Speaker 1: since movies studios used these very large estimates to justify
Speaker 1: lobbying for stiff penalties whenever they pursued cases, against pirates.
Speaker 1: They were able to win some pretty draconian victories against
Speaker 1: people using pretty flimsy justification. This was all in an
Speaker 1: effort to terrify would be pirates in order to discourage
Speaker 1: the practice. At the same time, the goal was to
Speaker 1: find ways to coax people into movie theaters, something that
Speaker 1: the theater chains also wanted to have happened for obvious reasons.
Speaker 1: And finding ways to create an experience that's not really
Speaker 1: easy to replicate at home was part of this strategy.
Speaker 1: With the success of Avatar, three D films became a
Speaker 1: big part of that strategy. It was hard to bootleg
Speaker 1: a three D film, so the super jen Kie way
Speaker 1: where you set up a camera inside a movie theater
Speaker 1: just didn't work. You know, the image would be even
Speaker 1: worse than a typical bootleg made in that way. And
Speaker 1: if you could get your hands on a digital copy,
Speaker 1: something that has happened on numerous occasions with different films,
Speaker 1: the image would be better, but you would still need
Speaker 1: a compatible three D television and glasses set up, or
Speaker 1: you wouldn't actually be able to watch the content in
Speaker 1: three D. And of course you could potentially get hold
Speaker 1: of a two D version of the movie, but then
Speaker 1: one of the big selling points of the film wouldn't
Speaker 1: be available to you. So three D was seen as
Speaker 1: a way to convince people to go to a theater
Speaker 1: to see a movie, rather than to pirate it or
Speaker 1: wait around. And this trend found its way to television
Speaker 1: manufacturers who saw the potential to advertise to home theater
Speaker 1: enthusiasts who did want to get the closest approximation of
Speaker 1: the cinematic experience in their own home setups. See One
Speaker 1: of the reasons three D televisions became a thing is
Speaker 1: that TV companies need to create a compelling reason for
Speaker 1: people to go out and buy a television. This is
Speaker 1: an arc we can follow whenever a new television technology
Speaker 1: really takes off. Initially, only a small percentage of the
Speaker 1: market adopts it, typically because the tech tends to be
Speaker 1: pretty expensive when it first debuts and there may be
Speaker 1: a shortage of content that you can watch on this
Speaker 1: new tech of television. So, for example, we saw this
Speaker 1: with the invention of color TV in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: Color TV actually followed not long after black and white
Speaker 1: television first started to get a real foothold. After the
Speaker 1: end of World War two, our c A and CBS
Speaker 1: competed fiercely to create the standard for color television. Eventually,
Speaker 1: our c A pretty much won that battle after some
Speaker 1: initial setbacks, but I covered that in my r c
Speaker 1: A episodes. But even though the tech was there, widespread
Speaker 1: adoption did not fall immediately. In fact, it took quite
Speaker 1: some time. So for one thing, only a few programs
Speaker 1: were being broadcast in color. In fact, for a long
Speaker 1: time in BC was the only network broadcasting anything in color,
Speaker 1: so a color television only had a slight advantage over
Speaker 1: older black and white sets. Why would you buy a
Speaker 1: color TV if there are only a couple of programs
Speaker 1: that are in color. Studios pushed hard to expand the options,
Speaker 1: with companies like Disney doing a lot to promote the
Speaker 1: advancement of color television. But price was another barrier. Television's
Speaker 1: were and are expensive. Many households don't have the extra
Speaker 1: money laying around to upgrade to the latest update to
Speaker 1: technologies like television's. The expectation was that you would buy
Speaker 1: a television set and then you pretty much use it
Speaker 1: until it stopped working, or maybe until the cost of
Speaker 1: repairing a television is more or less the same as
Speaker 1: buying a new one in the first place. For reasons
Speaker 1: like these, color television actually took a really long time
Speaker 1: to get a purchase in the US market, even by
Speaker 1: fewer than fifty of all households with a television had
Speaker 1: a color set. Similarly, we saw a trend like this
Speaker 1: emerge with high definition television. The transition from standard definition
Speaker 1: TV to h D t V was a fairly gradual one,
Speaker 1: and largely for the same reasons as the color TV
Speaker 1: transition we had seen in the sixties and seventies, though
Speaker 1: it took less time with HDTV, and we're seeing similarities
Speaker 1: with ultra high definition television sets to have two K
Speaker 1: or greater resolution. On top of that, you have other
Speaker 1: features like h D R and more. These aren't just
Speaker 1: tech advancements. These are sales pitches to get people to
Speaker 1: buy more televisions, because that's how businesses work. So for
Speaker 1: several years, companies like Sony, LG, Samsung, and many others
Speaker 1: really pushed three D capabilities. When we come back, i'll
Speaker 1: talk about how that played out, but first let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break. Companies were starting to experiment with three
Speaker 1: D television tech before, but that's the year of the
Speaker 1: industry really began to commit to the technology. Again, not coincidentally,
Speaker 1: because of Avatar's success, all the major TV manufacturers were
Speaker 1: pretty much on board. Most of them adopted the passive
Speaker 1: glasses strategy, a few were gambling with active glasses instead.
