August 12, 2019 • 43 mins
For years, television manufacturers were pushing 3D features on TV sets. By 2017, all major companies had stopped trying. What happened with 3D TV?
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer
with I Heart Radio and How Stuff Works in all
of all things tech, and longtime listeners of this show
(00:24):
know that on my annual trips to c e s
for several years in a row, I would come back
talking about how TV manufacturers were really pushing three D
features over and over again in the face of well,
let's let's call it consumer resistance to the idea. So
(00:45):
in this episode, I'm going to talk a bit about
three D and how three D works, and then transition
over to why television manufacturers were so gung ho on
the idea in the first place and why ultimately it
failed because spoiler alert, no major television manufacturer is currently
including three D TV capabilities in their sets. All right,
(01:08):
So let's begin with the way three D actually works. Now,
in the real world, we can perceive depth, right the
real world around us, we perceive in three dimensions, and
we can tell how far away stuff is in general,
or at least have a good idea about which things
are closer to us than other things. If something is
(01:30):
within twenty feet of us are closer, we can do
that pretty easily with our depth perception. Beyond that we
start to rely more heavily on visual cueues outside of
stuff like parallax, so we can perceive objects actually have
depths as well. Right, it's not just that we can
see that something is closer to us than something else.
(01:50):
We can see that that something has three dimensions, So
it's not like the world just looks like a bunch
of cardboard cutouts to us. Our brains use a lot
of different and form nation and cues to create this
three dimensional representation that we're taking in. But one of
those is stereoscopic vision. This applies to people who have
(02:11):
vision in both eyes. There are some people who do not,
and for those people the technology and three D films
and TV doesn't work. But for those of us who
do have vision in both eyes, we know that our
line of sight is slightly different for each eye. This
is just common sense, right. Because the eyes are on
either side of the nose, the left eye and the
(02:32):
right eye are peering out from different positions, so we
get slightly different angles of vision, and our brains take
these two streams of data and combine them into a
single representation, and that's where we get our three dimensional images.
It's our brain taking that information and combining it to say,
(02:53):
here's how I'm making sense of the world around us.
But stuff like traditional photographs or drawings, or films and
television present two dimensional images to us. Their images on
flat surfaces, and thus they have no depth. Our brains
can try to judge depth based upon the qualities within
the image, as in I can tell that in this image,
(03:17):
this one thing is closer than this other thing. But
that also means our brains can be fooled if we
take advantage of that way that brains work. This is
the principle behind tricks like forced perspective, in which you
position subjects in an image in such a way as
to create the illusion of a significant difference in size.
(03:38):
But it's not necessarily the case that one object or
person is significantly larger or smaller than another. Rather, it
has to do with the distance to the camera and
the angle of the shot. So an example of this
trick in action is found throughout the Lord of the
Rings films, in which Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf, would
often be positioned so that he was closer to the
(04:00):
camera than the actors who were playing dwarves or hobbits,
you know, the smaller creatures. The crew created special tables
and benches and other pieces of furniture so that when
they were shot from the correct camera angle, it looked
like a normal table, and this supported the illusion that
you were looking in on, say a six foot tall
(04:21):
human like figure sitting down with three foot tall human
like figures, when in reality the differences in the actor's
heights was really much less dramatic. This trick works because
there's no true depths in the image we're looking at,
so the filmmakers can take advantage of that and create
this illusion. A three D version makes this trick harder
(04:44):
to pull off, since it requires shooting the scene from
two different angles to simulate the experience of a person
looking in on that scene with their own eyeballs and
so force perspective in three D films is a lot
harder to pull off, So that's the first part of
three D technology. You shoot a scene with two cameras
position such that they mimic how the viewer's eyes would
(05:07):
look in on that scene, or sometimes this is done
in a computer generated environment for example pre c g
I films or for converted films. Will talk more about
those in the second. But now you have two sets
of images to show an audience, right do you have
one set for the left camera and one set for
the right camera, and you will only want one set
(05:30):
of images to go to each eye? Right, the images
from the left camera have to go to the viewers
left eye. The images from the right camera have to
go to the viewer's right eye. But you're showing all
of them on the same surface. Otherwise this the three
D effect won't work. You would just have a mess
of images on the screen. It would be a big jumble.
So how do you tell the light which way to go?
(05:52):
How do you tell the light from the left side
just go to the left eye and the light from
the right side to just go to the right eye
for an audience full of people. Well back when three
D films were first really becoming a fad in the
nineteen fifties, it was typical to use filters on the
camera's color filters. The left camera would have say, a
red lens filter on it, and that meant only red
(06:15):
light could come through that filter. This is a matter
of physics. A red object is one that absorbs all
light except light that has wavelengths in the red spectrum.
That light would reflect off the object. A red lens
allows red light to pass through and absorbs all other light. Similarly,
the right camera lens would have a blue filter on it,
(06:36):
which meant only the blue light from a scene could
pass through. So now you have two rolls of film
of the same movie. They are shot from almost identical angles,
but they are slightly offset, again to mimic the way
our eyes are offset. One set of those images is
from the camera with the red filter, and the other
is from the camera with the blue filter. You take
(06:57):
these developed pieces of film, you put them in a
pair of projectors, also spaced just so side by side,
and you play them in sync with each other so
that the sequence of images matches up. You have a
red set and a blue set, so these are identical
except for a slight difference in angle and of course
their color. The audience puts on glasses that have red
(07:22):
and blue lenses. The red lens will only let the
images from the red filter camera pass through. The blue
lenses on the glasses will only allow the blue images
to pass through, and thus the brain gets two sets
of images. If the cameras and projectors are properly aligned,
this should create the illusion of a three dimensional image,
(07:42):
and the audience will perceive depth and what is otherwise
two sets of two dimensional pictures, which is pretty darn cool.
Of course, that's the old way to do it, and
it meant that you couldn't really get a full color
film in three D. But there are other ways to
get same effect. The two main ways fall into the
(08:03):
broad category of passive glasses and active glasses. Passive glasses
work in a similar way to the red blue lens glasses,
in fact, the same way, just through a different operating mechanism.
They typically use polarized lenses, which will only allow light
that is polarized in a certain way to come through
(08:25):
the lens. Polarized sunglasses work in this way. Most polarized
sunglasses will only allow light that is vertically oriented to
pass through the lens, because horizontally oriented light is typically
glare caused by light that's reflecting off of horizontal surfaces
like the hood of a car. So by blocking that
(08:46):
kind of light, the glasses eliminate glare. It also means
that less light is coming to your eyes more than
a second. So you can polarize light in lots of
different ways, not just horizontally and vertically, including in circular
patterns that are clockwise or counter clockwise or witter shens
as I like to say, a clockwise polarized lens won't
(09:07):
let light with a counter clockwise polarization through the same lens,
and vice versa. The clockwise approach is important, by the way,
because if you polarize lights so that, say, the left
lens only allows horizontal oriented light to come through and
the right lens only allows vertical oriented light to come through,
it would require the audience to sit upright to watch
(09:28):
the image to get the proper feeling, the proper effect.
That might work at a movie theater, but at home
it could be an issue for people who might say,
lounge a bit while watching television. So if your head
is at an odd angle to the screen, the lenses
might not align properly with the light coming from the image,
(09:49):
and thus the circular polarization helps bypass that particular problem. Otherwise,
the process is pretty much the same as the red
and blue version. Each camera has a special filter to
only allow light polarized in a particular way to pass
through the lens, or the projectors are fitted with special
filters to polarize the light that they're projecting. These match
(10:14):
the glasses, and we again get the two sets of
images that, when viewed through this pair of glasses with
the proper polarization, creates that illusion of a three dimensional image.
