Multidimensional Failure

I have never understood the entertainment industry's fascination with 3-D. Not once have I ever heard of anyone walking out a movie and declaring it would have been much better if it was done in 3-D, so knowing how much more work it requires to shoot movies in this format I have always thought it was more trouble than it was worth. Not to mention that to show them theaters were forced to upgrade their projectors and charge more for tickets, which was a bad idea before movie theater audiences started dwindling and now it appears to be a full-fledged disaster. If I have the option of seeing a movie in regular format or 3-D I always choose the standard one and it appears that a lot of people agree with me, because other than kids' movies you never hear any great outcry for more movies to be released with 3-D. That is why I was even more confused when TV makers started offering 3-D televisions a couple years ago. Customers didn't appear to want it in the theaters, so what suddenly convinced these TV makers they wanted it in their homes, where the quality was never going to be as good due to smaller screens? I get thoroughly annoyed when industries press on despite public opinion, repeatedly trying to give consumers something they have made it clear they do not want, as if they somehow know us better than we know ourselves. That is why it was with a certain amount of smug satisfaction that I read an article this weekend which reported that 3-D television programming is going to be cut way back because no one is buying the TVs.

According to this article, less than 6% of homes in America have 3-D televisions in them (a number which is actually higher than I thought it was going to be). It went on to say that by this time next year that number will have increase dramatically, but that will have less to do with consumer's demand for them and everything to do with the fact that TVs are starting to come with 3-D technology even if people don't want it. Essentially 3-D TVs have become the third-row seat in SUVs of the technology world. [Sidebar: Seriously, why can't I buy an SUV without that third row? I don't want that many people in my car and just because I want an SUV it does not mean I will be ferrying a soccer team around. Not to mention they never lay all the way flat, robbing me of cargo space. I hate third-row seats in SUVs.] The other aspect of the article was the fact that there are stations, specifically sports networks, which broadcast programming in 3-D will continue to do so, but only because they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on cameras and are desperately trying to salvage any profits they can. I was probably never going to get on-board but still believe that if 3-D is going to have any chance to catch on with consumers, sports will be the perfect medium to reel those people in because 3-D would really come in handy for a sport like golf by allowing people to see the undulation of the greens or give people the depth to see if a runner cross the goal line or not. If they can't make it work than you have to wonder if anyone ever will.

Normally I would let something like this slide by saying this is what happens when you try to guess what people are going to find popular. It is the same thing which resulted in warehouses full of BETA tapes and Laser Discs. The problem with that logic in this case is consumers had already pretty much decided years ago that they wanted no part of 3-D. It doesn't matter how far technology has come in the last decade - people have formed their opinions of 3-D and they are not positive. These TV manufacturers had plenty of evidence to know this was going to fail and ignored it, so I have no sympathy for them. In my opinion, it all goes back to the main problem 3-D has always had - the glasses. No one wants to have to wear special accessories when they are doing something as casual as watching TV. Plus, we live in a world full of increasingly impatient people. There is a reason batteries seems to die in the TV remote first. The chances of someone watching one thing for hours at a time is extremely thing, so if wearing 3-D glasses makes you feel stupid when watching shows being broadcast in 3-D, imagine how silly you feel when you change the channel to regular programming but still have the glasses on. If they wanted to give 3-D another shot that is what they should have been working on correcting.

To me the key sentence in the entire piece was one manufacturer saying, "We were way too far ahead of the curve on this one." Not only were they ahead of a curve, they are on a curve no one else appears to want to be on. I know you can make numbers say anything you want them to and I think the Nielsen ratings are a terribly out-dated and flawed system, but all you need to know about the current state of 3-D programming comes from the fact that companies can't get rating for the shows they broadcast in 3-D because the numbers are so low Nielsen can't even record them. Even the worst shows on basic cable at least show up somewhere. Still, these people who jumped head-first into 3-D have no one to blame for their current situation but themselves. I know the best way to make money is to be in on the ground floor of a fad so you have a monopoly until everyone else catches up, but when the financial risk is this high maybe you should at least wait until you are sure something is actually going to be a fad before you build entire networks around it. I still have issues with my regular cable feed from time-to-time and I'm supposed to trust them to pioneer an entirely new broadcasting technology? You don't need special goggles to see that was never going to happen.