Speaker 1: A very few examples played with the idea of glasses
Speaker 1: free three D television demand. That's a big gamble. So
Speaker 1: with those sets, the screen itself acts in a way
Speaker 1: that's similar to a pair of three D glasses directing
Speaker 1: lights so that each of your eyeballs gets a different
Speaker 1: feed of information, as it were, But it also means
Speaker 1: to experience that three D effect, you need to be
Speaker 1: viewing the television from the proper angle. So you can
Speaker 1: imagine the TV surface and imagine that there's a wedge
Speaker 1: shape expanding out from the TV surface, and then imagine
Speaker 1: within that wedge you have slices kind of like a
Speaker 1: pizza or a pie. If you're in one of those slices,
Speaker 1: like in the middle, you get the three D effect.
Speaker 1: But if you're outside the wedge by being a little
Speaker 1: too far off to one side or the other, or
Speaker 1: if you are in a position where you're astride two
Speaker 1: slices like the slice goes down the middle where you're
Speaker 1: sitting or standing, you don't get the proper three D
Speaker 1: effect and it becomes hard to look at the screen anyway.
Speaker 1: The three D tech and television's worked more or less
Speaker 1: depending upon the specific implementation, but that's just part of
Speaker 1: the puzzle that needs to come together to make an
Speaker 1: innovation in TV technology a success. Yes, it has to
Speaker 1: work for it to be a success, but that's not
Speaker 1: the only quality. It has to have. Another is content,
Speaker 1: just like with color television and high definition television and
Speaker 1: now ultra high definition content. Without good three D content,
Speaker 1: this feature was doomed. Early on a few different media
Speaker 1: companies experimented with creating three D channels, and they included
Speaker 1: big names like ESPN. The provider Direct TV also had
Speaker 1: a three D channel, but both of them would stop
Speaker 1: broadcasting by two thousand thirteen. I'll get back to that
Speaker 1: in a second. The point is it's hard to sell
Speaker 1: a public on a platform if there's nothing on that platform.
Speaker 1: Fans of video game consoles have seen this happen time
Speaker 1: and time again. Arguably it's what doomed the Nintendo. We
Speaker 1: you there just wasn't enough compelling content available for the console.
Speaker 1: Another source of content was the promise of three D
Speaker 1: Blu ray discs, but to play one of these you
Speaker 1: needed a compatible Blu ray player, So if you had
Speaker 1: an old Blu ray player that was not compatible with
Speaker 1: three D technology, you would have to go out and
Speaker 1: buy a new one. You wouldn't just be investing in
Speaker 1: a brand new television, but also a brand new Blu
Speaker 1: ray player. Some companies were able to patch existing equipment
Speaker 1: to support three D content. Sony did this with the
Speaker 1: PlayStation three, and firmware updates to players could help remove
Speaker 1: some of the barriers to entry, but it wasn't a
Speaker 1: universal practice, and it didn't always mean that the experience
Speaker 1: you got was as good as if you went out
Speaker 1: and bought a new Blu ray player that could support it. Natively,
Speaker 1: so it was a fix for some platforms, but not
Speaker 1: an ideal one. On top of all that, there was
Speaker 1: the problem of three D quality in general. Now I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about how the television is displayed three D,
Speaker 1: although if you didn't tweak the settings just right you
Speaker 1: would have a pretty shoddy experience in the home. I
Speaker 1: am actually talking about the quality of the content itself.
Speaker 1: The floodgates opened after Avatar's crazy success, and so there
Speaker 1: were the movies that had been shot in three D
Speaker 1: to begin with, which weren't guaranteed to be better, but
Speaker 1: had advantages over the other type of three D content,
Speaker 1: the aforementioned converted to D films that have been turned
Speaker 1: into three D. Many movies included gimmicks of stuff seeming
Speaker 1: to emerge out from the screen. That's a three D
Speaker 1: trick that's been around since the nineteen fifties, and rather
Speaker 1: than create an immersive experience, these tricks seemed to call
Speaker 1: too much attention to themselves. It actually tends to pull
Speaker 1: people out of the movie. You you're laughing at something
Speaker 1: that's happening, because it's so far outside the realm of
Speaker 1: a typical movie experience that pulls you out of it.
Speaker 1: There are several analysts and television manufacturing representatives who actually
Speaker 1: blame the poorer performance of three D television sales on
Speaker 1: the ratio of bad three D content to good stuff.