Then we have active glasses. These are glasses that have
liquid crystals in the lenses, and the liquid crystals can
change shape and a fraction of a second, so in
(10:35):
one orientation they block light from coming through the lens,
and the other orientation they allow light to pass through
the lens. They're kind of like very tiny window blinds
that open and shut at an incredible speed. And the
left lens and the right lens have crystals alternating these
(10:55):
two orientations, so that when the left lens is letting
light through and the right isn't, then you can get
the left side, and then vice versa. The right side
will let light through on the left, won't you get
the right side. The shuttering is in synchronization with the
film or the three D television, Otherwise that method wouldn't work,
(11:15):
so you're only getting the left images when those are
on display. You're only getting the right images when those
are on display, and otherwise the the opposite lens is
blocking light. So with these glasses, rather than having two
sets of the same image projected on a movie screen
simultaneously or on a television display, you only have one
(11:36):
set displayed at any given instant. So let's say it's
the first fraction of a second, only the image for
the left eye is on display. The glasses worn by
the audience open the shutters on the left lens and
close the shutters on the right lens, so that the
light only gets to the left eye of all the viewers.
In the next instant, the image for the right eye
is displayed and the glasses switch the shutters, so now
(11:58):
the light can pass through the right lens but not
the left. And this goes on, with the glasses shuttering
over and over in sequence with the images on the screen,
and it's all happening fast enough that our brains can't
detect the changes. To us, it just seems like a
continuous series of images coming right into our brains, like
we're looking at unbroken sequence with both eyes at the
(12:20):
same time, and our brains again construct this three dimensional representation.
This approach helps correct a problem that a lot of
other three D films have, which is that they tend
to be pretty dark. You've got two sets of images
on the same surface with the other methods of three
D presentation. So if you read a lot of tech
(12:40):
blogs or a lot of movie review sites that talk
about the differences between three D versions of a film
and the two D versions of the film, you'll often
see commentary about how dark the three D version is
in comparison, and that has a couple of things with it.
That's partly because you have projectors with these polarized filters
(13:01):
on them, so less light is coming from the projector
to hit the screen. You're wearing glasses that also have
polar rized lenses on them, so they're preventing some of
the light from the screen to getting to your eyes.
So that means the image is going to look darker
to you, and it can make it challenging or even
impossible to tell what's going on with a dimly lit scene.
(13:24):
There's some filmmakers who try to counteract this by using,
you know, actual effects in the making of a three
D film to make a very bright image in the
first place and avoid doing darker image stuff. But you
can also get around this by actually just boosting the
amount of light that the projector is is putting through
(13:45):
the lens. You can essentially turn up the brightness on
the projectors. That requires training a projectionist to be able
to do this sort of thing, to calibrate a projector
so that it is ideally working with the three D content,
and a lot of places just don't do that. So
there are a lot of projectionists who just they don't
(14:07):
have the training to tweak things and make it calibrated
so that you get a really good, uh, three D experience,
And so the result is you get this kind of dark, muddy,
out of focus almost experience. It's not ideal anyway. Uh.
You you realize that there's not really a one size
(14:27):
fits all approach to projecting films properly. You need to
have that kind of training to really get the most
out of it, and it's just just a fact that
not a lot of places do that. Active glasses, however,
which again don't have quite the same problems. They are
the most technically complicated version of three D televisions and
(14:50):
three D films, And it also means that the glasses
themselves have to draw a power from something which is
typically a chargeable battery, and that means if you want
to watch a three D film or TV show with
active three D glasses, you need to make sure that
those glasses are charged up first, or they may not work,
they might conk out before the movie is over. And
it also means they tend to be more expensive. So
(15:11):
if you lose a pair of polarized glasses, that's already
pretty expensive, but losing a pair of active three D
glasses can really set you back a bit. When we
come back, i'll talk about why the industry pushed hard
for three D televisions and three D content and three
D films, But first, let's take a quick break. Okay,
(15:35):
I gave you a quick rundown on how three D works,
and I could trace the history of three D back
to early stereoscopic photographs up through the gimmicky tricks of
the nineteen fifties designed to lure more crowds into movie
theaters because of a fear that television was going to
rob theaters of their audiences. But honestly, I've covered that
in other episodes, and it's not really that relevant to
(15:58):
this conversation about modern tell visions and the effort to
get three D adopted as a standard feature in TVs.
So what gives Well, First, it helps if we look
at the rebirth of three D at the cinema. Now,
apart from some fairly gimmicky films like Jaws three D,
the three D craze had proven to be just sort
of a fad from a bygone eram But that started
(16:20):
to change in the first decade of the two thousand's,
particularly with a film that came out in two thousand nine.
So you do have filmmakers who are interested in using
three D to enhance the experience they want their audiences
to have while they are watching one of these directors films,
and these filmmakers are exploring new ways to create movies
(16:44):
and to tell stories. A great example of such a
filmmaker is James Cameron, and in fact, his insanely successful
two thousand nine film Avatar is a large reason why
three D films took off. Shortly afterwards, Avatar smashed box
office records and the effects were rightly louded by critics.
(17:08):
People said the three D effects of this movie are
like nothing we've ever seen before. It's not really an
exaggeration to say that Avatar helped usher in the modern
three D cinema age. A three D film requires different
considerations than a standard two dimensional film, which can hide
a lot of stuff just through lighting and camera angles
(17:29):
and other simple tricks. A three D film requires a
slightly different approach, often using the same tricks but tweaked
for the three D filming process. It also requires twice
as many people. You've got two cameras to run, not
just one, so you have two camera crews. You've got
a much larger staff. It's more expensive, and because it's
(17:50):
more technically complicated, when things go wrong, it can take
a lot more time to fix stuff. So it's not
necessarily a better approach, but it is a different approach.
Stuff like force perspective is a lot harder to pull
off that way. It just means that you have to
go about things in a different way if you want
to get the most out of creating a three D
(18:12):
film versus a two D film. Other films get converted
into three D after they've already been shot in two D,
so these movies were not shot in three D natively.
So with this approach, you're taking a single two dimensional
set of images. You know, that's what a film is.
It's just a long sequence of two dimensional images. Then
(18:34):
you have to take that and turn it into two
offset series of images, one for each eye. Now, this
can be done, it can even be done well, but
it's also really easy to do it poorly, and in
any case, it can result in a movie that seems
to be shot in three D for no apparent reason,
like there's no thing in the film that benefits from
(18:58):
the three D noss. With movies, a big motivating factor
for studios and movie theater chains is that they can
charge more money for a three D screening of a film.
It's a premium experience. So if it's done well, it
can be a really great experience for the audience. They
can feel like it was worth the money. But whether
(19:20):
it's done well or not, it drives up ticket prices.
You can charge more for those tickets, and driving a
ticket prices is a good way to generate a lot
more revenue, particularly in the early stages of a film's release,
and that means you can turn up the hype machine,
because if your film breaks some box office records. You
(19:40):
can use that to try and get more folks who
haven't yet seen the film in theaters to come check
it out. And you don't necessarily need to sell more
tickets than the previous record holder if the tickets you're
selling are more expensive. So, in other words, let's say
you are selling cookies at fifty cents each and I
(20:01):
swoop in on your turf and I start selling cookies
for a dollar each. But I also say that my
cookies have some feature about them that makes them superior.
Let's say I'm using the claim that the ingredients in
my cookie are all natural, for example, then I can
make more money than you, even if you sell more
cookies than I do. If you sell five dozen cookies
(20:22):
at fifty cents each, well you nitted yourself thirty bucks,
which isn't bad. Now let's say I sold four dozen cookies,
so twelve cookies fewer than you did, but I charge
a dollar each, so I met myself forty eight bucks.
You sold more cookies, but I brought in more revenue.
Three D films can help studios and theaters achieved the
same thing if we were just looking at the number
(20:45):
of tickets sold, the story would be different. So there's
a strong business case for three D content in movie theaters,
particularly in an age where the average person is going
to the cinema less frequently. Since two thousand, the per
capita ticket sales in the United States has been on
a fairly steady decline, with a couple of bumps every
(21:06):
other year or so. One way to combat this is
to offer up an experience that is hard to replicate
at home, a high fidelity experience with booming surround sound,
crisp images, and occasionally three D effects that can help
convert someone from I'll just watch it when it's available
for streaming to let's go to the theater and check
(21:27):
this out. Another motivation for three D films on the
studio side is that they seemed like a good solution
to a problem of debatable magnitude. That is the problem
of movie piracy and bootlegging. Now, I've done episodes in
which I've talked about movie piracy in the past, but
let's do a quick overview. First. Piracy isn't cool, guys,
(21:51):
that's just you know, true. My philosophy is that if
you think something is worth the price, then you should
pay that price in order to experience whatever that thing is.
