This year is a revolutionary one for the TV industry. It’s when the first 3D TV sets appeared on the shelves and the idea of watching movies in 3D glasses at home became popular.
Ukrainian gadget lovers also have an opportunity to taste this newly born technology. The 3D TV sets are available in Ukraine, but pricey.
Let’s examine what a 3D TV offers and whether it’s worth the asking price.
The 3D revolution didn’t come out of the blue. 3D movie theaters have been gaining popularity for years, although they showed mostly science-fiction movies.
The real breakthrough was Avatar by James Cameron, a sci-fi blockbuster that rocketed to the top of the box office with its unbelievable $2.7 billion in revenue. More than half of it came from 3D movie theaters around the world.
Since then almost every new huge film produced in Hollywood is made in 3D, and even some old movies will be re-edited in order to catch up with the new trend. For instance, George Lukas promised to do this with his evergreen Star Wars series.
But 3D is not only about the movie theaters.
While Avatar was still in the movies, Samsung was the first to announce its TV set that was able to show 3D picture. Others were heading the same direction. At the moment every large producer, including giants like Sony, Panasonic and LG has his own line of 3D models.
Samsung is leading the race now, with around 80 percent of world 3D TV sets sales. And the Korean company was the first to start selling 3D TV sets in Ukraine.
One of them I was able to get my hands on for a little while. It was a 50” Samsung 7000 series LED TV that costs around $3,000. And here is what I saw.
The key features of anew generation TV sets are the ability to play 3D content from Blu-ray discs and a special function that converts usual 2D picture into 3D.
As for the rest, it’s a usual TV set, with some modern technologies built inside that can be found in many other models by Samsung and its competitors — for instance, Internet integration (including Skype), playing movies from flash drives etc.
As for 3D, the first thing you should know is that you need a special Blu-ray player, which is sold separately, and 3D glasses.
The player might cost $300 to $400. And it’s a useful thing anyways because it is able to play usual DVDs apart from 3D discs.
The glasses might be a problem though. One pair comes with the TV set already. One more you will get with the Blu-ray player. So you will have two pairs, and that’s surely not enough for a big family or in case you want to show your new TV set to you friends.
Of course you can buy more 3D glasses. They are just $100 each pair, so in case you have a big family, you might find yourself spending more money for glasses than a usual non-3D TV set costs.
As for 3D picture quality, it is absolutely fantastic and unbelievably realistic at the same time. For example when someone throws something from the screen, you feel like it might indeed hit you in your face.
You can also turn on artificial 3D function when watching usual 2D movies. That’s of course not the same, though some effect is still achieved. It looks quite amazing when watching football game, for example.
But of course, the real 3D is unbeaten, and after buying such a TV set you should hurry to obtain video contents that match it.
And here you will meet the very problem that makes buying of 3D TV set a rather foolish idea no matter how utterly the producers advertise their products.
Even if your searching abilities sometimes makes Google envy and your friends often call you Sherlock, you will find as much as a dozen or two of Blu-ray discs with 3D movies for sale in Ukraine.
Even if you buy them all (and keep in mind they are pricey, about 5 times more expensive than usual DVDs), what will you do with your new TV set after you have watched them all?
Unlike US, Canada, UK and some other countries where first 3D TV channels have been launched already, in Ukraine you won’t find any 3D content in broadcasting.
Of course, real geeks always find a way out. You can download 3D movies from the web (thanks to torrents and pirate sites) and then connect your TV to your PC and play them this way. But I can hardly imagine many usual people doing this on a daily basis.
And that’s it. All the other things you can do with a 3D TV set you can obviously do with a usual TV set which would be 2-3 times cheaper. The picture quality for old-fashioned 2D content is the same, so you won’t feel any difference.
Obviously 3D TV sets will not become popular in Ukraine until they become much cheaper, until the glassless technology becomes available (it already exists but it’s far from perfect now) and until much more affordable 3D contents appear.
None of these will happen in the nearest future, so save your money. In a couple of years when James Cameron releases his Avatar II (or whatever it is called), you will definitely be able to watch it at home, without glasses and at a reasonable cost. But not yet.
Kyiv Post news editor Alexey Bondarev can be reached at [email protected]
