What is the future of 3DTV?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year, you’ll have heard of the coming of 3D TV. We’ve had it at cinemas long enough for it to become mainstream and the adoption of 3D by Sky for its higher-level subscriptions threatens to bring it right into households much quicker than I expected. Samsung’s offering a decent 50″ 3DTV with three sets of 3D glasses for under £1000, within a year we’ll be seeing excellent televisions in the 40″ range for a few hundred pounds less than that.

But do we really want it? With HDTV there’s a clear difference between the quality of a given medium and the difference in quality and resulting enjoyment is probably greater than that between DVD and VHS. Is this the case with 3DTV? No, not yet. The greatest uses of 3D in cinema are shock moments (weapon/car flying out from the screen), popping vistas (eg sweeps of buildings) and the like. Adding general depth is not something valued by the general public. Or is it?

The answer will come this time next year as more households adopt 3DTVs. With games consoles, TVs and PCs now embracing 3D – Call of Duty: Black Ops will allow 3D playing – it looks like the media-makers have made up their minds.

Hey guys, yes like many of you I’m an early adopter and I love new technology. Just a brief note today – I had problems with the iPad’s cellular data (3G) on o2. I couldn’t find a way to set up an account to start a 3G service. But I found the solution and it was an easy one: plug your iPad into iTunes and update. I’d already plugged it in the first time I used it without any update so it may be new. You’ll get an update to your cellular data settings which will give you the option of setting up an account.

Easy peasy.

The recording industry isn’t the only one failing to move with the times and adopt new business models. Arnaud Nourry, of French publishing group Hachette Livre said to the FT:

“On the one hand, you have millions of books for free where there is no longer an author to pay and, on the other hand, there are very recent books, bestsellers at $9.99, which means that all the rest will have to be sold at between zero and $9.99,”

According to the FT, he also complains that the trade in the hardback industry could be destroyed by e-book pricing.

Good.

I’m not sure why he complains about providing millions of books for free (presumably both where copyright has expired and so-called ‘orphan works’), but whining about how publishers won’t make money on books anymore really doesn’t cut it for me.

The digital book or e-book is really beginning to make headway. The Amazon Kindle is driving it in the right direction. No, it doesn’t have the tactile satisfaction of holding (or smelling the chemicals lacing the pages of) a real book. Conversely, it will work out cheaper. No more purchasing fiction for £19.99+ on release for a hardback. No more clutter. No more lost books. And it transcends books. I’m fed up of waiting for my subscriptions to arrive. When the Royal Mail does get my magazines and journals to the right address, they’re inevitably late and out-of-date. I’ve been waiting for an issue of Private Eye for a month now. As magazines and newspapers transition to an electronic format (no, not webpages) you can subscribe and receive the new editions first thing in the morning. I could even see stores like WHSmith and newsagents saving space and time – imagine a coin-operated machine: plug in Kindle Version x, pop in 20-50p, press a button for the relevant newspaper and you’re off with your digital read.

Yes, it will probably drive down prices for publishers. It will also drive down costs. It should also increase consumer demand.

So, weigh up the amount of recycling and rubbish we’ll avoid (we love you mother earth!), the amount we as consumers will save and the convenience and sustainability of the system against missing the look and feel of a book… I know which option I choose.