If you think something is not worth the price, if
you think they're charging way too much for that, then
you don't pay the price and you don't experience it.
(22:12):
That's how you can get the prices to come down.
You just say like, well, I just don't think it's
worth it, so I'm not gonna bother if it was.
If you feel like it wasn't worth it, why would
you worry about it? Now? If you think it's worth
the price, but you're not willing to pay that price.
So in other words, you're just saying, it's probably worth
the twenty bucks to see it, but I'm not gonna
(22:32):
pay twenty bucks to see it. I'm just gonna steal it. Well,
that that makes you a jerk. That's that's all that
works out. So pirating isn't really cool. Now that being said,
the movie studios have a narrative around piracy that isn't
really supportable. So well, I agree that piracy is not good.
I also say that movie studios have blown it way
(22:56):
out of proportion. See, the narrative is that movie piracy
directly translates to lost revenue, and that's just not really supportable.
If someone bootlegs a copy of a movie and then
makes it available in people who otherwise would never go
see the movie download the film to watch it. You
(23:17):
can't really claim that the movie studio is out any revenue.
After all, those pirates were never going to pay to
see the movie at all, So, in other words, there's
no difference to the movie studios bottom line if those
people pirated the film or they didn't, because they were
never going to buy a ticket in the first place.
Either they were going to pirate the film and watch
(23:38):
it for free, or they weren't going to pirate the
film and not watch it at all. Either way, you
don't get a ticket sale. Now, some of those people
might have been willing to buy a ticket before they
got hold of a pirated copy. Those people could potentially
represent cases of lost revenue, but it's impossible to determine
(24:00):
how many of those pirates would have otherwise bought a ticket,
which means it's impossible for movie studios to give an
actual amount as to the magnitude of lost revenue. And
since movie studios used these very large estimates to justify
lobbying for stiff penalties whenever they pursued cases against pirates.
(24:22):
They were able to win some pretty draconian victories against
people using pretty flimsy justification. This was all in an
effort to terrify would be pirates in order to discourage
the practice. At the same time, the goal was to
find ways to coax people into movie theaters, something that
the theater chains also wanted to have happened for obvious reasons.
(24:45):
And finding ways to create an experience that's not really
easy to replicate at home was part of this strategy.
With the success of Avatar, three D films became a
big part of that strategy. It was hard to bootleg
a three D film, so the super jen Kie way
where you set up a camera inside a movie theater
(25:06):
just didn't work. You know, the image would be even
worse than a typical bootleg made in that way. And
if you could get your hands on a digital copy,
something that has happened on numerous occasions with different films,
the image would be better, but you would still need
a compatible three D television and glasses set up, or
you wouldn't actually be able to watch the content in
three D. And of course you could potentially get hold
(25:29):
of a two D version of the movie but then
one of the big selling points of the film wouldn't
be available to you. So three D was seen as
a way to convince people to go to a theater
to see a movie, rather than to pirate it or
wait around. And this trend found its way to television
manufacturers who saw the potential to advertise to home theater
(25:49):
enthusiasts who did want to get the closest approximation of
the cinematic experience in their own home setups. See One
of the reasons three D televisions became a thing is
that TV companies need to create a compelling reason for
people to go out and buy a television. This is
(26:09):
an arc we can follow whenever a new television technology
really takes off. Initially, only a small percentage of the
market adopts it, typically because the tech tends to be
pretty expensive when it first debuts and there may be
a shortage of content that you can watch on this
new tech of television. So, for example, we saw this
(26:33):
with the invention of color TV in the nineteen fifties.
Color TV actually followed not long after black and white
television first started to get a real foothold after the
end of World War two, our c A and CBS
competed fiercely to create the standard for color television. Eventually,
our c A pretty much won that battle after some
initial setbacks, but I covered that in my r c
(26:54):
A episodes. But even though the tech was there, widespread
adoption did not fall immediately. In fact, it took quite
some time. So for one thing, only a few programs
were being broadcast in color. In fact, for a long
time in BC was the only network broadcasting anything in color,
so a color television only had a slight advantage over
(27:14):
older black and white sets. Why would you buy a
color TV if there are only a couple of programs
that are in color. Studios pushed hard to expand the options,
with companies like Disney doing a lot to promote the
advancement of color television. But price was another barrier. Television's
were and are expensive. Many households don't have the extra
(27:37):
money laying around to upgrade to the latest update to
technologies like television's. The expectation was that you would buy
a television set and then you pretty much use it
until it stopped working, or maybe until the cost of
repairing a television is more or less the same as
buying a new one in the first place. For reasons
like these, color television actually took a really long time
(27:59):
to at a purchase in the US market, even by
fewer than fifty of all households with a television had
a color set. Similarly, we saw a trend like this
emerge with high definition television. The transition from standard definition
TV to h D t V was a fairly gradual one,
(28:19):
and largely for the same reasons as the color TV
transition we had seen in the sixties and seventies, though
it took less time with HDTV, and we're seeing similarities
with ultra high definition television sets to have two K
or greater resolution. On top of that, you have other
features like h D R and more. These aren't just
tech advancements. These are sales pitches to get people to
(28:42):
buy more televisions, because that's how businesses work. So for
several years, companies like Sony, LG, Samsung, and many others
really pushed three D capabilities. When we come back, i'll
talk about how that played out, but first let's take
another quick break. Companies were starting to experiment with three
(29:12):
D television tech before, but that's the year of the
industry really began to commit to the technology again, not coincidentally,
because of Avatar's success, all the major TV manufacturers were
pretty much on board. Most of them adopted the passive
glasses strategy, a few were gambling with active glasses instead.
(29:33):
A very few examples played with the idea of glasses
free three D television demand. That's a big gamble. So
with those sets, the screen itself acts in a way
that's similar to a pair of three D glasses directing
lights so that each of your eyeballs gets a different
feed of information, as it were. But it also means
to experience that three D effect, you need to be
(29:55):
viewing the television from the proper angle. So you can
imagine the TV surface and imagine that there's a wedge
shape expanding out from the TV surface, and then imagine
within that wedge you have slices kind of like a
pizza or a pie. If you're in one of those slices,
like in the middle, you get the three D effect.
(30:17):
But if you're outside the wedge by being a little
too far off to one side or the other, or
if you are in a position where you're astride two
slices like the slice goes down the middle where you're
sitting or standing, you don't get the proper three D effect,
and it becomes hard to look at the screen anyway.
The three D tech and television's worked more or less
(30:40):
depending upon the specific implementation, but that's just part of
the puzzle that needs to come together to make an
innovation in TV technology a success. Yes, it has to
work for it to be a success, but that's not
the only quality it has to have. Another is content,
just like with color television and high definition television and
(31:00):
now ultra high definition content. Without good three D content,
this feature was doomed. Early on a few different media
companies experimented with creating three D channels, and they included
big names like ESPN. The provider Direct TV also had
a three D channel, but both of them would stop
(31:21):
broadcasting by two thousand thirteen. I'll get back to that
in a second. The point is it's hard to sell
a public on a platform if there's nothing on that platform.
Fans of video game consoles have seen this happen time
and time again. Arguably it's what doomed the Nintendo. We
you there just wasn't enough compelling content available for the console.
(31:45):
Another source of content was the promise of three D
Blu ray discs, but to play one of these you
needed a compatible Blu ray player, So if you had
an old Blue ray player that was not compatible with
three D technology, you would have to go buy a
new one. You wouldn't just be investing in a brand
new television, but also a brand new Blu ray player.
(32:05):
Some companies were able to patch existing equipment to support
three D content. Sony did this with the PlayStation three,
and firmware updates to players could help remove some of
the barriers to entry, but it wasn't a universal practice,
and it didn't always mean that the experience you got
was as good as if you went out and bought
a new Blu ray player that could support it. Natively,
(32:28):
so it was a fix for some platforms, but not
an ideal one. On top of all that, there was
the problem of three D quality in general. Now I'm
not talking about how the television is displayed three D,
although if you didn't tweak the settings just right you
would have a pretty shoddy experience in the home. I
(32:50):
am actually talking about the quality of the content itself.
