TechRadar, about James Cameron and his advocacy of 3D:
But with the sales of 3D TVs not exactly setting the economic world on fire, Cameron understands that it sometimes quality isn’t enough, you have to offer quantity as well.
“We care about the quality of 3D, so we are looking to constantly improve it. But for the general public, the biggest improvement we can make for them is to give them more stuff.
“They just want more stuff so when they do purchase their 3D TV set, they want to make sure that there is some programming to justify it.”
There is no doubt that 3D technology is the latest major advancement in movie technology, and that it is steadily improving. Avatar was an absolute blockbuster. More big-name filmmakers are embracing 3D. And Nintendo’s 3DS produces 3D without the need for glasses.
But it’s going to take more than a library of movies for 3D to take off. In fact, the number of 3D movies available almost doesn’t matter at all. Over the last 50 years, the key to whether a new technology gets adopted or not is based on just two things: price, and ease of adoption.
Stereo is how you hear almost all your music. These days, mono is usually only available if you really want it 1, and today a professional record mixed in mono is seldom heard of. As you might guess, it wasn’t always like that; until the mid- to late-60′s, mono was the popular choice for most pop/rock records. However, stereo records were being pressed as early as 1953, and through the late-60′s, standard practice was to issue both mono and stereo versions of a record. It took over a decade for a stereo record being sold to the public to actually become the standard way to make music.
Why the disparity? Consider this:
Many record players, especially cheap ones, were not capable of playing stereo records. It required more expensive equipment, and the records were often sold for a slightly higher price.
AM radio, almost entirely broadcast in mono, was the most popular way to hear music on the radio in the 1960′s. FM didn’t overtake AM until the late 1970′s.
Many pop bands and producers mixed first for mono, because four-track recorders (the standard for much of the 1960′s) were widely considered insufficient to mix a properly-balanced stereo record. The eight- and sixteen- track equipment necessary to rectify this would not be widely popularized until the end of the decade.
Stereo finally became the standard starting in the 1970′s. But that didn’t happen until the technology was mature enough that the side effects of upgrading (for listeners, musicians, and broadcasters) no longer dampened the upside of improved sound quality.
Fast forward ten years. Back in the 1980′s, JVC’s VHS was pretty much the undisputed winner of the home video format war, and it essentially had two competitors: Sony’s Betamax and the Philips/MCA/Pioneer LaserDisc. Both formats offered superior video quality to VHS, LaserDisc significantly so. Plus, LaserDisc wasn’t just better-looking, but supported features such as additional audio tracks and surround sound.
But Betamax and LaserDisc dwindled for reasons of convenience:
VHS tapes lasted longer, which Hollywood liked. Beta tapes, at least initially, only held one hour of high quality video. VHS offered two, making the release of films much easier. LaserDiscs, meanwhile, were large and cumbersome.
It was better for home video. For one, LaserDisc didn’t support this. And although Beta cassettes eventually got up to 5 hours of long play video, VHS was capable of 10 hours. What sounds easier to you: buying one 10-hour tape, or two 5-hour tapes?
It was cheaper. JVC licensed the VHS technology to almost every consumer electronics company they could. The competition between brands drove the price of VCR’s down significantly, making it much more attractive than LaserDisc or the Sony-exclusive Betamax.
One last example: the move from SD to HD television. This one is ongoing, but undoubtedly on its way to completion. Nielsen says HDTV is in 2/3 of all U.S. households, which is very good indeed. But HDTV has arguably been widely available for almost a decade now. Can you guess why it’s just now supplanting the old SD format?
Check out this piece from TVPredictions last year (emphasis mine):
While other recent studies have put HD ownership in the U.S. at just over 50 percent, the CEA said HDTV sales have been booming in the past 12 months. In fact, the group called HDTV “the top industry growth driver of the past 12 months.”
“A drop in price, widespread availability of HD content and successful completion of the digital television transition last year have all led to an increased ownership rate for HDTVs,” said Brian Markwalter, CEA’s vice president of research.
People do not flock to new technologies. DVD didn’t overtake VHS because it looked better — it’s because it was just as cheap and convenient to buy and use as VHS was. Ditto stereo over mono, CDs over every physical music format after it 2, online music stores over CDs, and why streaming video is making strides over indisputably-higher-quality Blu-ray discs.
You see a trend here. The irony of technology adoption is that its success has very little to do with the advancements at all. People usually embrace new technology when it’s built-in to what they already need/want.
A common argument for the success of 3D is its popularity in theaters. It’s true that 3D is lucrative if done right. But here’s the catch: movies and home entertainment are very different experiences. Movies are events that we’re willing to pay a one-time price for. If you’re already willing to spend $9 on a movie ticket and $9 on snacks, what’s a few extra bucks and a pair of glasses in the scheme of things?
Now, compare that experience to watching movies anywhere else. We watch movies at home because it’s comfortable, on our phones because it’s convenient, and on our computers because it’s a distraction. A high-quality, cinematic experience is a bonus. Outside of the theater, only a very small group of people really care about that first and foremost, and even fewer are willing to pay up with all the compromises involved with 3D.
Can you watch high-quality 3D movies without glasses? Can you buy a 3DTV for the same price as a regular TV? A history of buying trends suggests it’s not going to become big until you can say yes to both of those questions.
HDTVs didn’t take off because HD looks so good, or because people just suddenly started embracing the idea. It only happened because HD became cheap enough to produce and it became the standard for most televisions. People don’t buy HDTVs. They buy TVs that happen to have HD.
When 3D takes off, you won’t see 3DTVs versus 2DTVs. They’ll just be TVs, and they’ll happen to support 3D.
