For the first time in a long time, I didn't go to CES. I know, crazy huh. I used to love going there and seeing what products would never hit the market because they were truly stupid on all regards. Then it was also a good work out walking the Las Vegas convention center seeing those products that would make you cream in about 3-4 years when they hit the market. Beside that, it was an excuse to go to Vegas, the land where people roll the dice and get a load of free drinks. Who doesn't like to wake up in Vegas?
Then again, if I did go I probably would have just raged against it since I have picked up this little anti-consumerist message in most of my blog entries lately.. And yet I'm still cranking that wheel of progress in capitalism whenever a sale pops up. What can I say, it's in the nature of the industry that I am. But still, you can't let it go entirely to your head. Some technology is pretty good. I'm not going to join ZFT or anything, but I can and will gladly question technology as it comes along to see if it's really needed.
You know how at the start of Fahrenheit 451 all the dude's wife wants is another wall to watch TV on, like the best thing she can think of in life is having a whole room covered in TV Screens while her husband goes off and burns books? WELCOME TO AMERICA ASSHOLES. Do we really need 3D TVs? Is that what this country needs? Another pointless entertainment boondoggle that brings us closer to a nation of vegetables, experiencing reality only as a simulation?
I work in the fucking industry and yet I still don't give a shit about 3D TV. Not only does the acronym for it just make it sound stupid and lazy as it's just adding a 3 in front of DTV but what's even the point any more? On the studio lot I got to see one of the 3D TV setups that they borrowed from Sony to potentially work on how they would.. work on it.
It's even worse than I first imagined. The glasses were heavy and uncomfortable and it felt like an expensive, dumb gimmick. What do people do when they already wear glasses, I wonder. I can't imagine wearing glasses on top of my own glasses. It's bad enough being a four-eyed geek, let alone a six-eyed freak. Just a little reminder.. The poor of the world are still living by fire light.
3D TV is a dumb gimmick and I hope it never catches on. Hell, I am leery of 3D anything. Half the time it's just some object or item tossed at the camera to make you move to prevent it from hitting you. Really stupid shit. 3D TV is basically a last gasp desperate attempt for TV networks and advertisers to be relevant now that most entertainment seems to be shifting towards being accessible 24/7 online for virtually no cost and with no commercials.
ESPN is starting 3D broadcast this year and Avatar is going to gross over 2 billion dollars. Oh wow, a football is coming RIGHT AT MY FACE.. this is it, a dawn of a new era. ESPN and others will be broadcasting sports in 3D HD, so some rich sports losers will buy them. Also, Avatar is making money simply because of the novelty of it being in 3D as the story is god damn awful. Literally 20% of its domestic gross is specifically because it's 3D, because that justifies the ticket price inflation.
That 120 million dollars so far that can be specifically and indisputably attached to the fact that it is playing in 3D. You see, you have the option of paying 10 dollars to see it in 2D, or 15 for 3D. If you're paying $15 for 3D, you're doing it pretty much because you want the 3D effects, and the extra 5 dollars is attributable soley to the element. So 20% of that domestic gross is composed of that $5 people are choosing to pay. Avatar was in 3D to distract viewers from its boring plot and one-dimensional characters. Just like Titanic except with the 3D gimmick instead of a giant sinking ocean-liner.
I guess 3D porn is going to own. Maybe I should just get that out there. No wait.. that's like communism. It looks great on paper but much like high definition porn, it's just magnifying something that really shouldn't be magnified. I mean, have you've seen Porn in Bluray? I have never seen so much roughly shaved skin and blemishes on a person ever. It's like putting Tina Faye on HD, you just shouldn't do it.
Further more with the 3D TV, Good luck getting grandma to install another converter box to watch 3D Telenovelas. Bluray and the Wii can't compare to 3D TV which is dumb as shit. Hmm, yes. I want to wear glasses while watching TV and spend $500-$1000 on enough pairs so when I have people over to watch a movie or game, we can all actually take part of actually watching. Who am I kidding, I'm pretty sure that there is millions of people out there that would ignore the deaths of an entire country of impoverished human beings for such a Television that projects things at you in a fake manner.
Talking about useless technology, how about OLED TV's. Just think about it, when OLED technology is perfected, roughly 75% of all flat surfaces in the country will become advertising space like in Minority Report. Oh, you don't know what OLED technology is? It's just a bendable flat see through surface you can project images onto. You can watch it in action here
A great summary of OLED: Completely useless but incredibly marketable to gullible idiots. Then again, OLED displays are used in several smart phones now and they have much better contrast, are thinner and consume less power than LCDs. OLED is organic polymers that emit light and can be printed onto surfaces.
But what the hell -Why the hell would anybody want a transparent screen? I look forward to contact lenses that tell me how many doritoes I have left in my bag and all, but a laptop screen that people on the other side can see what I'm typing? That's just stupid.
Holy shit, there's an expensive thing that I don't have? The 200 expensive things I bought previously did not make me happy but I think they just weren't expensive enough. One of these credit cards is bound to not be maxed!
Just think about the steps that technology has first stepped into. Microwaveable fried chicken and macaroni and cheese in the same TV dinner!? hungryman you tread where eagles dare.
Bending pictures of babies has never seemed so... possible
I realize that I'm sounding like the old neighbor who tells kids to stay off his lawn and how much better things were in my day. But it's not even that. While I don't think any of these technologies really will advance much of anything, other than your crushing debt, I do believe that there should be proper justification other than "I guess we can do it, so why don't we?" in the process of coming up with uses for this stuff. Otherwise we end up creating more shit like the Jimmy Dean Sausage Pancake Corn dog.
Then again, people will always defend new technology on the premise that those who reject the shiny new object due to its capacity to degrade some facet of real lived experience are just like those who decried previous developments. Then they will go on to justify that same product by saying how much this new technology is a revolutionary change completely beyond those previous developments without ever seeing some clash between those arguments.
Why yes. I currently am unsatisfied with my life so I'm glad I'll soon be able to find true satisfaction with this product. Maybe the TV making industry severely underestimates the laziness of the American public. Who wants to put on and take off glasses every time they are going to watch TV? I usually have a TV in the background and glance over between writing seasons. I'm not going to want to wear glasses for something I'm only half paying attention to and wearing the glasses will prevent me from wearing my normal glasses. You can see how this can be a problem for me.
In fact, the size of the glasses are the main torn in the side to the 3D TV idea. The effects may be great and seamless, but in most cases, users of 3D glasses have reported suffering from eyestrain and headaches. Most of all is cost. A few years ago at CES I saw some holographic projectors. These things were straight out of Star Trek. The problem, as with most of the other problem with CES products is the cost that made it evident that this product was never going to get off the ground. Big families won't be able to afford the 3D televisions, along with whatever you need for what amounts to a few programs planned so far that plan on using the technology.
So in short.. I'm going to hate working on a set with 3D cameras are on, they're going to cause so much headaches.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment