back to article David Attenborough dino doc shows limits of 3D TV

The future of 3D TV is "event television" reckons eminent broadcaster Sir David Attenborough, the implication being that stereoscopic broadcasting isn't much cop for anything else. Speaking at the premiere of his upcoming Flying Monsters 3D documentary, Sir David likened 3D to the arrival of black-and-white television in the …

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  1. whats the point of kenny lynch?
    Stop

    3d was soooo 2010 darling...

    and what's attenborough doing on sky - i thought he used to run bbc2?

    looks like the beeb have had enough of dinosaurs then.....or is the budget slashed again...

    1. PsychicMonkey
      Pint

      maybe

      because the BEEB don't have a 3D channel?

      I've always though that the 3D would be niche until you don't need the glasses. Having seen the 3D demo at the O2, it is very impressive but I don't want to wear glasses to watch telly (well, not till I need to so I can actually see the telly!)

  2. jake Silver badge

    3D TV exists to sell hardware to idiots.

    Need I say more?

  3. James Howat

    I agree, but for different reasons

    Whereas the switch from B/W to colour, or from SD to HD, made things more engaging and pretty, it didn't really change the way you interact with the TV in the way that 3D does. Whether done well or not, it asks for a lot more attention and immersion, and so is probably better suited to things you don't dip in and out of.

  4. Craig Chambers
    Boffin

    Pterosaurs != Dinosaurs

    Just a quick point of order. The article states that Pterosaurs were a type of flying dinosaur, but this is not the case. Although contemporaneous with dinosaurs and sharing a common ancestor, pterosaurs (and also other diverse reptiles such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs) are on a different branch of the reptilian tree.

  5. LinkOfHyrule
    FAIL

    3D - the new DAB (In terms of FAIL)?

    Something like a quarter of all people can't even see 3D screen images - and of those of us who can, headaches and eye-strain are a common occurrence apparently!

    3D won't take off unless all tellies/monitors support it without the need of glasses and the cameras needed to produce the images become cheap and standard. Until then I'm calling 3D the new DAB! Or who knows, maybe it will be worst than that and it's actually the new HD DVD!

    hahaha!

    1. nickrw
      Boffin

      Re: 3D - the new DAB (In terms of FAIL)?

      The only film I've seen in 3D recently was 3Dized in post-processing, so I don't know if my problem with 3D this is something that affects properly 3D films, or just 'upscaled' ones:

      The camera focuses on the subject, blurring the background, or vice-versa. My eyes, clever beasts that they are, know that normally they can adjust themselves to focus on whatever they are looking at. Then then get confused and sore from constantly trying to focus on something that they cannot.

      I've never personally seen or heard anyone else complain about that specifically. I'd be interested to know if everything in the 3D image was in focus if the number of reports of eye strain etc. go down.

      1. Radelix

        Agreed

        that forced perspective does not assist with making it any easier to watch. Try watching one without the glasses and you get dizzy since your eyes and brain are trying REALLY hard to paint a picture of something that is not there

  6. Leigh Smith

    I will surely not be the first or last to post this

    Pterosaurs are not dinosaurs.

    1. PaddyPower

      badgerosaurus

      I think everybody took that as understood..

      Everybody knows they're really part of the Badger family yes?

  7. SkippyBing

    Depth Perception

    I've always wondered about this, depth perception from stereoscopic vision only really works out to about 18 feet or so, after that it's done on visual cues and experience so without massively forcing things to the foreground how good is 3D TV actually going to be?

    Probably doesn't help that I actually have poor depth perception anyway...

    1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      They just increase the camera separation

      Of course that makes everything look like toys - and a ten inch tyrannosaurus, for example ,isn't exactly scary - but, hey, you can't have everything.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Agreed or a greed?

    Agreed - 3D has its place but without meaningful content what general good is it?

  9. Jefe Mixtli

    Pterosaurs are not Dinosaurs.

    Come on guys, you know your science better than this!!

    Pterosaurs are NOT 'flying dinosaurs', they are flying reptiles. Calling them dinosaurs is like calling crocodiles 'lizards'.

  10. Steve X
    Thumb Down

    stereoscopic, not 3D

    This is exactly why "3D" as pitched today is just a gimmick. With a true 3d image of a fossil skeleton you'd be able to move around it, study it from different angles, really see how it fitted together. With Sky's 3D you just get a frozen stereoscopic view, like those old ViewMaster transparencies. It looks clever, for the first 10 seconds.

    I'm holding out for the laser holo TV.

    1. LaeMing
      Stop

      Yes, at best what we have here is 2.5D

      Though I'd be more inclined to call 2.2D.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Getting fedup of 3D

    I am getting fed up of those who constantly go on about 3D TV. It's all a gimmick, and I am not buying into it at all. It's how Sky and TV manufacturers want to make more money. They want gullible people to buy new TVs just to show they have 3D.

  12. Chris 244
    Boffin

    Best 3D ever for me

    was in 1st year Histology class. Stereoscopic projections of SEM images of freeze-fractured cells. Everything 3D to follow will always be a let-down.

