Marshall and the Movies

A few days ago, I had to run an errand at Best Buy.  I thought I would take a “shortcut” through the DVD section and peruse for a good bargain.  However, that longer walk took me by the TV section, where the Samsung 3D-TV was featured prominently up front.  There were some comfortable recliners to sit in while watching, but perhaps more importantly, they had “Avatar” in 3D on the TV.  I mean, how could I not sit down and watch some of it?

I turned on the glasses – yes, you literally have to turn them on – and allowed myself to reenter the world of Pandora.  It was good to be back, but I do think it’s a very different and superior experience to watch it on the big screen.  But the colors and the picture quality and the amazing cinematography still shine, even on a TV screen.  I fast-forwarded (because I couldn’t work the remote and couldn’t change by scene) to the scene where Jake learns to fly for the first time because I didn’t have the energy to fast-forward all the way to the climactic battle.  But in between, I got to see plenty of other visual marvels of the movie: fighting the giant creature in the forest, flying through the Hallelujah Mountains, and swimming through the neon nighttime forest.

So, if I had the kind of money to spend on a 3D-TV, would I buy one today?  Probably not.  I don’t think the technology or the movie selection is quite all there yet.  “Avatar” revolutionized 3D, and Hollywood needs to decide how to incorporate 3D into the future of cinema before I commit to it.  Plus, the glasses were giving me a headache (although I think headaches go away once you’ve used a certain type of glasses enough).

In addition, Samsung gave these health warnings in Australia:

3-D TV viewers [should] stay away from the TV if “you are in bad physical condition, need sleep or have been drinking alcohol.”

The Los Angeles Times further muses on the implications of these warnings.

Yikes! Wouldn’t that pretty much wipe out the possibility of most male sports fans ever having a chance to watch any 3-D programming? The Variety story adds that “aside from warning that strobe lights can trigger epileptic seizures — a known risk for pretty much everything from TV screens to traffic lights — it urges viewers to stop watching and consult a doctor if they experience any of a slew of possible symptoms, including dizziness, cramps or loss of awareness.”

…Opinion from 3-D experts was split. According to Lenny Lipton, whose StereoGraphics firm has sold 150,000 pairs of active-shutter 3-D glasses, “We never had a single complaint of the kind noted in the Samsung warning.” Variety also talked to Martin Banks, a University of California professor of optometry and an expert in depth perception, who said “there’s essentially no evidence to back up some of these concerns,” though he acknowledged that the idea that 3-D viewing can contribute to motion sickness is “not ridiculous.”

…There was a celebrated incident in Japan where the slow strobing in an early version of active-shutter glasses induced seizures in some children. Even Banks’ own studies have found that eye strain can result from the way 3-D forces viewers to converge their eyes on points at different distances. “As the viewing distance gets shorter, the likelihood that this conflict is going to cause problems increases,” Banks concedes, which means that TV viewing could prompt more dizziness or eye strain than watching movies on a distant screen.

So I’ll keep my distance from the 3D-TV.  It has a place – at Best Buy, not my own home.