BBC Says 3D TV is a Hassly Experience, Takes 3-Year Break
BBC bidding 3D adieu for now.
The BBC has decided to take a bit of a break from its 3D efforts. The British broadcaster has announced that it will be easing off on 3D following a special 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who. RadioTimes cites Kim Shillinglaw, the BBC’s head of 3D, as saying 3D hasn't taken off and that the corporation will be taking a three year break from the development of 3D programming.
"I have never seen a very big appetite for 3D television in the UK," Shillinglaw told the RadioTimes. "Watching 3D is quite a hassly experience in the home. You have got to find your glasses before switching on the TV. I think when people watch TV they concentrate in a different way. When people go to the cinema they go and are used to doing one thing – I think that’s one of the reasons that take up of 3D TV has been disappointing."
Shillinglaw's comments on 3D TV follow similar comments from British retailer John Lewis. Last month, John Kempner, Vision Buyer at John Lewis, was quoted as saying that while there is an interest in 3D, it's not the primary purchasing decision anymore, and the noise and consumer interest surrounding the technology is not where it was two or three years ago. Kempner highlighted the need to wear glasses as a big reason customers are slow to catch on to 3D viewing in the home.
"The usage of 3D for home viewing is very limited," Kempner told Trusted Reviews. "As an experience I think people maybe enjoy it at the cinema, but in the home it’s not quite such a wonderful experience because of the requirement to wear glasses."
The BBC said it would reconsider 3D further down the line and "see what happens when the recession ends and there may be more take up of sets."

not now nor 30 years from now.
4K/8K in the other hand might peek my interest.
I love my multi-monitor setup and my 2560 x 1440 monitor as well, but if a game does a good job supporting 3D, I always plug it in first.
But I can understand why some people don't care for it too much.
Again, 4K units are far more attractive a proposition for me, but then we get the next version of BluRay, etc. to handle 4x the pixel count, etc... And I have to start the process all over again of replacing my collection.
1. Wearing the damn glasses, I have to wear them everyday as it is.
2. The price is very off putting, like "smart" TV.
3. It isn't that good anyway, feels slightly fake, looking forward to Rift.
So I would much rather they hurry up with 4k TV' and monitors more than anything else, and I think I could of told them this 5 years ago, like most of the rest of us would have.
3D doesn't work well because current techniques don't completely fool the eye. Until that hurdle is surpassed, 3D won't be more than a gimmick.
1. Wearing the damn glasses, I have to wear them everyday as it is.
2. The price is very off putting, like "smart" TV.
3. It isn't that good anyway, feels slightly fake, looking forward to Rift.
So I would much rather they hurry up with 4k TV' and monitors more than anything else, and I think I could of told them this 5 years ago, like most of the rest of us would have.
Yep! The first allmost good 3D was the Hobbit because of the high definition and higher refress rate than in normal. All other 3D even in very good movie theater have been really bad in fast moving scenes. The Hobbit was guite good, but I supose that the refress rate should have been even higher, to really work well. I slow moving parts that 48 Hz was allmost enough... so that there was very little flickering and jerky movent. We need much better 3D until it is fine. The 4K/8K instead is a valid upgrade.
However, sit down in front of a 3D vision 2 monitor with a pair of $150 electronic 3D shutter glasses and crank up the depth %. The result is simply amazing. Nothing else I've seen, TVs, movies, 3DS, even come close to how good my VG278H looks.
Half the population find it irritating and headache inducing.
Many of those who do like it are busy people and haven't got time to mess about setting it up, glasses etc.
Now TV manufacturers have finally woken up to what they should have been developing all along. That is producing 84 inch and larger TVs with 4K resolution.
I also think than LG's passive Cinema 3D is superior to that of active shutter, where technically it shouldn't be. When I purchased my last TV I had no interest in 3D as all past experiences were not good. Once I started looking more closely at variousTV's I realised the Samsung and Panasonic TV's I'd favoured for years were no better than the likes of LG models, and the 3D on these models blew me away. Technically the resolution is poorer than the active glasses, but the 3D effect is outstanding. There is no charging of glasses, no dimming of brightness and best of all no flickering associated with active shutter. Once sat at a good viewing distance you really don't notice the resolution. I know for many techies (of which I am one) what I've said here defies logic, but if you've never witnessed good 3D then go checkout the passive cinema 3D models. Finally, I'd like to point out that I've never had a good 3D experience at the cinema, so don't let that out you off. A good 3D TV gives a much better experience than that experienced in a cinema.
It sucked back then, it sucks today.
3D is something different, we are not there yet.
It sucked back then, it sucks today.
3D is something different, we are not there yet.
firstly the 3d producs state that if you have heart issues, unevenly matched eyesight or are young or are sensitive to light, you shouldn't use 3d. That's quite a bit of potential customers gone.
Then there's the price. The cheapest sainsonic glasses are around 20€ a piece - and not every system works with these chinese univeral glasses.
Thirdly, there's so much confusion with the different technology types (side by side, top bottom, anaglyph etc) that the ordinary joe has to pray the auto detect feature works.
And also, there's the bandwidth issue. 1080p with 3D requires more bandwidth than hdmi can handle (or so I've read), so you need to shift to 1080i @ 24hz or something for it to work - or go to 720p ; and who'd want to make that tradeoff for 3d effects?
Lastly there's the problem with the light getting so much darker with active glasses (and price with the passive ones).
Also for gaming there's the extra issue with having to buy or pirate a middleware software to play most games and if you're on the green team, buy special(ly expensive) glasses.
Bottom line, it's just way too darn complicated and expensive for most people to care.