  13. Plankton
    Grenade

    3D gaming

    Surely the future of 3D is in gaming? Or does everyone apart from me hate 3D?

    1. Alan Bourke
      Pint

      I'd agree.

      And games are the only application where you don't feel stupid with the glasses on, since you're using all sorts of other kit anyway.

    2. Daniel B.
      Boffin

      Yup

      Best movie to use 3D: Avatar.

      Besides that, the one thing that does tempt me to get into the 3D bandwagon is Gran Turismo 5, that one supports 3D.

      And you *don't* need a 3D TV, it seems!

    3. Martin
      WTF?

      The future of 3D...

      ...is the same thing that made VHS and the internet take off - porn.

  14. Chris 3

    Done deal?

    "But it didn't take long for us or TV's earliest viewers to move beyond the novelty value. That's certainly true of 3D too."

    That's still very much an open question in my mind. Personally I think it will remain a novelty for the next 10 years, at least.

  15. Andy Farley

    Considering...

    how long these "dead-ends" lived that might not be a bad thing.

  16. HeyMickey
    Dead Vulture

    The irony of it all...

    ... Illustrating an extinct flying beastie next to a form of aviation which will also be as good as extinct pretty soon if EASA and Eurocontrol get their way with the new European Rules of the Air!

    Tombstone to lament the slow painful death of my favorite weekend pastime.

  17. Sir Runcible Spoon

    Sir

    I had the leisure of looking over a test setup of a Panasonic 3D tv last night at John Lewis and I was impressed despite myself.

    Some of the gimmicky stuff coming out of the screen was 'oh wow' but you could tell the novelty would wear off.

    There was another scene of a land rover in a field and some people infalting a hot air balloon, and the general picture, even lacking a lot of depth clues (i.e. the land rover was in the distance and it was just a grass field, horizon and sky) and it actually looked like I was looking through a window (i.e. not overtly 3D jumping out of the screen at you).

    It was this last bit that got me thinking that it would eventually be on my shopping list. Maybe not until there is a LOT more content, but it was a real eye-opener.

    I also wear glasses and it wasn't too bad even wearing both.

    1. LaeMing

      I imagine the difference you were seeing...

      ...was 'natural' vs 'contrived' stereoscopics, with the former being where the long-term appeal might be.

  18. Pahhh
    Flame

    3D No Glasses = Today

    For those of you that keep winging about the need of 3D glasses to watch 3D, sets are available that enable you to watch 3D content without glasses.

    I saw a Philips 3D unit well over a year ago ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOWvx ) that did this. Oh yeah, it was great too.

    I believe other manufacturers now have units that display in 3D without glasses too.

    Saying all that, I'm not a big fan of 3D as someone already pointed out , it does cause some element of eye strain. Guess you are used to focusing for different depths and artificial 3D messes that up. But maybe you will get used it.

    Of course it is still to some extent a "gimmick". In the same way that Moving pictures, Colour TV, DVDs and 5.1 surround sound was. It adds another level of perception and of course no-one wants that !!!!!

  19. Citizen Kaned

    3d could be cool

    i wear glasses for watching tv and the cinema anyway so i dont have a problem with wearing specs.

    i do have an issue with how much colour saturation is lost via the specs. admittedly avatar was impressive at the cinema but i found that at home in 2d on blu-ray looked far better. the colours were much more impressive. with 3d glasses its like someone went into photoshop and reduced the saturation by 50%- feeling semi B&W

  20. Dave Bell

    Flying Dinosaurs vs The Doctor

    Oh, really, we already know it's going to be flying sharks. The press have been gabbling about the preview screening all week.

  21. LaeMing

    While I do feel it is, in many applications, a gimmick...

    ...I am rather reluctant to join H. M. Warner of Warner Brothers in 1927 with his "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" statement regarding the gimmick of /that/ era!

  22. Graham Marsden
    Thumb Down

    3D? Most documentaries are 1D!

    So much of what appears on TV now barely needs vision *at all*, let alone 3D!

    I often work whilst "watching" (well, actually listening to) something on Discovery or National Geographic channel because so little information is supplied by the pictures that I only need to glance at the screen once a minute to see if anything important is there (usually it isn't) then go back to what I need to look at.

    Even the narration is often so ridiculously repetitive that the whole programme could have been shown in half the broadcast time.

    3D? Flat Screen Plasma? Hi def? I'll stick to my old CRT TV!

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Question...

    For all the physics type experts that read this. When I worked on flight simulator visual systems we would use a theodolite to measure from the pilots eyepoint to objects on the monitors and they would be in focus at the appropriate realworld distance (all the way up to 1,000's of feet away). I never had the courage to say i didn't understand how that happened but I would have thought the technology used for that must be of use for 3D TV.

    The monitor was mounted above an angled beam splitter which reflected the image to a curved mirror and then on the return it passed through the beam splitter to the pilots eye.

    Posted anon because I still don't want them to know I didn't understand it....it worked and that was good enough for me...then

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