3D TV: the dead horse CES needs to stop flogging

Amidst the daily scrum of announcements at CES today, there was a blast from the past: 3D TV. For anyone whose attended the Consumer Electronics Show, 3D TVs were the future in, oh, 2011. 

As we reported last year, CES was the birthplace of the technology, and sites, including our own were all excited about sharing our living rooms with floating objects like this guy (things were so much simpler back then). 

But when the film and TV industries decided that the cost of turning their stables into 3D capable films, TV makers quickly began dropping the idea and telling fans that the technology “hasn’t really worked”.

But that hasn’t stopped Stream TV Networks from announcing its new glasses free 3D technology at CES 2016. Some two years after Panasonic and Vizio said, “thanks but no thanks.”

The company unveiled a 4K PC monitor, a 65-inch UHD TV and announced a deal with Pegatron stating that there’s a production line ready to start churning out bucket loads of TVs and PC monitors.

But despite all of that, is anyone really looking to get back in to 3D? Are we all that unsatisfied with 8K resolution screens? Does Oculus Rift and Microsoft’s Hololens not promise something infinitely more, well, 3D? 

Is depth perception going to make us think Ted 2 wasn’t a giant pile of shit? The answer is, most definitely, no.

Sure, Stream TV says their technology doesn’t require production studios to shoot things specifically in 3D, but what on earth is the point of 3D when Virtual Reality is now getting good enough to be able to deliver genuinely immersive experiences through little more than a smartphone and a piece of cardboard?

Saying that 3D movies are the future of cinema is like saying that Magic Eye books were the future of literature.

3D TV is dead and we all need to stop thinking that this time things will be different.

➤ Glasses-free 3D TV finally gets real [Mashable]