The floodgates opened after Avatar's crazy success. And so there
were the movies that had been shot in three D
to begin with, which weren't guaranteed to be better, but
had advantages over the other type of three D content,
the aforementioned converted to D films that have been turned
(33:12):
into three D. Many movies included gimmicks of stuff seeming
to emerge out from the screen. That's a three D
trick that's been around since the nineteen fifties, and rather
than create an immersive experience, these tricks seemed to call
too much attention to themselves. It actually tends to pull
people out of the movie. You you're laughing at something
(33:34):
that's happening because it's so far outside the realm of
a typical movie experience that pulls you out of it.
There are several analysts and television manufacturing representatives who actually
blame the poorer performance of three D television sales on
the ratio of bad three D content to good stuff.
In other words, there was just too much crappy three
(33:55):
D out there, and there wasn't enough good to really
make it compelling. Then, of course you have to buy
or rent the Blu ray discs that you would play
on your compatible Blu Ray player, and that adds yet
another expense to this technology. And if the television comes
with fewer sets of three D glasses, then you have
(34:15):
people in your household, then you have to shell out
even more money to make sure everyone has a glasses set.
And complicating matters was that the Blu Ray format itself
was starting to struggle in the market at this same time.
While the quality of Blu ray films, both from a
picture and sound standpoint, was superior to most other home
(34:37):
entertainment options, it wasn't nearly as convenient as emerging cloud
based streaming services like Netflix, Amazon's prime video service Hulu,
and things like that. Consumers were favoring convenience over image
and sound quality, which has been a pretty steady trend
throughout media history see also the music industry. By two
(35:00):
thousand nineteen, there were really only two services to stream
three D movies, at least legally. Those were Voodoo and
the PlayStation Video Service. You couldn't get three D streaming
on the more popular mainstream services out there, and this
contributed to the lackluster usage data around three D televisions.
(35:21):
On top of that, people were watching less content on
their television's in general, and watching more stuff like that
on tablets and smartphones. The shift in consumer behavior had
no real place in it for three D television. The
glasses themselves also represented a challenge. Many customers didn't like
the idea of having to put on a pair of
(35:41):
glasses just to watch a movie in their own homes
and admit having to keep track of yet another peripheral
on top of mundane stuff like remote controls. Plus, if
you damaged or lost a pair, it wasn't a pretty
big expense to replace them, usually in the range of
a hundred dollars per pair of glasses. So the general
consensus was that three D glasses are expensive and a hassle. Plus,
(36:05):
some people found that the glasses would be uncomfortable and
they could contribute to problems like eye strain or headaches
and generally create an unpleasant experience. Lots of folks have
issues like this with three D films as well, so
this isn't just something that happens to people watching three
D television. There are people who have generally unpleasant experiences
(36:28):
watching three D films. I tend to fall into that camp. Actually.
If a film is showing in three D and two D.
I almost always pick the two D version. I will
see a three D film if I feel like it
was made specifically with the intent to be a three
D film, at least in some cases, but those are
rare exceptions because I do tend to find the experience
(36:51):
to be unpleasant. Three D TV sales never quite matched
the marketing efforts that these companies were putting forward. The
numbers did go up, though that may largely be because
many models sold in the first few years following two
had three D capability baked into them, so you could
(37:11):
argue that people were buying these sets not because they
were three D capable, though, rather they were in the
market for a brand new television, and all the brand
new televisions also had three D support built into them.
Even if people were buying them because of the three
D capability, before long it became clear that most folks
just weren't using that feature. So you had a lot
(37:32):
of people holding back from buying a three D television,
perhaps because of the price or just in general sense
that they wouldn't get much out of it. And then
you had the people who would buy the three D TVs,
but they never or very rarely ever watched three D
content on them. The house of cards really came down,
tumbling down pretty quickly. It wasn't a complete shambles until
(37:54):
about two thousand and seventeen. Now I already mentioned that
three D channels like ESPN's special three D cable channel
went off the air. By that was an early warning sign.
The expense and technical challenges of producing good three D
content were just too high. Companies were not seeing a
good return on investment. If the money had been there,
(38:16):
then those channels would have stuck around, but it just
wasn't there. The manufacturers began to abandon three D features
to video pulled the plug early, and which was a
pretty prescient move, as it turns out. Sam Sung would
hold on until two thousand and sixteen and then stopped
including three D support in their television's. LG and Sony
(38:37):
were the last two major television manufacturing companies to offer
three D support. They stopped in two thousand seventeen. On
the film front, three D screenings have not been doing
very well in the United States over the last few years.
In the wake of Avatar, three D screenings began to
make up a pretty good part of the overall revenue
for ticket sales, but the glood of two D films
(38:58):
converted to three D, the horror viewing experiences, that kind
of stuff may have contributed to a general feeling of
disillusionment over the quality of three D movies. Or maybe
it's the premium prices that audiences object to. Whatever the reason,
three D ticket sales at the US have been on
the decline for several years. Then again, this is complicated
(39:19):
by the fact that ticket sales in general have been
on the decline, So it's possible the trend with three
D films is merely keeping pace with the overall trend
from movie ticket sales. But there's no shortage of articles
out there that suggests that audiences in North America see
very little added value with three D films in general
(39:39):
and have come to reject them when going to the theater.
In one place this isn't happening, however, is China. China
has the most theaters capable of screening three D films
in the entire world, and China represents a truly huge
market for entertainment. It's such a big market that its
(39:59):
shape it's the actual content of films, So for example,
in two thousand twelve, the remake of Red Dawn debuted.
The original film had come out in ninety four and
it had been shelved for a couple of years. That
had actually been finished by but MGM, the production company
that was behind it, got into some real financial difficulty,
(40:23):
so the movie kind of set on shells for a
couple of years. A different studio came in to become
the production company, and at that stage they were looking
at editing the movie and making a major change changing
the invading army from Chinese soldiers to North Korean soldiers.
The film it's China in two twelve, it's North Korea.
(40:45):
So why is that, Well, it's because of the huge
potential market in China. It was a political move. It
was done to avoid ticking off a potentially lucrative market.
They would never be able to sell the film in
China if China are seen as the enemy in the movie.
But then the movie never did release in China, so
(41:05):
it's kind of a moot point. What I'm getting at
is that the Chinese market is so huge, so significant
to the entertainment industry that when movie studios are considering
funding a film production that's part of the consideration. So
movies that are made for North America are often made
(41:26):
for North America. And then you have an asterisk next
to that that says and also China, but mostly China,
so you might end up having a very different film
than what perhaps the screenwriter or director originally intended. Anyway,
that Chinese market is likely to keep the three D
(41:46):
film industry alive because it is a fairly popular form
of entertainment over in China. It may mean that we'll
see more conversions, more two D to three D film
conversions rather than native three D films, because again, unless
it's a c g I film, it tends to require
twice as much of a crew to run a three
D shoot as a normal two D shoot, so it's
(42:09):
a very expensive and complicated endeavor. So is three D
dead in the United States? I would say it's mostly dead,
But we do have the sequels to Avatar coming out
that might have a bit of a at least a
brief franchise specific revival, and we'll probably see three D
(42:31):
come back and yet another incarnation in the future because
it has happened before. But I think in general we're
going to see fewer three D films, at least fewer
films made in three D from the get go, and
we probably will see a continuation of the trend of
fewer people buying tickets to go see the three D films,
(42:53):
But that's just my own opinion on that matter. This
was really to trace how the fad failed to become
a trend. If you guys have suggestions for future topics
of tech Stuff, send me an email. The address is
tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or pop
(43:13):
on over to our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com.
