Can 3D’s modern offerings be better than one-dimensional?
Excitement about 3D entertainment breaks out every decade or two, rather like a flu epidemic. And it seems to evaporate just as quickly and mysteriously. This festive season, as we enjoy James Cameron’s 3D eco-movie, Avatar, we learn that television is also going to get in on the act. BSkyB has announced Europe’s first 3D television channel for 2010. It could be with us as soon as April.
The mood in tellyland is despondent. Commercial television suffered its biggest ever fall in advertising revenues in 2009. The BBC seems to have alienated both Labour and the Tories and the latter are threatening the corporation with a licence fee freeze in 2012. However, the third arm of television revenue, subscription, continues to grow robustly. Sky is nearing its target of 10m subscribers. Not only is it increasing the number of subscribers but it is also persuading existing customers to spend more. This is a piece of alchemy referred to as ARPU (average revenue per user). Just two years ago we used to spend about £34 a month on its packages of sports and movies, now it’s nearer £40. How does it do it? By offering more and more luxuries for us to buy. Broadband and high-definition television have taken off strongly, as has the time-shift technology, Sky+, already in 60 per cent of Sky homes. Now 3D TV is being lined up as our next indulgence.
I have just visited Sky HQ in southwest London for a demonstration of the service. The technology still polarises two images but no longer relies on the old red and green separation. I saw a soccer match they had shot with new 3D cameras. Far from the old gimmicks of bringing images out of the screen towards you, this concentrated on lending an intriguing depth and perspective to the game. They want to give us the feeling we’re there. I also watched the band Keane perform a gig at Abbey Road Studios and Ricky Hatton in a boxing match (his glove did come out of the screen at me, but thankfully not his spittle).
Sky has found a way of delivering the signal through the existing HD TV boxes. But you will need the requisite glasses and a new 3D television set. Hyundai already makes such screens for Japan, where an experimental 3D channel started in 2008. Other manufacturers are also promising models but the availability of these imported television sets will dictate when Sky can launch its new service. Then the new channel will be marketed to us, with a range of movies, music and live sport.
In November Channel 4 caught the fever with a week of three-dimensional programmes. I’m afraid the result was a touch one-dimensional. You had to collect your cardboard glasses from Sainsbury’s and, having discreetly drawn the blinds, put them on. The first offering was The Queen in 3D, with about half an hour of colour documentary footage stretched thinly across three hours of television. Two charming old gents, Bob Angell and Arthur Wooster, had rigged up the first colour 3D camera in 1953, the year of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. And her coach did stand out nicely in front of the crowd in the Mall. But this effect was eclipsed by the Dundee cake prose of the Merrie England voiceover: “All thoughts and hearts were centred on the Palace from whence a golden coach would soon set out upon a journey—a journey gay and live with colour. Yet fraught in all its inner meaning with a solemn wonder… her name would be forever woven in the texture of our history and it would be proclaimed for all to hear that Elizabeth was our undoubted Queen.” Quite so.
Derren Brown’s 3D Magic Spectacular was a less-than-spectacular collection of mostly tired American clips. But Barry and Stuart, a British act, showed promise with a predilection for stunts based on fisting and self-harm. This seemed to go down well with the live audience. Channel 4’s 3D Week was rounded off with one of those clip extravaganzas, The Greatest Ever 3D Moments. This involved a troupe of underemployed comedians giving “critical” interviews (of the “I-remember-hula-hoops” variety) interspersed with 3D stuff the public had voted for. We were reminded that there had been 3D movies (Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1954), 3D porn (The Stewardesses, 1969) and 3D pop videos (Michael Jackson’s Captain EO, 1986). All these had come and gone, as had BBC1’s Dr Who Meets EastEnders in 1993. This car crash was put together for Children in Need. Noble though its cause is, it has been responsible for some of the most execrable television in modern times.
Will our enthusiasm for 3D sustain this time around? It may well do. Cinemas are now finding 3D movies a great driver of audiences. And I would never bet against Sky. When it markets something seriously we usually end up buying it.
