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Why 3D TV Failed and why 3D Blu Rays will be next.

Considering Netflix, Redbox, and most Rental Stores don't do 3D, and the one store that does, Family Video had only one copy of a movie in 3D excpet during the first week of release, and is 50% more than the 2D copy, and Cable and [in our case] Satellite does Technically have 3D as a feature, but it's so rarely used outside Pay Per View, that I can't tell when a 3D show is on, I know a few reasons that add up together to make 3D fail. The biggest reason why it failed is becuase 3D shows are rarer than finding tjhese 3 things that wasn't a hollywood sutdio creation: a real alien, a filmable visit of God, and capturng a live Sasquatch, all in 24 hours on broadcast and Cable/Satellite TV. (Yes there is such things as TV via internet like YouTube is the number 1 source of 3D video. But remember 1.5 Mb/s inbound. This is 56OK.org after all.) And the reason why it's rare is because most networks want to reach as many people as possible, and by the definition of 3D video, the experiences must be ruined for 2D Viewers, and even though the government provided HD signal receivers for SD TVs, such was not the case for 3D. At its peak in 2012 when I got a $200 PLaystartion 3D TV for the basement, because I needed a Hi-def tv anyway. The reason why Color TV succeeded in the 60s and failed earlier on UHF, and why Stereo TV succeeded in the 80s was because they were backwards compatible with the older technologies of black and white TV and mono TV respectively. In 3D, you either have to use Red and Cyan, or side-by-side half. I have NEVER Seen a broadcast show in side-by-side half. If it were, I could convert it with my PS3DTV.

Now admittedly I had an old device whose satellite receive which had its second tuner in Standard definition, and the default mode the signal is in is 4x3. I undersnad the 3D wouldn't have been right just using the 3D TV to convert, becuase it would convert one 4x3 inage to twin 2x3 images that would fit in a 4x3 frame, and the TV assumes evertthing is 16x9. The way around it was to stretch the video to keep accurate 3D perspective, at the cost of stretch, monsterous "fat chick" mode. Real fat women shown in the ratio intended look more ladylike than a "normal chick" in fat-vision mode. Here's an aside about my opinion of female beauty at high school from a man's perspective, which is tangentially related to the 3D discussion

It looks like the TV industry was favoring content creators over broadcast networks when they chose Side-by-side half as the unofficial 3D standard on TV. It's good for editors becuase you dont need to buy special 3D editing equipmnet for basic "real-world" 3D. (for Hollywood producitons, that's another thing entirely, they are playing with scale and dealing with special effects.) It's bad for broadcasters becuase if you're going to show a 3D TV show, you ruin it for the 2D. As soon as the Super Bowl was going to be in full-color 3D, ordinary people couldn't watch it becuase their TVs woudl display side-by-side half width pictures, which is awful, becuase as I said above, Awesome Kong looks cuter in a formal dress at the right ratio than any of my female friends do in half width, or in stretched 4:3 to 16:9. Also you have the misjudgging of of width tto height ration. Jamal lost a key game of Sonic the Hedgehog becuase the TV stretches 4:3 into 16:9 whihc made him lose a life due to throwing off the trajectory of the jump. See it's more than just libido that gets affected by wrong ratios.

My suggesiton is to take the cheaper of these two approaches:

1) Approach one. There were too many knuckdraggers which wanted to hang on to their old TVs, becuase they didn't want to upgrade yet. (I still have a CRT TV but it's for ping issues and colors on Laser Discs.) Luckily they made devices whihc convert HD broadcasts and puts them on standard screens. If it wasn't dfor that, there'd be NO way digital TV would have succeeded. So mayber a 3D-to-2D adapter mostly subsidized by 3D content creators, who don't want anyone missing their content, just becuase they didn't upgrade to 3D TV. Now everyoen would be happy because 3D content is also 2D content.

2) Along similar lines to a Dolby surround sound device or closed captioning, maybe a 3D standard could be 30 Hz x 2 eyes, in alternating frames. The thing that would be the trickiest part is to make every other frame hidden on a 2D TV, but with a 3D TV/ 3D adpater (read sidfebar),could be opened up and made 3D. With ATSC 2.0 maybe it can be upped to 60 Hz x 2 eyes, with a 60 Hz x 1 eye compatible mode. Some Blu Rays already do that. Dredd and Smurfs are 3D/2D combo discs. In 2D on 2d machines, and in 3D on 3D machines.

Now my brother says most people see 3d as an inconvenience. And Yes I agree that I don't want to watch a 3D movie EVERY time in 3D. If it's runing in the background while I'm doing something else, 2D is better. If i have more people than glasses, then 2D is better. But if DVRs record in 3D and then pare it down to 2D, and if more directors are okay witht he 2D verison being a left-eye only presentation, instead of insisting on having a separate 2D cut on a separate disc, then that would make 3D more flaxable.