Speaker 1: In other words, there was just too much crappy three
Speaker 1: D out there, and there wasn't enough good to really
Speaker 1: make it compelling. Then, of course you have to buy
Speaker 1: or rent the blu ray discs that you would play
Speaker 1: on your compatible Blu Ray player, and then adds yet
Speaker 1: another expense to this technology. And if the television comes
Speaker 1: with fewer sets of three D glasses, then you have
Speaker 1: people in your household, then you have to shell out
Speaker 1: even more money to make sure everyone has a glasses set.
Speaker 1: And complicating matters was that the Blu Ray format itself
Speaker 1: was starting to struggle in the market at this same time.
Speaker 1: While the quality of Blu Ray films, both from a
Speaker 1: picture and sound standpoint, was superior to most other home
Speaker 1: entertainment options, it wasn't nearly as convenient as emerging cloud
Speaker 1: based streaming services like Netflix, Amazon's prime video service, Hulu,
Speaker 1: and things like that. Consumers were favoring convenience over image
Speaker 1: and sound quality, which has been a pretty steady trend
Speaker 1: throughout media history see also the music industry. By two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, there were really only two services to stream
Speaker 1: three D movies, at least legally. Those were Voodoo and
Speaker 1: the PlayStation Video Service. You couldn't get three D streaming
Speaker 1: on the more popular mainstream services out there, and this
Speaker 1: contributed to the lackluster usage data around three D televisions.
Speaker 1: On top of that, people were watching less content on
Speaker 1: their television's in general, and watching more stuff like that
Speaker 1: on tablets and smartphones. The shift in consumer behavior had
Speaker 1: no real place in it for three D television. The
Speaker 1: glasses themselves also represented a challenge. Many customers didn't like
Speaker 1: the idea of having to put on a pair of
Speaker 1: glasses just to watch a movie in their own homes
Speaker 1: and admit having to keep track of yet another peripheral
Speaker 1: on top of mundane stuff like remote controls. Plus, if
Speaker 1: you damaged or lost a pair, it wasn't a pretty
Speaker 1: big expense to replace them, usually in the range of
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars per pair of glasses. So the general
Speaker 1: consensus was that three D glasses are expensive and a hassle. Plus,
Speaker 1: some people found that the glasses would be uncomfortable, and
Speaker 1: they could contribute to problems like eye strain or headaches
Speaker 1: and generally create an unpleasant experience. Lots of folks have
Speaker 1: issues like this with three D films as well, so
Speaker 1: this isn't just something that happens to people watching three
Speaker 1: D television. There are people who have generally unpleasant experiences
Speaker 1: watching three D films. I tend to fall into that camp. Actually,
Speaker 1: if a film is showing in three D and two D,
Speaker 1: I almost always pick the two D version. I will
Speaker 1: see a three D film if I feel like it
Speaker 1: was made specifically with the intent to be a three
Speaker 1: D film, at least in some cases, but those are
Speaker 1: rare exceptions because I do tend to find the experience
Speaker 1: to be unpleasant. Three D TV sales never quite matched
Speaker 1: the marketing efforts that these companies were putting forward. The
Speaker 1: numbers did go up, though that may largely be because
Speaker 1: many models sold in the first few years following two
Speaker 1: had three D capability baked into them, so you could
Speaker 1: argue that people were buying these sets not because they
Speaker 1: were three D capable, but rather they were in the
Speaker 1: market for a brand new television, and all the brand
Speaker 1: new televisions also had three D support built into them.
Speaker 1: Even if people were buying them because of the three
Speaker 1: D capability, before long it became clear that most folks
Speaker 1: just weren't using that feature. So you had a lot
Speaker 1: of people holding back from buying a three D television,
Speaker 1: perhaps because of the price or just in general sense
Speaker 1: that they wouldn't get much out of it. And then
Speaker 1: you had the people who would buy the three D TVs,
Speaker 1: but they never or very rarely ever watched three D
Speaker 1: content on them. The House of cards really came down,
Speaker 1: tumbling down pretty quickly. It wasn't a complete shambles until
Speaker 1: about two thousand and seventeen. Now I already mentioned that
Speaker 1: three D channels like ESPN's special three D cable channel
Speaker 1: went off the air. By that was an early warning sign.
Speaker 1: The expense and technical challenges of producing good three D
Speaker 1: content were just too high. Companies were not seeing a
Speaker 1: good return on investment. If the money had been there,
Speaker 1: then those channels would have stuck around, but it just
Speaker 1: wasn't there. The manufacturers began to abandon three D features
Speaker 1: to video pulled the plug early, and which was a
Speaker 1: pretty prescient move, as it turns out. Sam Sung would
Speaker 1: hold on until two thousand and sixteen and then stopped
Speaker 1: including three D support in their television's. L G and
Speaker 1: Sony were the last two major television manufacturing companies to
Speaker 1: offer three D support. They stopped in two thousand seventeen.