You will find links to our presence on social media,
as well as a link to the archives of every
single episode that's ever been published of tech Stuff and
a link to our online store, where every purchase you
make goes to help the show and we greatly appreciate it,
(43:34):
and I'll talk to you again and really soon. Text
Stuff is a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from I heeart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer
with I Heart Radio and How Stuff Works in all
of all things tech, and longtime listeners of this show
(00:24):
know that on my annual trips to c e s
for several years in a row, I would come back
talking about how TV manufacturers were really pushing three D
features over and over again in the face of well,
let's let's call it consumer resistance to the idea. So
(00:45):
in this episode, I'm going to talk a bit about
three D and how three D works, and then transition
over to why television manufacturers were so gung ho on
the idea in the first place and why ultimately it
failed because spoiler alert, no major television manufacturer is currently
including three D TV capabilities in their sets. All right,
(01:08):
So let's begin with the way three D actually works. Now,
in the real world, we can perceive depth, right the
real world around us, we perceive in three dimensions, and
we can tell how far away stuff is in general,
or at least have a good idea about which things
are closer to us than other things. If something is
(01:30):
within twenty feet of us are closer, we can do
that pretty easily with our depth perception. Beyond that we
start to rely more heavily on visual cueues outside of
stuff like parallax, so we can perceive objects actually have
depths as well. Right, it's not just that we can
see that something is closer to us than something else.
(01:50):
We can see that that something has three dimensions, So
it's not like the world just looks like a bunch
of cardboard cutouts to us. Our brains use a lot
of different and form nation and cues to create this
three dimensional representation that we're taking in. But one of
those is stereoscopic vision. This applies to people who have
(02:11):
vision in both eyes. There are some people who do not,
and for those people the technology and three D films
and TV doesn't work. But for those of us who
do have vision in both eyes, we know that our
line of sight is slightly different for each eye. This
is just common sense, right. Because the eyes are on
either side of the nose, the left eye and the
(02:32):
right eye are peering out from different positions, so we
get slightly different angles of vision, and our brains take
these two streams of data and combine them into a
single representation, and that's where we get our three dimensional images.
It's our brain taking that information and combining it to say,
(02:53):
here's how I'm making sense of the world around us.
But stuff like traditional photographs or drawings, or films and
television present two dimensional images to us. Their images on
flat surfaces, and thus they have no depth. Our brains
can try to judge depth based upon the qualities within
the image, as in I can tell that in this image,
(03:17):
this one thing is closer than this other thing. But
that also means our brains can be fooled if we
take advantage of that way that brains work. This is
the principle behind tricks like forced perspective, in which you
position subjects in an image in such a way as
to create the illusion of a significant difference in size.
(03:38):
But it's not necessarily the case that one object or
person is significantly larger or smaller than another. Rather, it
has to do with the distance to the camera and
the angle of the shot. So an example of this
trick in action is found throughout the Lord of the
Rings films, in which Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf, would
often be positioned so that he was closer to the
(04:00):
camera than the actors who were playing dwarves or hobbits,
you know, the smaller creatures. The crew created special tables
and benches and other pieces of furniture so that when
they were shot from the correct camera angle, it looked
like a normal table, and this supported the illusion that
you were looking in on, say a six foot tall
(04:21):
human like figure sitting down with three foot tall human
like figures, when in reality the differences in the actor's
heights was really much less dramatic. This trick works because
there's no true depths in the image we're looking at,
so the filmmakers can take advantage of that and create
this illusion. A three D version makes this trick harder
(04:44):
to pull off, since it requires shooting the scene from
two different angles to simulate the experience of a person
looking in on that scene with their own eyeballs and
so force perspective in three D films is a lot
harder to pull off, So that's the first part of
three D technology. You shoot a scene with two cameras
position such that they mimic how the viewer's eyes would
(05:07):
look in on that scene, or sometimes this is done
in a computer generated environment for example pre c g
I films or for converted films. Will talk more about
those in the second. But now you have two sets
of images to show an audience, right do you have
one set for the left camera and one set for
the right camera, and you will only want one set
(05:30):
of images to go to each eye? Right, the images
from the left camera have to go to the viewers
left eye. The images from the right camera have to
go to the viewer's right eye. But you're showing all
of them on the same surface. Otherwise this the three
D effect won't work. You would just have a mess
of images on the screen. It would be a big jumble.
So how do you tell the light which way to go?
(05:52):
How do you tell the light from the left side
just go to the left eye and the light from
the right side to just go to the right eye
for an audience full of people. Well back when three
D films were first really becoming a fad in the
nineteen fifties, it was typical to use filters on the
camera's color filters. The left camera would have say, a
red lens filter on it, and that meant only red
(06:15):
light could come through that filter. This is a matter
of physics. A red object is one that absorbs all
light except light that has wavelengths in the red spectrum.
That light would reflect off the object. A red lens
allows red light to pass through and absorbs all other light. Similarly,
the right camera lens would have a blue filter on it,
(06:36):
which meant only the blue light from a scene could
pass through. So now you have two rolls of film
of the same movie. They are shot from almost identical angles,
but they are slightly offset, again to mimic the way
our eyes are offset. One set of those images is
from the camera with the red filter, and the other
is from the camera with the blue filter. You take
(06:57):
these developed pieces of film, you put them in a
pair of projectors, also spaced just so side by side,
and you play them in sync with each other so
that the sequence of images matches up. You have a
red set and a blue set, so these are identical
except for a slight difference in angle and of course
their color. The audience puts on glasses that have red
(07:22):
and blue lenses. The red lens will only let the
images from the red filter camera pass through. The blue
lenses on the glasses will only allow the blue images
to pass through, and thus the brain gets two sets
of images. If the cameras and projectors are properly aligned,
this should create the illusion of a three dimensional image,
(07:42):
and the audience will perceive depth and what is otherwise
two sets of two dimensional pictures, which is pretty darn cool.
Of course, that's the old way to do it, and
it meant that you couldn't really get a full color
film in three D. But there are other ways to
get same effect. The two main ways fall into the
(08:03):
broad category of passive glasses and active glasses. Passive glasses
work in a similar way to the red blue lens glasses,
in fact, the same way, just through a different operating mechanism.
They typically use polarized lenses, which will only allow light
that is polarized in a certain way to come through
(08:25):
the lens. Polarized sunglasses work in this way. Most polarized
sunglasses will only allow light that is vertically oriented to
pass through the lens, because horizontally oriented light is typically
glare caused by light that's reflecting off of horizontal surfaces
like the hood of a car. So by blocking that
(08:46):
kind of light, the glasses eliminate glare. It also means
that less light is coming to your eyes more than
a second. So you can polarize light in lots of
different ways, not just horizontally and vertically, including in circular
patterns that are clockwise or counter clockwise or witter shens
as I like to say, a clockwise polarized lens won't
(09:07):
let light with a counter clockwise polarization through the same lens,
and vice versa. The clockwise approach is important, by the way,
because if you polarize lights so that, say, the left
lens only allows horizontal oriented light to come through and
the right lens only allows vertical oriented light to come through,
it would require the audience to sit upright to watch
(09:28):
the image to get the proper feeling, the proper effect.
That might work at a movie theater, but at home
it could be an issue for people who might say,
lounge a bit while watching television. So if your head
is at an odd angle to the screen, the lenses
might not align properly with the light coming from the image,
(09:49):
and thus the circular polarization helps bypass that particular problem. Otherwise,
the process is pretty much the same as the red
and blue version. Each camera has a special filter to
only allow light polarized in a particular way to pass
through the lens, or the projectors are fitted with special
filters to polarize the light that they're projecting. These match
(10:14):
the glasses, and we again get the two sets of
images that, when viewed through this pair of glasses with
the proper polarization, creates that illusion of a three dimensional image.
