Just like normal TV, but blurred & in one colour

I had a general anaesthetic recently, and appear to have woken up in 1983.

There are 3D films being advertised, 3D glasses being given away with tabloid newspapers – even dedicated 3D televisions being produced.

Not proper 3D, obviously – that’s reality. No, this is still the same old shitty faux 3D where things are either split into two colours, or polarised, or stereoscoped.

All of which are very impressive ways of blurring the image and forcing people to wear rubbishy glasses while watching TV. Because it’s 1983.

I imagine it’s pretty shit for normal people, having to wear these glasses – whether they have coloured lenses or fancy shutters or whatever – because they’re invariably of poor workmanship, and deeply uncomfortable. I have yet to find a pair which, for example, fail to dig violently and painfully into the skin above both ears. And for people who aren’t normally spectacled, that’s got to be pretty irritating.

For the nearly blind, however, who ordinarily wear glasses, experiencing this 3D bullshit necessitates donning a second pair of glasses, over the top of your existing pair.

This, I shall point out for the sighted people in my audience, is not at all comfortable. It’s also pretty damn usual for at least seventeen pairs of the oh-so-fancy 3D glasses to snap into their component atoms as you try to squeeze them over your existing lenses, possibly because they’re made from plastics which only existed in 1983.

This is as futuristic as it gets, folks

But hey – it’s worth it for the astounding 3D effect!

Except it isn’t. Because – once you’ve finally got a pair of specs on, and you’re just about managing to tolerate the incessant, gnawing pain of the arms digging into your skull – 3D films are shit.

Actually, that’s not fair – they’re much like a normal production, only every 45 seconds something mysteriously rushes towards the camera, but not quite towards you and goes a bit blurry as it sort of (but not really) almost has the effect of coming out of the screen. A bit.

There are only so many times I can see something hurtle towards the screen for no fucking reason whatsoever without wanting to kill the director. And that number of times was exceeded when I was 11 years old, on the Granada Studios tour.

What I shall laughingly call ‘this technology’ is shit enough when you’re forced to endure it in a cinema, although it is at least mitigated by gigantic screens, and the ability to laugh at your friends, who are all wearing stupid 3D glasses and getting migraines.

But why the fuck would we want to pay for this sort of shit in our own homes?

I can only hope that by the time I eventually wake up in the 21st century the entertainment industry will have outgrown this sort of tat.

Posted by Dave in Bastardry, Geekery (6/06/2010 at 16:01).
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