‘Home theaters will soon be able to show 3-D’

So sayeth Kevin Maney at Portfolio.com. It’s in the context of a discussion about how Hollywood is producing a spurt of improved technology 3D movies. Apparently Hollywood sees 3D screenings as a way to get people back to theatres, just as they introduced widescreen in the early 1950s, colour became the norm over that decade, and surround sound appeared in the 1970s. The problem for them is that the time period between technology appearing in the cinema and, later, in the home is diminishing. I read through the first two and a half pages of this article before finding an acknowledgement that this might not achieve their aims for this reason:

Bringing in 3-D will boost the quality of the experience, but it still might not be enough to lure butts out of living rooms and into cinemas. Home theaters will soon be able to show 3-D. I visited a Kodak lab where a team is working on a 3-D display, and the images rivaled what I saw in Walden’s screening room. ‘It will be three years before the price and package are appropriate for consumer applications,’ says Kodak researcher Patrick Cosgrove.

I suspect that Hollywood is just going to have to get used to the idea that much of their profit will be derived from media sales for home theatre use, not public display rentals.

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