Monday August 23, 2010 – Stewart Wolpin
Yes, there are serious companies involved and, yes, there is serious money invested by both content creators and hardware makers, but it's difficult to shake what Comedy Central's faux pundit Stephen Colbert would call the truthiness of 3D. In other words, despite what objective reality might seem to indicate, 3D in the home doesn't feel as if it has the inevitability of past transformative format shifts such as color, high-definition, content digitalization, widescreen and surround sound a decade before each became technology ecosystem sine qua nons.
For instance, despite the popularity of 3D in the movie theater, 3D HDTV sales won't even account for 10% of total TV sales in the U.S., even by the most optimistic forecasts. A recent Kakau.com survey revealed 70% of Japanese consumers are uninterested in purchasing 3D HDTVs.
In today's technological world, a format as radical as 3D must penetrate into multiple levels of technologies, products and content to create an encompassing and seamless ecosystem. This multi-level 3D evolutionary ecosystem has been slow to develop thus far.
A movement in the glacial evolution of the 3D ecosystem was on display at an appropriate venue earlier this week, the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, where Fuji showed off its second generation dual-lens 3D digital still camera, the W3, the follow-up to the relatively unheralded year-old W1.
While the W3 includes several improvements – a 3.5-inch screen vs. a 2.7-inch display on the W1, 720p 3D/2D AVI video capture, three simultaneous 2D shooting modes (separate/different 2D images captured by each lens), and a $100 price drop to $500 – the biggest difference is the 3D environment.
Since Fuji unveiled the W1 last September, three HDTV makers – Panasonic, Samsung and Sony – have all launched high-profile 3D HDTVs, two camcorder makers, Panasonic and DXG, have announced 3D camcorders, and last month Sony announced two single-lens 3D digital cameras. With a better-prepared market foundation, Fuji's Night at the Museum event signals the company will be a lot more aggressive promoting the W3 and, by extension, further promoting the long-term viability of 3D.
Yet 3D still doesn't feel like the legitimate future of video, especially since this is our third brush with 3D, once in the 1950s and again in the 1970s. As the old – and oft mangled – saying goes, fool me once shame on you, fool me thrice…
Many in the video hardware business and in 3D glasses-wary living rooms are similarly 3D cynical. Yes, three TV heavyweights are in the 3D fight – but where are LG, Vizio, Toshiba, Sharp, et al? Perhaps some of these 3D holdouts will unveil 3D HDTVs at next month's CEDIA Expo – but maybe not. On the camera/camcorder side, where are Canon, Nikon, Flip, Kodak and 3D HDTV maker Samsung? Computer heavyweights such as Microsoft, HP, Dell and Apple – vocal and nearly obstructive during HDTV's formative stages – are shockingly 3D mute.
In addition to the inconvenient necessity of $100-plus 3D glasses, content is a contentious 3D issue. Everyone is waiting for the 800-pound 3D content gorilla to burst into the room – Avatar on Blu-ray. James Cameron's blue blockbuster is due to be re-released into theaters on 27 August, and the 3D Blu-ray likely won't appear until next year, a delay which likely frustrates 3D HDTV and Blu-ray hardware makers.
But the release of one 3D Blu-ray won't ignite a critical mass of consumers to make the expensive re-investment toward a 3D living room, especially so soon after the digital transition and especially especially in this economy. It's also hard to conceive serious Oscar-worthy dramas being produced in 3D – the technology is seen as intrusive and distractive to plot and character development and so far more conducive to explosive action flicks and animation, all of which means 3D won't become the dominant cinematic technology trend the way widescreen and surround sound were. Gaming had thus far has not been the 3D Trojan Horse many have predicted. And anyone who has watched sports in 3D knows simultaneous fast-moving player/ball action makes eye focusing far more difficult and often eye-achingly painful.
Fuji's new 3D camera is fun to use and may even sell well enough to boost the company's imaging profile even without a pervasive 3D landscape. But without a radical shift in technology, it feels as if 3D in the home will prove nothing more than an evolutionary dead end.