Then we have active glasses. These are glasses that have
liquid crystals in the lenses, and the liquid crystals can
change shape and a fraction of a second, so in
(10:35):
one orientation they block light from coming through the lens,
and the other orientation they allow light to pass through
the lens. They're kind of like very tiny window blinds
that open and shut at an incredible speed. And the
left lens and the right lens have crystals alternating these
(10:55):
two orientations, so that when the left lens is letting
light through and the right isn't, then you can get
the left side, and then vice versa. The right side
will let light through on the left, won't you get
the right side. The shuttering is in synchronization with the
film or the three D television, Otherwise that method wouldn't work,
(11:15):
so you're only getting the left images when those are
on display. You're only getting the right images when those
are on display, and otherwise the the opposite lens is
blocking light. So with these glasses, rather than having two
sets of the same image projected on a movie screen
simultaneously or on a television display, you only have one
(11:36):
set displayed at any given instant. So let's say it's
the first fraction of a second, only the image for
the left eye is on display. The glasses worn by
the audience open the shutters on the left lens and
close the shutters on the right lens, so that the
light only gets to the left eye of all the viewers.
In the next instant, the image for the right eye
is displayed and the glasses switch the shutters, so now
(11:58):
the light can pass through the right lens but not
the left. And this goes on, with the glasses shuttering
over and over in sequence with the images on the screen,
and it's all happening fast enough that our brains can't
detect the changes. To us, it just seems like a
continuous series of images coming right into our brains, like
we're looking at unbroken sequence with both eyes at the
(12:20):
same time, and our brains again construct this three dimensional representation.
This approach helps correct a problem that a lot of
other three D films have, which is that they tend
to be pretty dark. You've got two sets of images
on the same surface with the other methods of three
D presentation. So if you read a lot of tech
(12:40):
blogs or a lot of movie review sites that talk
about the differences between three D versions of a film
and the two D versions of the film, you'll often
see commentary about how dark the three D version is
in comparison, and that has a couple of things with it.
That's partly because you have projectors with these polarized filters
(13:01):
on them, so less light is coming from the projector
to hit the screen. You're wearing glasses that also have
polar rized lenses on them, so they're preventing some of
the light from the screen to getting to your eyes.
So that means the image is going to look darker
to you, and it can make it challenging or even
impossible to tell what's going on with a dimly lit scene.
(13:24):
There's some filmmakers who try to counteract this by using,
you know, actual effects in the making of a three
D film to make a very bright image in the
first place and avoid doing darker image stuff. But you
can also get around this by actually just boosting the
amount of light that the projector is is putting through
(13:45):
the lens. You can essentially turn up the brightness on
the projectors. That requires training a projectionist to be able
to do this sort of thing, to calibrate a projector
so that it is ideally working with the three D content,
and a lot of places just don't do that. So
there are a lot of projectionists who just they don't
(14:07):
have the training to tweak things and make it calibrated
so that you get a really good, uh, three D experience,
And so the result is you get this kind of dark, muddy,
out of focus almost experience. It's not ideal anyway. Uh.
You you realize that there's not really a one size
(14:27):
fits all approach to projecting films properly. You need to
have that kind of training to really get the most
out of it, and it's just just a fact that
not a lot of places do that. Active glasses, however,
which again don't have quite the same problems. They are
the most technically complicated version of three D televisions and
(14:50):
three D films, And it also means that the glasses
themselves have to draw a power from something which is
typically a chargeable battery, and that means if you want
to watch a three D film or TV show with
active three D glasses, you need to make sure that
those glasses are charged up first, or they may not work,
they might conk out before the movie is over. And
it also means they tend to be more expensive. So
(15:11):
if you lose a pair of polarized glasses, that's already
pretty expensive, but losing a pair of active three D
glasses can really set you back a bit. When we
come back, i'll talk about why the industry pushed hard
for three D televisions and three D content and three
D films, But first, let's take a quick break. Okay,
(15:35):
I gave you a quick rundown on how three D works,
and I could trace the history of three D back
to early stereoscopic photographs up through the gimmicky tricks of
the nineteen fifties designed to lure more crowds into movie
theaters because of a fear that television was going to
rob theaters of their audiences. But honestly, I've covered that
in other episodes, and it's not really that relevant to
(15:58):
this conversation about modern tell visions and the effort to
get three D adopted as a standard feature in TVs.
So what gives Well, First, it helps if we look
at the rebirth of three D at the cinema. Now,
apart from some fairly gimmicky films like Jaws three D,
the three D craze had proven to be just sort
of a fad from a bygone eram But that started
(16:20):
to change in the first decade of the two thousand's,
particularly with a film that came out in two thousand nine.
So you do have filmmakers who are interested in using
three D to enhance the experience they want their audiences
to have while they are watching one of these directors films,
and these filmmakers are exploring new ways to create movies
(16:44):
and to tell stories. A great example of such a
filmmaker is James Cameron, and in fact, his insanely successful
two thousand nine film Avatar is a large reason why
three D films took off. Shortly afterwards, Avatar smashed box
office records and the effects were rightly louded by critics.
(17:08):
People said the three D effects of this movie are
like nothing we've ever seen before. It's not really an
exaggeration to say that Avatar helped usher in the modern
three D cinema age. A three D film requires different
considerations than a standard two dimensional film, which can hide
a lot of stuff just through lighting and camera angles
(17:29):
and other simple tricks. A three D film requires a
slightly different approach, often using the same tricks but tweaked
for the three D filming process. It also requires twice
as many people. You've got two cameras to run, not
just one, so you have two camera crews. You've got
a much larger staff. It's more expensive, and because it's
(17:50):
more technically complicated, when things go wrong, it can take
a lot more time to fix stuff. So it's not
necessarily a better approach, but it is a different approach.
Stuff like force perspective is a lot harder to pull
off that way. It just means that you have to
go about things in a different way if you want
to get the most out of creating a three D
(18:12):
film versus a two D film. Other films get converted
into three D after they've already been shot in two D,
so these movies were not shot in three D natively.
So with this approach, you're taking a single two dimensional
set of images. You know, that's what a film is.
It's just a long sequence of two dimensional images. Then
(18:34):
you have to take that and turn it into two
offset series of images, one for each eye. Now, this
can be done, it can even be done well, but
it's also really easy to do it poorly, and in
any case, it can result in a movie that seems
to be shot in three D for no apparent reason,
like there's no thing in the film that benefits from
(18:58):
the three D noss. With movies, a big motivating factor
for studios and movie theater chains is that they can
charge more money for a three D screening of a film.
It's a premium experience. So if it's done well, it
can be a really great experience for the audience. They
can feel like it was worth the money. But whether
(19:20):
it's done well or not, it drives up ticket prices.
You can charge more for those tickets, and driving a
ticket prices is a good way to generate a lot
more revenue, particularly in the early stages of a film's release,
and that means you can turn up the hype machine,
because if your film breaks some box office records. You
(19:40):
can use that to try and get more folks who
haven't yet seen the film in theaters to come check
it out. And you don't necessarily need to sell more
tickets than the previous record holder if the tickets you're
selling are more expensive. So, in other words, let's say
you are selling cookies at fifty cents each and I
(20:01):
swoop in on your turf and I start selling cookies
for a dollar each. But I also say that my
cookies have some feature about them that makes them superior.
Let's say I'm using the claim that the ingredients in
my cookie are all natural, for example, then I can
make more money than you, even if you sell more
cookies than I do. If you sell five dozen cookies
(20:22):
at fifty cents each, well you nitted yourself thirty bucks,
which isn't bad. Now let's say I sold four dozen cookies,
so twelve cookies fewer than you did, but I charge
a dollar each, so I met myself forty eight bucks.
You sold more cookies, but I brought in more revenue.
Three D films can help studios and theaters achieved the
same thing if we were just looking at the number
(20:45):
of tickets sold, the story would be different. So there's
a strong business case for three D content in movie theaters,
particularly in an age where the average person is going
to the cinema less frequently. Since two thousand, the per
capita ticket sales in the United States has been on
a fairly steady decline, with a couple of bumps every
(21:06):
other year or so. One way to combat this is
to offer up an experience that is hard to replicate
at home, a high fidelity experience with booming surround sound,
crisp images, and occasionally three D effects that can help
convert someone from I'll just watch it when it's available
for streaming to let's go to the theater and check
(21:27):
this out. Another motivation for three D films on the
studio side is that they seemed like a good solution
to a problem of debatable magnitude. That is the problem
of movie piracy and bootlegging. Now, I've done episodes in
which I've talked about movie piracy in the past, but
let's do a quick overview. First. Piracy isn't cool, guys,
(21:51):
that's just you know, true. My philosophy is that if
you think something is worth the price, then you should
pay that price in order to experience whatever that thing is.
