You're suggesting
That I kneel 1.5 meters away from the screen in a darkened room, to watch Hannah Montana?
Channel 4 to become Channel 3D tonight
Popping into Sainsbury’s tonight for up some milk and bread? Then don’t forget to grab your free 3D glasses, so you can enjoy Channel 4 in new depths – well, three – from tonight. At 9pm, the channel kicks of its “3D Week” with a three-dimensional look back at the life and times of... er... the Queen during her coronation in …
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Monday 16th November 2009 10:09 GMT adnim
A waste of the 4th dimension.
..."a three-dimensional look back at the life and times of... er... the Queen during her coronation in 1953."... "Some of the channel’s scheduled multi-dimensional treats will include Derren Brown's 3D Magic Spectacular, Friday the 13th Part III and a joint concert by Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus."
I am so grateful that watching this 3D content is optional. I shall be putting the 4th dimension to much better use.
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Monday 16th November 2009 10:48 GMT Jason Bloomberg
Anticipating Epic Fail
It doesn't look promising from wearing the glasses and watching the few trailers which had the 3D effect applied. Though that's perhaps because I didn't watch in a darkened room - one maybe would have thought they'd give instructions for use on the glasses themselves ?
The glasses are typical cardboard affairs, amber over left eye, blue over right. Don't know what happened in manufacturing but the way they were stamped out it seemed they weren't separated well in my Sainsbury's so if you picked up a pair, you got two. With no one bothering to spend time separating in-store it's perhaps not surprising they ran out.
It's generated a fair bit of publicity for C4 but I suspect it's going to put the case for 3D back decades. Those with glasses can try a pre-C4 preview here ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j-uRTsHC9k
I'm going to lie down now until the migraine passes.
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Monday 16th November 2009 10:48 GMT Dale 3
@OFI
You're going to be disappointed. It's blue/yellow this time, not blue/red or green/red (for AC @10:00, and no it's the crappy one not the jolly good cinema one).
Is anyone else secretly hoping this whole blue/yellow vs blue/red thing turns into another full scale format war? Haven't had one of those since HD-DVD, and it was quite entertaining (more so than the content, mostly).
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Monday 16th November 2009 11:21 GMT Eddie Edwards
@ format war
No, the format war will be between horizontal polarization on the left eye and horizontal polarization on the right eye.
You can't have a TV format war that doesn't involve everyone having to buy a new TV, and the losers having to buy two.
These glasses are free. The only losers in *that* format war would be the format creators, and we can't have that.
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Monday 16th November 2009 11:21 GMT Ian Ferguson
If you want some of the Channel 4 branded glasses
I saw hundreds of them decomposing in a storm drain yesterday. I have a feeling a delivery man couldn't be bothered :)
They don't seem to be putting on much worth watching. You know the old adage about the driver of new technology? I can't help feeling it would have been more successful if Channel Five did it in the old days when they screened late night soft porn.
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Monday 16th November 2009 11:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
(untitled)
:-( Knew I needed to pop into Sainsbury's when I was near them yesterday, But couldn't recall why. Not driving over 2 miles for a pair of cardboard/[plastic specs now.
That said I seem to recall they were supposed to be giving them away a few months ago, weren't they? I didn't see any there then anyway.
Why has C4 just teamed up with a single retailer for this?
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Monday 16th November 2009 12:17 GMT Stu
3D effect
I checked out the colorcode3d.com gallery pages using the 3D glasses to see how good it is, well, quite disappointing in fact.
Firstly, CGI artificially created content like the Monsters v Aliens trailor worked in certain scenes, but not others. In fact any CGI, including still images were pretty crap, probably due to the oversaturated colours they throw into those movies. They had a few real world videos on there and they mostly didn't work either.
Its true that for most people that bad headaches would hit you in a matter of ten minutes or so, it certainly happened to me. Its extremely uncomfortable to look at some things with them.
But what did work are the digital still photographs of daylight scenes, nice high resolution imagery. Theres one in a wooded area, a pathway leads into the woods, people are there, and a wooden fence lines the path on the left. Now that works great, but thats the only one, the rest are so so.
