ABI Research anticipates that mobile devices may turn out to be the best form factor to bring 3D technology into mainstream markets. By 2015, 3D devices—including smartphones, notebooks, mobile Internet devices, and portable game players—will comprise over 11% of the total mobile devices market.

“Emerging 3D technologies for mobile devices do not require the user to wear glasses to view the 3D content,” says senior analyst Victoria Fodale. “While there are still challenges with glasses-free 3D on televisions, is it is possible on smartphones and other mobile devices.” Glasses-free technologies require an optimum viewing distance and a screen size that is better suited for single-viewer applications like those used on mobile devices.

And according to Fodale, “Unlike 3D TVs, the mobile category has a fast replacement cycle. This means consumers are more likely to buy a mobile device with 3D in an upgrade purchase much sooner than they would purchase 3D in a larger form factor such as a flat-screened television.”

Mobile 3D devices will be driven by three key applications: creation of user-generated 3D content by integrated video and still cameras; playback of 3D content; and 3D gaming. Some 3D devices will also support the conversion of 2D content to 3D content.

It is still a very early market: in late 2010, notebooks and smartphones are the only mobile device categories that are shipping with 3D capabilities, and most of those have been limited to specific areas, in particular Japan. As glasses-free technologies are refined and gain broader market acceptance, 3D will spread to other regions and mobile device categories, including media tablets and netbooks.

A new ABI Research study, “3D Mobile Devices” (http://www.abiresearch.com/research/1006094), examines the key market and technology trends for 3D in mobile devices including in smartphones, notebooks, netbooks, media tablets, MIDs, and portable game players. It highlights recent releases of 3D mobile devices from leading OEMs, and other issues influencing the 3D market. The study also examines 3D enabling technologies: stereoscopic, autostereoscopic, parallax barrier, and lenticular lens, and includes comprehensive forecasts of mobile device shipments and attach rates.

The report is included in two ABI Research Services, Smartphones & Mobile Devices (http://www.abiresearch.com/products/service/Mobile_Devices_Research_Service), and Netbooks, MIDs and Mobile CE (http://www.abiresearch.com/products/service/Netbooks_MIDs_and_Mobile_CE).

ABI Research provides in-depth analysis and quantitative forecasting of trends in global connectivity and other emerging technologies. From offices in North America, Europe and Asia, ABI Research’s worldwide team of experts advises thousands of decision makers through 30+ research and advisory services. Est. 1990. For more information visit www.abiresearch.com, or call +1.516.624.2500.

Original press release here: http://www.hulu.com/watch/198802/modern-family-dance-dance-revelation#s-p1-so-i0

IMAGINE if Oscar voters in 1939 saw The Wizard of Oz only in black and white. Would they have nominated the film for best picture and best visual effects if the yellow brick road were just another shade of grey?

The filmmakers behind the latest 3D movies face just such a dilemma. Films in 3D require academy members to drive to a cinema, rather than just pop a DVD into their home players, to see the full depth of the work that went into them. But with a bumper crop of 3D films up for award consideration, it’s not clear how many Oscar voters will make that effort.

”We came out of last year’s award season having Avatar overshadow everything,” says Jim Chabin, president of the International 3D Society, a non-profit organisation that gives its own awards to 3D movies. ”This year has been scrappy.”

Visually ambitious 3D movies released this year include Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland, How to Train Your Dragon, Tangled and Tron.

Whether in animation or live action, 3D adds a level of difficulty for filmmakers, particularly in the category of special effects.

Most critics agreed 3D was deployed with particular dexterity in How to Train Your Dragon, an animated film about a teenage Viking who develops a special bond with a monster. The movie’s swooping, kinetic flying scenes earned praise from the Los Angeles Times film critic Betsy Sharkey, who called them ”a study in how nuance can actually complement the spectacle we’ve come to demand of 3D animation”.

While parts of the film left him cold, the Herald’s Paul Byrnes praised its ”thrilling flying sequences that make the movie enormous fun”.

DreamWorks Animation released How to Train Your Dragon in cinemas in March and began holding 3D screenings for members of the academy and various guilds in mid-August. But its directors, Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, must walk a fine line between exhorting their peers to see their movie in 3D and just hoping they watch it at all.

”If they have the chance to, we hope people will see it in 3D,” DeBlois says. ”There was a lot of effort put into the 3D experience and making it part of the storytelling and not just gimmickry.”

The 3D technology is still controversial among the industry’s artistic elite, most of whom have yet to make a 3D movie. ”For the academy, there’s some interest, but it’s somewhat divided because there are too many projects that come out where 3D is just used as a diversion,” DeBlois says.

Shoddy 3D has tainted the perception of the format. Many academy members are old enough to remember movies such as Jaws 3-D (1983) or The House of Wax (1953), which relied on a more rudimentary technology to create the impression of objects jumping off the screen.

”This digital 3D today is a completely different technical standard, and the storytelling can be done far more subtly,” Chabin says. ”But people have those memories, and it’s difficult to change those perceptions.”

More recently, the trend of conversions from 2D to 3D has raised hackles in the industry, with Clash of the Titans drawing criticism for its rushed, second-rate work. That kind of bad buzz can taint other conversions, like Alice in Wonderland, which underwent a much longer, more painstaking process.

The year The Wizard of Oz was released marked a major change at the Oscars; the creation of separate categories for colour and black-and-white cinematography, a distinction that endured until 1967. It’s unlikely, says Chabin, that the academy will introduce a 3D-specific category any time soon.

Full story posted here: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/oscar-angst-for-3d-filmmakers-with-fears-of-long-memories-20101230-19b7r.html