posted 01-23-2010 08:47 AM                   

Remember, not everybody sees "the same thing" you see.

About 10% of the population can't see 3D "right" for technical (medical) reasons, so they much rather go to a 2D show to begin with and save the $$$$.

Some people can see the 3D, but are truly bothered when stuff comes out of the screen to "poke at their eyes", and once again, prefer the 2D version.

Some people like the 3D ok, but they have poor(er) night vision. They also much rather have a choice in 2D, so they can watch it at a much brighter 14/16fl illumination level, instead of the 3.5-5.5fl of the 3D version. At low light levels, the colors are perceived differently and more "muted" (as there is more "black and white" signal from the eye's rod receptors and less from the color-sensitive cones).

Some people like the 3D ok and can see fine the dimmed picture, but they know the 3D show, compared with the 2D, has these drawbacks:
-Usually shown at 1/4 the number of colors (10 bits against 12 bits)
-Usually shown at 1/2 the color resolution (4:2:2 vs 4:4:4)
-Usually shown in time-sequential mode: both eyes never see the same image at the same time -- one eye is always seeing black while the other may be watching the same frame or another frame in the "future" (3D "flicker"). A small group of people are really sensitive to this.
-Sometimes, in older projectors w/o triple-flash, the total screen resolution if reduced once more (1628 x 880 vs 1998x1080 IIRC). Not to mention the additional re-scaling.
-If they are watching a 1.85 movie in Sony 3D, you are also missing 40 lines of information.
-You get some amount of ghosting, which goes from a (negible) 1:1000 in Dolby to as much as 1:20 in RealD if you are sitting (way) off center.
-If you are watching a ghostbusted movie, you are watching reduced contrast artifacts through one eye.
-If you are watching a Dolby 3D movie, you are watching a further reduced color space (not to mention, slightly different for each eye).
-If you are watching a polarized (or XpanD) film, you are also changing the color, as the filters in the glasses are not linear across the whole visible spectrum.
-If you are watching on a Silver Screen, you get the SSC™ (Silver Screen Curse)
-Etc, etc.

Most of this, of course, you don't solve by simple making yourself a 2D version of the film through the glasses. But if the eye-poking bothers you, it's a start

Don't get too carried-away with Avatar being so grossly preferred in 3D. After all, we've been told by marketing over-and-over that this movie MUST be watched and it MUST be watched in the largest 3D screen you can possibly find or you-are-an-idiot. A lot of people don't want to feel like idiots, so they are forced to the 3D version. A different story is when a kid's film is playing and you try to convince your 5 year old to keep the glasses on for 2 hours.

http://displaydaily.com/2009/05/27/3d-brighter-is-better/

quote:

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In the May issue of Large Display Report, we covered a summary of a demonstration run by Inter-Society of Digital Cinema Forum (ISDCF) last March. The demonstration had originally been closed and targeted at studio executives but details leaked out, as could be expected.

This test involved 3D content mastered or re-mastered for showing at different luminance levels. 4.5 Ft. lamberts served as a baseline since that is the specified luminance of 3D content in the theaters. The material was also re-mastered for showing at higher luminance levels. The different versions of the material were then shown at 4.5 6, 10 and 14 Ft. Lamberts. 14 Ft. Lamberts is the normal theatrical luminance for 2D material. Video material in the home is typically shown at still higher levels, from 30 Ft. Lamberts on up.

Why is this important? The way the eye perceives color changes rapidly as a function of light level at these very low luminance levels. 14 Ft. Lamberts was chosen as the standard for 2D cinema for two reasons. First, it is well within the range of film projectors with reasonable sized lamps. Second, and perhaps more importantly, at this low light level, the eye does not normally perceive the flicker produced by the 48 Hz field rate of double-flashed film. While digital cinema is more commonly triple flashed to 72 Hz, eliminating flicker as a problem, it continues to use the 14 Ft. Lambert standard. This allows digital and film theaters to have a similar "look and feel," an important property to the movie industry.

3D digital cinema projectors are very inefficient compared to the same projector showing 2D content, 14% efficiency is a typical value. By using a larger lamp and a high gain screen, the current generation of 3D digital cinema projectors can make about 4.5 Ft. Lamberts on the screen but not 14 Ft. Lamberts. In general, 3D presentations have been in the smaller auditoriums of a multiplex, since it is easier to achieve 4.5 Ft. Lamberts on a small screen than a large screen.

Since human perception of color is different at 4.5 and 14 Ft. Lamberts, studios need to color correct their 3D movies twice: once for 2D screens and once for 3D screens. This is an expensive process and studios would like to eliminate the second color correction.

There are two approaches to doing this. First, they could color correct for some intermediate light level, say 6 or 10 Ft. Lamberts, and use that color correction at both the higher 2D and the lower 3D light levels. The ISDCF demo showed that this might actually be an acceptable path.

The other approach would be to increase the light level on 3D cinema screens to a value closer to the 2D light level. From a studio’s point of view, this would be ideal: only one master would be required and the 3D experience would then match the 2D experience, with the addition of depth.

Theater owners would not like this, however. Current digital cinema projectors strain to achieve 4.5 Ft. Lamberts, especially on larger screens. Lamps must be run at maximum power, leading to high electric bills and short lamp life. High-gain screens help but there is an upper limit to acceptable gain. Going to a high enough gain screen to achieve 14 Ft. Lamberts in 3D means that only the seats on the theater centerline will get an acceptable image. When brighter 3D projectors are available, theater owners want to put them into larger auditoriums with more seats, not make brighter images on the same screens.

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