So, did you see those Samsung 3D-HD-LED TV ads for hours on end while some show called the “Oscars” got in the way with their worthless shilling for art over commerce? Really? How could you miss ’em, they were everywhere… showing a beautiful coral reef’s worth of colorful fish (did you spot Dory and Nemo… great cameos) and a manta ray flying swimming over the heads of a family who can’t help but reach out to touch the nothingness that’s right before their eyes. They’re wearing expensive looking 3D glasses (small than those theater ones) and seem to be truly enjoying themselves, save for the fact that though story and character might remain completely unaffected by the 3D gimmick, it’s just oh so cool to touch a manta ray that’s not there. Funcity.
If the Samsung 3D ads, complete with good-time music by Train (“Hey, Soul Sister”), proved anything it’s that the selling of 3D will be completely detached from the reality of 3DTV which is not quite ready for prime-time. CES more or less proved that while the technology is nascent and almost there (but not quite), it’s the lack of content that will hamper 3DTV acceptance in living rooms across Wal-MartLand America. By giving viewers to the Oscars a taste of the future (again and again and again… I lost count at how many spots Samsung had bought up), Samsung and other hardware manufacturers are betting that content providers will follow and offer up movies and television shows in 3D. That remains to be seen, but if older and current programming is just revamped for 3D, the effect that the fictional fun-time family has in that commercial won’t be the experience most people get with their expensive 3D sets.
Those commercials were interesting the first several times around, but left me wondering just how the far along studios might be in planning for a 3D future… aside from the crass efforts to put all current 2D theatrical releases into 3D format to get a couple of extra bucks from sheeple who think they’re gonna be visiting Pandora once again. Unless a few movies and video games, which may be the only 3D offerings in the future, are reason enough to spend a big hunk of cash on a 3D set, you’ll probably just want to hang onto your regular ol’, lame, unexciting, no longer impressive HDTV for now (hey! I just bought that damn thing and am still paying it off!). That HDTV, which may or not be an environmental disaster when you finally throw it out, should still be good for at least several years, or at least until the gimmick of 3D blows over and demand grows for living-room holography devices.
See the Samsung 3D-HD-LED-TV-WHOO-WEE commercial HERE
See what living room holography looks like go HERE (skip to the 7:52 mark).
