BBC ditches 3D TV – farewell 3D, you won’t be missed

“Being publically funded, the BBC has a responsibility to focus on appealing to the widest audience of viewers and listeners, which isn’t something that goes hand in hand with emerging technology and a small number of early adopters.”
Thank goodness this is not the case, otherwise we would have more of the mindless programmes churned out on other channels. The BBC has lead the way – successfully. Zoom lens cameras (B+W days), outside broadcasts, colour, stereo broadcasts. It has a duty to keep up or lead technology, otherwise it would lose audiences and you’d be complaining it was not adventurous enough.
The world is full of minorities, who deserve their share of programmes, something the BBC does reasonably. How many classical music concerts do you get on independent channels? (hardly a minority either but pop music seems to predominate).
They will not always get it right, but do we all?

3D is an easy target for the BBC at a time of looking for financial savings. It is a difficult beast because unlike a 3D film where you go to watch just that, in your home watching TV you may be doing many things at the same time which do not lend themselves to wearing goggles. So a home 3D TV viewer has to commit and quite frankly whether it is a sporting event or a film, although difficult, it can be quite stress free to commit to one activity to enjoy. I was not keen initially and there are plenty of films in the cinema these days that have no right to be viewed in 3D because they do not add to the experience and usually cost more. 3D films produced from original 3D material tend to be better than the many conversions now taking place. I have come to embrace Rugby, Football, even Sky Formula 1 testing and now Wimbledon presented in 3D live. I’m sorry the BBC has chosen to “mothball” their development project for three years as it may never return and we have a lot to thank the BBC for in technical broadcast developments over the years. The industry is jumping on the 4K bandwagon now as some sort of upgrade but it’s no such thing and for now I am content with 1080p 3D. Will we ever see 4K3D?

My SMART TV has 3D – no choice in the matter all top-end ones did !
Never gets used – it doesnt work for me anyway as I dont have good vision in one eye.
My local independent cinemas has also dropped 3D in the switch to digital projection, many customers didnt like it and the extra cost made it uneconomic.
So I think the question is how long before film producers drop the production of 3D films ?

3D TV has never appealed to us because of slightly bad eyesight and having to wear special specs.

We were in Currys a few days ago and saw what might have been a 4K TV as it was about 80″ and cost £20,000.

The picture was stunning, and had depth almost like 3D but without the need for special specs.

One day………….

We’ve bought a 3D TV in 2010 which came with a set of Shrek DVDs to give an experience of 3D content. I still have not managed to watch the entire set. I found that watching for any length of time made me feel nauseous and strained. I finally put this down to the fact that one’s brain is constantly having to cope with contradictory depth information. The eyes are focused on the TV which is a fixed distance away, say 2-3m. But the stereo vision is giving different depth information dependent on the scene being viewed. The result is an inconsistency which results in viewer fatigue and strain.

I can’t see this issue being fixed by any new technology in future because it’s a direct result of our physiology.

But I think the BBC was absolutely right to produce content to test the 3D proposition and I hope it continues to produce content for the next generations of TV technologies.

Thanks for all your comments – we’ve rounded them up here: https://conversation.which.co.uk/technology/3dtv-is-there-any-future-smart-tv-bbc/

And one of you got our Comment of the Week… 🙂

I seem to remember that a couple of years ago one manufacturer (I believe it was Toshiba) had developed a 3d system that needed no glasses and that they had displayed it at one of the tech shows to rave reviews !!!!! Now that’s worth waiting for. If it happens mainstream it will no doubt be BETAMAX again although to me it’s a no brainer. !!!!

I would rather see money spent on producing good quality interesting programmes rather than 3D TV. A lot of what is broadcast at present is probably primarily intended to produce good audience ratings.

I thought Dr WHO was really good in 3D (at least the original broadcast and simultaneous cinema distribution) and it made the BBC a stack of money.

As part of a 3D case study David Wigram, stereo3D consultant on Dr Who stated:

“What does the future hold? Nobody really knows, but over the short term expect to see the top-grossing films of each year to remain being 3D, but the majority of releases to be 2D. Expect further innovations along the line of HFR as the theatrical industry invests in keeping the cinema a high-value experience, to compete with TV, tablets and phones as a way of consuming media. But of course experience has shown many times that where cinema leads, TV follows.”