Speaker 1: On the film front, three D screenings have not been
Speaker 1: doing very well in the United States over the last
Speaker 1: few years. In the wake of Avatar, three D screenings
Speaker 1: began to make up a pretty good part of the
Speaker 1: overall revenue for ticket sales, but the glood of two
Speaker 1: D films converted to three D, the horror viewing experiences,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff may have contributed to a general
Speaker 1: feeling of disillusionment over the quality of three D movies.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it's the premium prices that audiences object to.
Speaker 1: Whatever the reason, three D ticket sales at the US
Speaker 1: have been on the decline for several years. Then again,
Speaker 1: this is complicated by the fact that ticket sales in
Speaker 1: general have been on the decline, So it's possible the
Speaker 1: trend with three D films is merely keeping pace with
Speaker 1: the overall trend for movie ticket sales. But there's no
Speaker 1: shortage of articles out there that suggests that audiences in
Speaker 1: North America see very little added value with three D
Speaker 1: films in general and have come to reject them when
Speaker 1: going to the theater. In one place this isn't happening, however,
Speaker 1: is China. China has the most theaters capable of screening
Speaker 1: three D films in the entire world, and China represents
Speaker 1: a truly huge market for entertainment. It's such a big
Speaker 1: market that its shape. It's the actual content of films. So,
Speaker 1: for example, in two thousand twelve, the remake of Red
Speaker 1: Dawn debuted. The original film had come out in nine four,
Speaker 1: and it had been shelved for a couple of years
Speaker 1: that had actually been finished by but MGM, the production
Speaker 1: company that was behind it, got into some real financial difficulty,
Speaker 1: so the movie kind of set on shells for a
Speaker 1: couple of years. A different studio came in to become
Speaker 1: the production company, and at that stage they were looking
Speaker 1: at editing the movie and making a major change changing
Speaker 1: the invading army from Chinese soldiers to North Korean soldiers.
Speaker 1: The film it's China in two twelve, it's North Korea.
Speaker 1: So why is that, Well, it's because of the huge
Speaker 1: potential market in China. It was a political move. It
Speaker 1: was done to avoid ticking off a potentially lucrative market.
Speaker 1: They would never be able to sell the film in
Speaker 1: China if China are seen as the enemy in the movie.
Speaker 1: But then the movie never did release in China, so
Speaker 1: it's kind of a moot point. What I'm getting at
Speaker 1: is that the Chinese market is so huge, so significant
Speaker 1: to the entertainment industry that when movie studios are considering
Speaker 1: funding a film production. That's part of the consideration. So
Speaker 1: movies that are made for North America are often made
Speaker 1: for North America. And then you have an asterisk next
Speaker 1: to that that says and also China, but mostly China,
Speaker 1: so you might end up having a very different film
Speaker 1: than what perhaps the screenwriter or director originally intended. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that Chinese market is likely to keep the three D
Speaker 1: film industry alive because it is a fairly popular form
Speaker 1: of entertainment over in China. It may mean that we'll
Speaker 1: see more conversions, more two D to three D film
Speaker 1: conversions rather than native three D films, because again, unless
Speaker 1: it's a c g I film, it tends to require
Speaker 1: twice as much of a crew to run a three
Speaker 1: D shoot as a normal two D shoot, so it's
Speaker 1: a very expensive and complicated endeavor. So is three D
Speaker 1: dead in the United States? I would say it's mostly dead,
Speaker 1: But we do have the sequels to Avatar coming out
Speaker 1: that might have a bit of a at least a
Speaker 1: brief franchise specific revival, and we'll probably see three D
Speaker 1: come back and yet another incarnation in the future because
Speaker 1: it has happened before. But I think in general we're
Speaker 1: going to see fewer three D films, at least fewer
Speaker 1: films made in three D from the get go, and
Speaker 1: we probably will see a continuation of the trend of
Speaker 1: fewer people buying tickets to go see the three D films.
Speaker 1: But that's just my own opinion on that matter. This
Speaker 1: was really to trace how the fad failed to become
Speaker 1: a trend. Thank you so much for listening to text Stuff.
Speaker 1: I promise we'll have new episodes up very soon. Uh,
Speaker 1: just having an off day, really, it's nothing serious, but yeah,
Speaker 1: totally side checked me. So we will have some news
Speaker 1: shows up very soon. If you have suggestions for topics
Speaker 1: we should cover in episodes of tech Stuff, please reach
Speaker 1: out to me on Twitter. The handle for the show
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.