If you think something is not worth the price, if
you think they're charging way too much for that, then
you don't pay the price and you don't experience it.
(22:12):
That's how you can get the prices to come down.
You just say like, well, I just don't think it's
worth it, so I'm not gonna bother if it was.
If you feel like it wasn't worth it, why would
you worry about it? Now? If you think it's worth
the price, but you're not willing to pay that price.
So in other words, you're just saying, it's probably worth
the twenty bucks to see it, but I'm not gonna
(22:32):
pay twenty bucks to see it. I'm just gonna steal it. Well,
that that makes you a jerk. That's that's all that
works out. So pirating isn't really cool. Now that being said,
the movie studios have a narrative around piracy that isn't
really supportable. So well, I agree that piracy is not good.
I also say that movie studios have blown it way
(22:56):
out of proportion. See, the narrative is that movie piracy
directly translates to lost revenue, and that's just not really supportable.
If someone bootlegs a copy of a movie and then
makes it available in people who otherwise would never go
see the movie download the film to watch it. You
(23:17):
can't really claim that the movie studio is out any revenue.
After all, those pirates were never going to pay to
see the movie at all, So, in other words, there's
no difference to the movie studios bottom line if those
people pirated the film or they didn't, because they were
never going to buy a ticket in the first place.
Either they were going to pirate the film and watch
(23:38):
it for free, or they weren't going to pirate the
film and not watch it at all. Either way, you
don't get a ticket sale. Now, some of those people
might have been willing to buy a ticket before they
got hold of a pirated copy. Those people could potentially
represent cases of lost revenue, but it's impossible to determine
(24:00):
how many of those pirates would have otherwise bought a ticket,
which means it's impossible for movie studios to give an
actual amount as to the magnitude of lost revenue. And
since movie studios used these very large estimates to justify
lobbying for stiff penalties whenever they pursued cases against pirates.
(24:22):
They were able to win some pretty draconian victories against
people using pretty flimsy justification. This was all in an
effort to terrify would be pirates in order to discourage
the practice. At the same time, the goal was to
find ways to coax people into movie theaters, something that
the theater chains also wanted to have happened for obvious reasons.
(24:45):
And finding ways to create an experience that's not really
easy to replicate at home was part of this strategy.
With the success of Avatar, three D films became a
big part of that strategy. It was hard to bootleg
a three D film, so the super jen Kie way
where you set up a camera inside a movie theater
(25:06):
just didn't work. You know, the image would be even
worse than a typical bootleg made in that way. And
if you could get your hands on a digital copy,
something that has happened on numerous occasions with different films,
the image would be better, but you would still need
a compatible three D television and glasses set up, or
you wouldn't actually be able to watch the content in
three D. And of course you could potentially get hold
(25:29):
of a two D version of the movie but then
one of the big selling points of the film wouldn't
be available to you. So three D was seen as
a way to convince people to go to a theater
to see a movie, rather than to pirate it or
wait around. And this trend found its way to television
manufacturers who saw the potential to advertise to home theater
(25:49):
enthusiasts who did want to get the closest approximation of
the cinematic experience in their own home setups. See One
of the reasons three D televisions became a thing is
that TV companies need to create a compelling reason for
people to go out and buy a television. This is
(26:09):
an arc we can follow whenever a new television technology
really takes off. Initially, only a small percentage of the
market adopts it, typically because the tech tends to be
pretty expensive when it first debuts and there may be
a shortage of content that you can watch on this
new tech of television. So, for example, we saw this
(26:33):
with the invention of color TV in the nineteen fifties.
Color TV actually followed not long after black and white
television first started to get a real foothold after the
end of World War two, our c A and CBS
competed fiercely to create the standard for color television. Eventually,
our c A pretty much won that battle after some
initial setbacks, but I covered that in my r c
(26:54):
A episodes. But even though the tech was there, widespread
adoption did not fall immediately. In fact, it took quite
some time. So for one thing, only a few programs
were being broadcast in color. In fact, for a long
time in BC was the only network broadcasting anything in color,
so a color television only had a slight advantage over
(27:14):
older black and white sets. Why would you buy a
color TV if there are only a couple of programs
that are in color. Studios pushed hard to expand the options,
with companies like Disney doing a lot to promote the
advancement of color television. But price was another barrier. Television's
were and are expensive. Many households don't have the extra
(27:37):
money laying around to upgrade to the latest update to
technologies like television's. The expectation was that you would buy
a television set and then you pretty much use it
until it stopped working, or maybe until the cost of
repairing a television is more or less the same as
buying a new one in the first place. For reasons
like these, color television actually took a really long time
(27:59):
to at a purchase in the US market, even by
fewer than fifty of all households with a television had
a color set. Similarly, we saw a trend like this
emerge with high definition television. The transition from standard definition
TV to h D t V was a fairly gradual one,
(28:19):
and largely for the same reasons as the color TV
transition we had seen in the sixties and seventies, though
it took less time with HDTV, and we're seeing similarities
with ultra high definition television sets to have two K
or greater resolution. On top of that, you have other
features like h D R and more. These aren't just
tech advancements. These are sales pitches to get people to
(28:42):
buy more televisions, because that's how businesses work. So for
several years, companies like Sony, LG, Samsung, and many others
really pushed three D capabilities. When we come back, i'll
talk about how that played out, but first let's take
another quick break. Companies were starting to experiment with three
(29:12):
D television tech before, but that's the year of the
industry really began to commit to the technology again, not coincidentally,
because of Avatar's success, all the major TV manufacturers were
pretty much on board. Most of them adopted the passive
glasses strategy, a few were gambling with active glasses instead.
(29:33):
A very few examples played with the idea of glasses
free three D television demand. That's a big gamble. So
with those sets, the screen itself acts in a way
that's similar to a pair of three D glasses directing
lights so that each of your eyeballs gets a different
feed of information, as it were. But it also means
to experience that three D effect, you need to be
(29:55):
viewing the television from the proper angle. So you can
imagine the TV surface and imagine that there's a wedge
shape expanding out from the TV surface, and then imagine
within that wedge you have slices kind of like a
pizza or a pie. If you're in one of those slices,
like in the middle, you get the three D effect.
(30:17):
But if you're outside the wedge by being a little
too far off to one side or the other, or
if you are in a position where you're astride two
slices like the slice goes down the middle where you're
sitting or standing, you don't get the proper three D effect,
and it becomes hard to look at the screen anyway.
The three D tech and television's worked more or less
(30:40):
depending upon the specific implementation, but that's just part of
the puzzle that needs to come together to make an
innovation in TV technology a success. Yes, it has to
work for it to be a success, but that's not
the only quality it has to have. Another is content,
just like with color television and high definition television and
(31:00):
now ultra high definition content. Without good three D content,
this feature was doomed. Early on a few different media
companies experimented with creating three D channels, and they included
big names like ESPN. The provider Direct TV also had
a three D channel, but both of them would stop
(31:21):
broadcasting by two thousand thirteen. I'll get back to that
in a second. The point is it's hard to sell
a public on a platform if there's nothing on that platform.
Fans of video game consoles have seen this happen time
and time again. Arguably it's what doomed the Nintendo. We
you there just wasn't enough compelling content available for the console.
(31:45):
Another source of content was the promise of three D
Blu ray discs, but to play one of these you
needed a compatible Blu ray player, So if you had
an old Blue ray player that was not compatible with
three D technology, you would have to go buy a
new one. You wouldn't just be investing in a brand
new television, but also a brand new Blu ray player.
(32:05):
Some companies were able to patch existing equipment to support
three D content. Sony did this with the PlayStation three,
and firmware updates to players could help remove some of
the barriers to entry, but it wasn't a universal practice,
and it didn't always mean that the experience you got
was as good as if you went out and bought
a new Blu ray player that could support it. Natively,
(32:28):
so it was a fix for some platforms, but not
an ideal one. On top of all that, there was
the problem of three D quality in general. Now I'm
not talking about how the television is displayed three D,
although if you didn't tweak the settings just right you
would have a pretty shoddy experience in the home. I
(32:50):
am actually talking about the quality of the content itself.
