3D TV - a personal view

With all the recent hype about James Cameron’s recent film “Avatar”, together with the recent 3D Week on Channel 4, its easy to get excited about the prospect of 3D TV.

At the beginning of the year, I mentioned to some friends at work that I expected the introduction of 3D TV around the end of the year, in other words, about now. My wisdom at the time was informed by developments at Philips, who were advanced in the development of glasses - free 3D TV. However, it transpires that Philips has now adopted a less proactive approach responding to its perception of when the market will be ready for it’s glasses free technology.

I sat and watched some of the Channel 4 3D programs, squinting through the blue and amber glasses picked up at my local branch of Sainsbury’s. I sat transfixed for a while watching old films of our Queen’s Coronation celebrations which only served to remind me that the ability to watch films or stills in 3D is an old technology. The 3D effect was very striking, but it wasn’t long before the novelty wore off, as staring through the bi-coloured glasses made my head somewhat squiffy.

It seems to me that as long as we have to watch 3D through glasses then we haven’t moved along very far since the 1950s and before. Granted, the quality of what is seen and promised now is far better than before, the encumbrance of having to wear the glasses gets in the way of what should be a more naturalistic experience. I do not think this is such an issue in the cinema, as when you pay to watch a film, that is what you do - you sit and concentrate on the film with no other distractions competing for your attention save a gulp of Coke or another mouthful of popcorn. Also, the technology behind 3D at the cinema is somewhat different to the TV in your lounge. Because the image you see on your TV is self-radiant and not reflected as at the cinema, it holds out the possibility of alternative 3D imaging technology which does not require the use of glasses. In the Avatar film, there are many scenes depicting people working on glasses-free 3D computer monitors, and this, from my point of view really has to be the future for TV before I can get particularly excited about it. Why is this an issue? Well, if I said that as I am typing this in my favourite recliner I am also half-watching and half listening to the TV as well as the fact that my wife has just shown me some animal pictures which appealed to her in the Sunday newspaper. Now, if I had to wear 3D viewing glasses, this would kind of restrict my activities away from the multi-tasking I am engaged in at the moment, and hold me hostage to staring at the TV screen and nothing else, unless I am happy to keep sliding the glasses from my eyes to the forehead and back again at each activity intersection involving the TV!

Now, 3D TV is set to arrive in 2010 and Sky TV and other networks have the technology in place to wow our sensitivities and hopefully, for them, make millions/billions of dollars/pounds/euros of additional profit into the bargain. However, I am a little doubtful as to how successful this first foray into 3D broadcasting is likely to be remains an issue. For me, glasses dependent 3D TV is not the real deal and I am unwilling to spend any more of my hard earned dosh on another TV unless I can see the 3D image naturally, and without the aid of glasses. I would guess that the TV retailers are likely to find themselves with a lot of expensive obsolete stock on the shelves when glasses free real 3D finally arrives, as I am sure it will, and in rather short order behind the glasses dependant variety. The reason for my confidence in this is that Philips are not the only company working on glasses-free technology, but a number of other companies besides, Mitsubishi being one of them. The claims made for the quality of the images and the viewing experience are extremely encouraging. Of course, price will be an issue, but like all consumer electronic appliances, the price will plummet once the sales increase and the desire and acceptance takes off. I believe that once seen, the appeal will be irresistible to the viewing public.

As for me, I will not be buying a glasses dependant 3D TV. I would much rather wait a little longer for the real deal to arrive, as it surely will - its just a question of when.

Creationist Stupidity

The other night I was watching a particularly annoying programme late at night on one of the Christian religious channels. The program was about why life was created by God, and not evolved through the process of evolution by natural selection, which, incidentally, is so well proven, it is beyond doubt. Now, if you think I am being arrogant in making that statement, then that's okay, because its okay to be arrogant when you are right! What was annoying about this programme was that it claimed to be scientific, and it was anything but!! This should not be surprising because where fundamentalist religion is concerned, its adherents would not know what constituted science if it came up and hit them in the face.

The programme took the form of a gormless presenter interviewing a so-called expert in the cloud cuckoo-land realm of creationism. Our “expert” looked like he had just returned from planting some spuds in his garden, clad in green and talking in a tone of such serious gravitas that many a village idiot might actually have been fooled into thinking he knew what he was talking about!

When I switched over and discovered this wonderful programme, they were sat there discussing carrots, and how the carrot would not know how to develop in the ground without the information already being there in the carrot and how it is dependant upon the green bits above the soil to get the energy for it to do its stuff. Gosh – we don't know how that could come about by evolution – there MUST be a god!! Not only that, but how do plants know which sort of energy to utilise? Well, that couldn't happen by evolution – there MUST be a god who created all this!! And all the while, our gormless presenter didn't challenge once a single thing this so called expert spouted forth in all his unthinking non-logic of stupidity. Our presenter just agreed with everything he said, nodding his head in all the right places with an inane stupid grin plastered over his dim-witted face.

What was even more annoying, this green clad clown kept poking criticism at evolution by natural selection in the complete comfort of there being no one there to defend against his claims! If Professor Richard Dawkins had been there, he would have ripped this guy to shreds and exposed him for the unscientific, illogical, non-reasoning twit that he was! Its very easy to spout forth and pretend to be scientific when there is no one to challenge you – and there is the rub. Science advances by being challenged all along the way. Once we have a hypothesis and tested it to its limits with all the scepticism we can muster – and if it survives all that and still stands up, then we can say that on the balance of probabilities our hypothesis is most likely fact. The religionists don't bother testing anything. They just make sweeping statements gleaned from some “enlightened” understanding of some Iron-Age text, dress it up in the trappings of academia and call it scientific – poppycock and balderdash!

Finally, this guy's Pièce de résistance came with the claim that the reason we have beauty in nature – i.e. beautiful girls, butterflies, flowers etc., has nothing to do with survival and natural selection – I will not bore you with his arguments, they were pathetic – is because god, in his infinite wisdom loves beauty. Of course, what he conveniently forgot to explain is why this same god has seemingly been pleased to have created so many butt-ugly women, and other objects of ugliness in the natural realm. I'm so glad I'm not some “Ugly Betty” because I would, at least on the basis of this “expert's” wisdom, have to spend my life in the assured knowledge that someone up there had it in for me. Better not go out in a storm – bound to get struck by lightning!