I think its this one - http://www.colorcode3d.com/gallery/cc3dgal/pages/27.htm
.
I noticed with lots of the 3D content that if you closed one eye you could still see details, edges/lines intended only for the other eye, which ruined the effect, and we're talking about content on ColorCode3Ds own website so the glasses are the right ones.
.
All in all a bit shit really. Quite how C4 expect you to sit thru at least 30 mins of this torture amazes me.
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Monday 16th November 2009 12:17 GMT GrahamT
Polarized with TV: not yet
The polarizing glasses you use for "Up" etc. have one eye horizontally polarized and one vertically polarized. The two projectors then have similar polarizers; take the glasses off and you see the two full colour pictures overlaid. This is a completely passive system and works very well with cinema, though it needs either two synced projectors or a special dual lens projector. The glasses though are very cheap. The 3D effect is streets ahead of the anaglyph method used by Channel 4.
That is the problem with TV, one source of light, and it isn't polarized. A new HD TV could have half the pixels horizontally and half vertically polarized, but that would need double the bandwidth, or the picture would be reduced definition, and the brightness would be reduced (half the light from each pixel). The advantage is that it would work with stereo and non-stereo images, though a 3D image viewed without glasses would be blurred.
Another system (IMAX 3D) uses glasses with electronic LCD shutters over each eye. An infrared beam then switches the eye on in sync with the frame being displayed, left and right being interleaved. This system could be used for TV with extra hardware (set-top box even) switching the glasses. The glasses are of course much more expensive and need batteries to be kept charged. Again double the bandwidth is needed, or frame rate is halved. Definition stays the same.
However, we are stuck with anaglyphs for current TVs.
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Monday 16th November 2009 13:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
Coloured glasses should have died in the 80s
The only good thing about the C4 glasses from Sainsburys is they are a much better build quality than the American ones - hopefully a sign the British public is slightly more discerning!
I ordered some superbowl ones off ebay to watch the 3D Chuck episode a while back and the 3D is terrible compared to RealD in the cinema. The blue (right) side is a very vivid blue while the brown side lets most colours through in a muted fashion. I guess this relies on the left eye seeing the image while the right eye gets the 3D effect. If you have eyes which are not equal you will therefore either see less 3D effect (weak right eye) or in my case a disproportionate amount of blue (weak left eye) and almost no 3D.
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Monday 16th November 2009 14:18 GMT Tony Paulazzo
Flesh for Frankenstein
Saw that in 3D at the ICA, best bit - Joe Dellasandra's arse bouncing up and down over the audience, but Chanel4 3D week, awesome fail. How about 50's it came from outer space (packaged flat in the DVD release but supposedly the 3D effect was subtle rather than things poking out the screen), The ant bully, Avatar preview (in 3D) with maybe a 'short' interview with Cameron, Beowulf, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (terrible 80s film but fun), even Jaws 3D would've been better than Friday 13th 3D and would've gotten a bigger audience.
In fact, whoever programmed that awful lineup...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_3-D_films
and use red/blue tech next time - Jeez! Hannah Montana, T4, Paul O Grady, Derren Brown - shudder. The queen thing sounds interesting from an historical perspective, shame I can't watch, Morrisons is the only local supermarket and I'm not driving 24 miles on the off chance they're not out of stock (love me some double negatives).
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Monday 16th November 2009 14:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Another form of Fail
Anyone "lucky" enough to get hold of some 3D glasses from Sainsbury's is in for another disappointment. The arms of the glasses are too short and you either have to bend the glasses between the lenses (acceptable workaround), hold them on your face at all times, or suffer sharp cardboard edges digging into the back of your ears. And before anyone suggests the obvious, I do not have a big head - in fact, it's probably smaller than the average.
Of course, using the glasses still gave me a headache after about 2 mins, but most C4 shows would do that anyway, so I doubt people will notice....
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Monday 16th November 2009 15:08 GMT Andy Livingstone
London-centric peasants
According to Sainsbury's Store Locator Web site page there are no stores anywhere near me.