Excitement about 3D entertainment breaks out every decade or two, rather like a flu epidemic. And it seems to evaporate just as quickly and mysteriously. This festive season, as we enjoy James Cameron’s 3D eco-movie, Avatar, we learn that television is also going to get in on the act. BSkyB has announced Europe’s first 3D television channel for 2010. It could be with us as soon as April.
The mood in tellyland is despondent. Commercial television suffered its biggest ever fall in advertising revenues in 2009. The BBC seems to have alienated both Labour and the Tories and the latter are threatening the corporation with a licence fee freeze in 2012. However, the third arm of television revenue, subscription, continues to grow robustly. Sky is nearing its target of 10m subscribers. Not only is it increasing the number of subscribers but it is also persuading existing customers to spend more. This is a piece of alchemy referred to as ARPU (average revenue per user). Just two years ago we used to spend about £34 a month on its packages of sports and movies, now it’s nearer £40. How does it do it? By offering more and more luxuries for us to buy. Broadband and high-definition television have taken off strongly, as has the time-shift technology, Sky+, already in 60 per cent of Sky homes. Now 3D TV is being lined up as our next indulgence.
I have just visited Sky HQ in southwest London for a demonstration of the service. The technology still polarises two images but no longer relies on the old red and green separation. I saw a soccer match they had shot with new 3D cameras. Far from the old gimmicks of bringing images out of the screen towards you, this concentrated on lending an intriguing depth and perspective to the game. They want to give us the feeling we’re there. I also watched the band Keane perform a gig at Abbey Road Studios and Ricky Hatton in a boxing match (his glove did come out of the screen at me, but thankfully not his spittle).
Sky has found a way of delivering the signal through the existing HD TV boxes. But you will need the requisite glasses and a new 3D television set. Hyundai already makes such screens for Japan, where an experimental 3D channel started in 2008. Other manufacturers are also promising models but the availability of these imported television sets will dictate when Sky can launch its new service. Then the new channel will be marketed to us, with a range of movies, music and live sport.
In November Channel 4 caught the fever with a week of three-dimensional programmes. I’m afraid the result was a touch one-dimensional. You had to collect your cardboard glasses from Sainsbury’s and, having discreetly drawn the blinds, put them on. The first offering was The Queen in 3D, with about half an hour of colour documentary footage stretched thinly across three hours of television. Two charming old gents, Bob Angell and Arthur Wooster, had rigged up the first colour 3D camera in 1953, the year of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. And her coach did stand out nicely in front of the crowd in the Mall. But this effect was eclipsed by the Dundee cake prose of the Merrie England voiceover: “All thoughts and hearts were centred on the Palace from whence a golden coach would soon set out upon a journey—a journey gay and live with colour. Yet fraught in all its inner meaning with a solemn wonder… her name would be forever woven in the texture of our history and it would be proclaimed for all to hear that Elizabeth was our undoubted Queen.” Quite so.
Derren Brown’s 3D Magic Spectacular was a less-than-spectacular collection of mostly tired American clips. But Barry and Stuart, a British act, showed promise with a predilection for stunts based on fisting and self-harm. This seemed to go down well with the live audience. Channel 4’s 3D Week was rounded off with one of those clip extravaganzas, The Greatest Ever 3D Moments. This involved a troupe of underemployed comedians giving “critical” interviews (of the “I-remember-hula-hoops” variety) interspersed with 3D stuff the public had voted for. We were reminded that there had been 3D movies (Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1954), 3D porn (The Stewardesses, 1969) and 3D pop videos (Michael Jackson’s Captain EO, 1986). All these had come and gone, as had BBC1’s Dr Who Meets EastEnders in 1993. This car crash was put together for Children in Need. Noble though its cause is, it has been responsible for some of the most execrable television in modern times.
Will our enthusiasm for 3D sustain this time around? It may well do. Cinemas are now finding 3D movies a great driver of audiences. And I would never bet against Sky. When it markets something seriously we usually end up buying it.
