| "Hollywood Seized by 3D Mania" but ... |
| Saturday, 26 December 2009 21:15 |
 When I wrote After Avatar, You Must Move On 3D Channels, I had no idea just how powerful the movie would prove. As I write, it's passing $600M at the box office in two weeks. Sharon Waxman writes "even the most hard-bitten moguls (from David Geffen: “a complete gamechanger”) now -- faster than you can say "man the lifeboats!" -- everyone is on board." Ridley Scott wants to spend $7M to add 3D to Robin Hood, already in the can in 2D and therefore extremely limited in what can be done with 3D. Even the next Jackass movie is adding a dimension. The 3D hype at CES in a few weeks will be overwhelming. Sky in Britain will have a 3D channel in 2010. So will the World cup. HDGuru reports DirecTV will launch a channel in the spring, but that's unconfirmed. The Blu-ray folks agreed to use MPEG4-MVC for 3D and some believe it will work in the Sony Playstation. There's no doubt which way the wind is blowing.
Today's high end TV already can display the necessary 60 and 120 frames/second. Is your network ready for 10 megabit 3D channels? Time for a reality check. To a reader who forwarded my piece to his CEO, I wrote "On 3D, I'm a little ahead of the telecom crowd. It's two to four years before it is a crucial product most places. There remain problems with standards, etc. They are solvable and the cost will be reasonable. Hollywood and the Asian Consumer Electronics crowd are all over this." It will be a small niche at least through 2011. There will be some very, very bad 3D movies with monsters in front of your face until you are exhausted. The actual power of 3D requires a director - like Cameron - able to use it subtly, adding immersive depth. The TV standards haven't been agreed. Ultimately, it will require 1.5x or 1.8x the bandwidth of HD, with terrible artifacts if the compression isn't done well. Avatar has scenes unlike any you've ever seen. Steven Spielberg called it "the best film he’d ever seen," (Waxman) It is visually astonishing. Dialog, plot, and the like are not up to that standard, but if you've haven't seen the movie yet go see it at the best screen you can find. The answer to the obvious question about the Na'vi is "with their tails," according to Zoe Soldana, but they are holding those scenes for the disk to protect the movies PG rating. If you want to understand the latest in video compression, catch the MPEGIF event January 8 at CES. AT&T is one of the presenters. Also, if you want to keep up with Hollywood, do subscribe to Sharon Waxman's free emails from The Wrap, http://bit.ly/6RW4Qi |