They say " Please search again using a different UK postcode or town " Does that mean I need to move house ? Not really worth it for watching the English Coronation. At least it's not shown as often as the 1966 World Cup, I suppose.
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Monday 16th November 2009 15:34 GMT Where is Ben
Sainsbury's, C4 & Quality Street Wrappers...
... gives a ratings boost for a week whilst people fall over themselves to try something "fun".
Whereas if they removed Paul O'Grady, Historical trawls through the wastefulness of the monarchy, JLS and Hannah f**king Montana and replaced them with programs that can stimulate someone with a positive IQ might give them a permanent ratings boost.
Effort: 6
Idea: 3
Waste-of-money: 10
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Monday 16th November 2009 20:11 GMT SImon Hobson
RE: Broadcaster does something a bit different, for free
Err, well how about "broadcaster does something that'll completely f**k up the programmes for anyone without the glasses, and makes the glasses available through a store that doesn't have a branch anywhere near me, the effect isn't exactly great anyway - and then people complain.
Like the 3D Chuck episode - all it did for me was give me a headache. If only they'd shown a 2D version at a different time that I could have watched.
Well for me, when these 3D programs are on, there'll be plenty of stuff on other channels so I can ignore C4. Hmm, great marketing plan - put something on that's going to have the effect of making people switch to anything but your programmes !
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Monday 16th November 2009 21:27 GMT Trev 2
Guess CH4 execs are in London
Could have been worse than Sainsbury's - they could have used Waitrose as that's got even fewer stores in the north of England (actually non). Morrisons, Asda, Iceland or anywhere like that about 2 to 20 miles away, but Sainsbury's about 50 miles away and there's only 2 at that distance. Next one I think is 100 miles away.
Hope they put a note at the bottom of the screen or there's gonna be a lot of people thinking their digiboxes are faulty.
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Tuesday 17th November 2009 00:57 GMT Sooty
i asked in sainsbury's today
and got the great response i expected, they told me they'd run out a couple of days ago, as they were free 'people were just taking them'
i'm just a simple software developer, but surely you would assume free = every customer taking a couple regardless, and order accordingly, based on your average daily turnover.
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Tuesday 17th November 2009 05:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Sainsbury's
I work at a fairly small Sainsbury's branch. Anyway, I have been refilling the stand of 3D glasses for the past 3 weeks and our branch has dispensed between 500-2000 pairs a day during that time. We had a couple of palettes stacked with them.
I've seen a lot of people walk out with 10 or more pairs. I've spoken to people who say their children have over 100 pairs at home. I think Sainsbury's should have given the glasses away during customer transactions or upon request. Sainsbury's don't want to be policing a giveaway though, they'd get slated for that too. I personally blame the massive fail here on a few peoples' idiotic greed and unwillingness to control their brats.
The whole thing must have been badly promoted too. I don't watch much TV myself but since the thing started tonight, my branch was inundated with enquiries about the glasses (out of 80ish phone calls I took today, only about 5 *weren't* about the glasses!!!). I wasn't allowed to put up a sign stating that we had no glasses left; instead I had to nominate a colleague to deal with queues of glasses enquiries. I saw her addressing crowds of 15 or more customers at a time!
The whole thing is just crazy and sad. One of my colleagues kept a few pairs back for a customer, he called later to tell me when he'd arrive. He was driving almost an hour to get the damned things. All day long, we've had lynch mobs telling us that we should have got more stock!
BTW, same goes for Call of Duty @ £26. We had about 400 copies a day for 5 days, queues everywhere and complaints flying in constantly because we sold out so quickly. In a store that normally sells about 10-15 console games a day (total), how could they possibly have predicted that? We've stocked plenty of other chart titles, much cheaper than the competitors and nobody seems to notice or care.
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Tuesday 17th November 2009 15:34 GMT Arnie
Better than some
Well its not too bad. At least its the amber/blue as opposed to the red/green. Theres certainly a bit more colour going on than recent blu-ray 3d offerings (coroline and that horror) that use the green/red variation.
Whats piss poor is that Friday the 13th or the sexy flesh for frankenstien arent in HD. They would have been "keepers"
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