The floodgates opened after Avatar's crazy success. And so there
were the movies that had been shot in three D
to begin with, which weren't guaranteed to be better, but
had advantages over the other type of three D content,
the aforementioned converted to D films that have been turned
(33:12):
into three D. Many movies included gimmicks of stuff seeming
to emerge out from the screen. That's a three D
trick that's been around since the nineteen fifties, and rather
than create an immersive experience, these tricks seemed to call
too much attention to themselves. It actually tends to pull
people out of the movie. You you're laughing at something
(33:34):
that's happening because it's so far outside the realm of
a typical movie experience that pulls you out of it.
There are several analysts and television manufacturing representatives who actually
blame the poorer performance of three D television sales on
the ratio of bad three D content to good stuff.
In other words, there was just too much crappy three
(33:55):
D out there, and there wasn't enough good to really
make it compelling. Then, of course you have to buy
or rent the Blu ray discs that you would play
on your compatible Blu Ray player, and that adds yet
another expense to this technology. And if the television comes
with fewer sets of three D glasses, then you have
(34:15):
people in your household, then you have to shell out
even more money to make sure everyone has a glasses set.
And complicating matters was that the Blu Ray format itself
was starting to struggle in the market at this same time.
While the quality of Blu ray films, both from a
picture and sound standpoint, was superior to most other home
(34:37):
entertainment options, it wasn't nearly as convenient as emerging cloud
based streaming services like Netflix, Amazon's prime video service Hulu,
and things like that. Consumers were favoring convenience over image
and sound quality, which has been a pretty steady trend
throughout media history see also the music industry. By two
(35:00):
thousand nineteen, there were really only two services to stream
three D movies, at least legally. Those were Voodoo and
the PlayStation Video Service. You couldn't get three D streaming
on the more popular mainstream services out there, and this
contributed to the lackluster usage data around three D televisions.
(35:21):
On top of that, people were watching less content on
their television's in general, and watching more stuff like that
on tablets and smartphones. The shift in consumer behavior had
no real place in it for three D television. The
glasses themselves also represented a challenge. Many customers didn't like
the idea of having to put on a pair of
(35:41):
glasses just to watch a movie in their own homes
and admit having to keep track of yet another peripheral
on top of mundane stuff like remote controls. Plus, if
you damaged or lost a pair, it wasn't a pretty
big expense to replace them, usually in the range of
a hundred dollars per pair of glasses. So the general
consensus was that three D glasses are expensive and a hassle. Plus,
(36:05):
some people found that the glasses would be uncomfortable and
they could contribute to problems like eye strain or headaches
and generally create an unpleasant experience. Lots of folks have
issues like this with three D films as well, so
this isn't just something that happens to people watching three
D television. There are people who have generally unpleasant experiences
(36:28):
watching three D films. I tend to fall into that camp. Actually.
If a film is showing in three D and two D.
I almost always pick the two D version. I will
see a three D film if I feel like it
was made specifically with the intent to be a three
D film, at least in some cases, but those are
rare exceptions because I do tend to find the experience
(36:51):
to be unpleasant. Three D TV sales never quite matched
the marketing efforts that these companies were putting forward. The
numbers did go up, though that may largely be because
many models sold in the first few years following two
had three D capability baked into them, so you could
(37:11):
argue that people were buying these sets not because they
were three D capable, though, rather they were in the
market for a brand new television, and all the brand
new televisions also had three D support built into them.
Even if people were buying them because of the three
D capability, before long it became clear that most folks
just weren't using that feature. So you had a lot
(37:32):
of people holding back from buying a three D television,
perhaps because of the price or just in general sense
that they wouldn't get much out of it. And then
you had the people who would buy the three D TVs,
but they never or very rarely ever watched three D
content on them. The house of cards really came down,
tumbling down pretty quickly. It wasn't a complete shambles until
(37:54):
about two thousand and seventeen. Now I already mentioned that
three D channels like ESPN's special three D cable channel
went off the air. By that was an early warning sign.
The expense and technical challenges of producing good three D
content were just too high. Companies were not seeing a
good return on investment. If the money had been there,
(38:16):
then those channels would have stuck around, but it just
wasn't there. The manufacturers began to abandon three D features
to video pulled the plug early, and which was a
pretty prescient move, as it turns out. Sam Sung would
hold on until two thousand and sixteen and then stopped
including three D support in their television's. LG and Sony
(38:37):
were the last two major television manufacturing companies to offer
three D support. They stopped in two thousand seventeen. On
the film front, three D screenings have not been doing
very well in the United States over the last few years.
In the wake of Avatar, three D screenings began to
make up a pretty good part of the overall revenue
for ticket sales, but the glood of two D films
(38:58):
converted to three D, the horror viewing experiences, that kind
of stuff may have contributed to a general feeling of
disillusionment over the quality of three D movies. Or maybe
it's the premium prices that audiences object to. Whatever the reason,
three D ticket sales at the US have been on
the decline for several years. Then again, this is complicated
(39:19):
by the fact that ticket sales in general have been
on the decline, So it's possible the trend with three
D films is merely keeping pace with the overall trend
from movie ticket sales. But there's no shortage of articles
out there that suggests that audiences in North America see
very little added value with three D films in general
(39:39):
and have come to reject them when going to the theater.
In one place this isn't happening, however, is China. China
has the most theaters capable of screening three D films
in the entire world, and China represents a truly huge
market for entertainment. It's such a big market that its
(39:59):
shape it's the actual content of films, So for example,
in two thousand twelve, the remake of Red Dawn debuted.
The original film had come out in ninety four and
it had been shelved for a couple of years. That
had actually been finished by but MGM, the production company
that was behind it, got into some real financial difficulty,
(40:23):
so the movie kind of set on shells for a
couple of years. A different studio came in to become
the production company, and at that stage they were looking
at editing the movie and making a major change changing
the invading army from Chinese soldiers to North Korean soldiers.
The film it's China in two twelve, it's North Korea.
(40:45):
So why is that, Well, it's because of the huge
potential market in China. It was a political move. It
was done to avoid ticking off a potentially lucrative market.
They would never be able to sell the film in
China if China are seen as the enemy in the movie.
But then the movie never did release in China, so
(41:05):
it's kind of a moot point. What I'm getting at
is that the Chinese market is so huge, so significant
to the entertainment industry that when movie studios are considering
funding a film production that's part of the consideration. So
movies that are made for North America are often made
(41:26):
for North America. And then you have an asterisk next
to that that says and also China, but mostly China,
so you might end up having a very different film
than what perhaps the screenwriter or director originally intended. Anyway,
that Chinese market is likely to keep the three D
(41:46):
film industry alive because it is a fairly popular form
of entertainment over in China. It may mean that we'll
see more conversions, more two D to three D film
conversions rather than native three D films, because again, unless
it's a c g I film, it tends to require
twice as much of a crew to run a three
D shoot as a normal two D shoot, so it's
(42:09):
a very expensive and complicated endeavor. So is three D
dead in the United States? I would say it's mostly dead,
But we do have the sequels to Avatar coming out
that might have a bit of a at least a
brief franchise specific revival, and we'll probably see three D
(42:31):
come back and yet another incarnation in the future because
it has happened before. But I think in general we're
going to see fewer three D films, at least fewer
films made in three D from the get go, and
we probably will see a continuation of the trend of
fewer people buying tickets to go see the three D films,
(42:53):
But that's just my own opinion on that matter. This
was really to trace how the fad failed to become
a trend. If you guys have suggestions for future topics
of tech Stuff, send me an email. The address is
tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or pop
(43:13):
on over to our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com.
You will find links to our presence on social media,
as well as a link to the archives of every
single episode that's ever been published of tech Stuff and
a link to our online store, where every purchase you
make goes to help the show and we greatly appreciate it,
(43:34):
and I'll talk to you again and really soon. Text
Stuff is a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from I heeart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.