[by Michael Grotticelli, Broadcast Engineering]

From this May to September — the typical summer movie season — American motion picture studios will release 16 movies in the 3-D format. That’s more than double the number last year.

From their financial performance so far, movie executives are running scared.

Next up are the most anticipated summer releases. “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” is due from Paramount Studios on July 1, and then, two weeks later, comes Part 2 of Part 7 of the “Harry Potter” series from Warner Brothers. The performance of these two films will go a long way in determining whether 3-D movies are boom or bust for the summer.

So far, things are looking bad. Ripples of fear spread across Hollywood after “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” which cost Walt Disney Studios an estimated $400 million to make and market, did poor 3-D business in North America.

Event movies have typically done 60 percent of their business in 3-D. However, “Stranger Tides” sold just 47 percent in 3-D. “The American consumer is rejecting 3D,” Richard Greenfield, an analyst at the financial services company BTIG, wrote of the “Stranger Tides” results.

The Memorial Day holiday did not give studio chiefs much 3-D comfort. “Kung Fu Panda 2,” a Paramount Pictures release of a DreamWorks Animation film, sold $53.8 million in tickets from Thursday to Sunday, a soft total, and 3-D was only 45 percent of the business.

Consumer rebellion over high 3-D ticket prices plays a role, and the novelty of putting on the 3-D glasses is wearing off, analysts told the New York Times. However, there is a deeper problem. While 3-D has provided an enormous boost to the strongest films such as “Avatar” and “Alice in Wonderland,” it has actually undercut lesser quality films that are trying to milk the format for extra dollars.

“Audiences are very smart,” Greg Foster, the president of Imax Filmed Entertainment, told the Times. “When they smell something aspiring to be more than it is, they catch on very quickly.”

Clouding the picture is a discrepancy between the performance of 3-D films in North America and overseas. 3-D is doing very well internationally. Disney’s “Stranger Tides,” for example, did about $256 million in box office abroad, becoming the biggest international debut of all time.

Hollywood, however, needs the American market for overall success, and the situation at the moment is dire. Box office performance in the first six months of 2011 was soft. Revenue fell about 9 percent compared with last year, while movie attendance was down 10 percent.

This comes along with equally poor performance for home entertainment sales. In all formats, including paid streaming and DVDs, home entertainment revenue fell almost 10 percent, according to figures from the Digital Entertainment Group.

Studio executives acknowledge that the motion picture industry needs to sort out its 3-D production strategy, which may lead to a cut-back in 3-D features for release.

“With a blockbuster-filled holiday weekend skewing heavily toward 2-D, and 3-D ticket sales dramatically underperforming relative to screen allocation, major studios will hopefully begin to rethink their 3-D rollout plans for the rest of the year and 2012,” Greenfield told the newspaper.

See the original post here: http://blog.broadcastengineering.com/3-D/2011/06/27/hollywood’s-getting-nervous-as-audiences-grows-weary-of-new-3-d-films/

[by Michael Grotticelli, Broadcast Technology]

Leading 3-D manufacturers like Sony, Panasonic and Samsung do not seem worried that a lack of enthusiasm for 3-D by North American audiences could cause lasting damage to sales. All three have introduced expensive new, high-end 3-D viewing technology for the home.

Both Sony and Panasonic have introduced new projectors. Sony’s VPL-HW30ES incorporates the latest lamp technology, dynamic lamp control system and a brightness level three times greater than the company’s first 3-D home projector, the VPL-VW90ES.

The VPL-HW30ES is equipped with Sony’s High Frame Rate 1920 x 1089 SXRD chip. This helps to reproduce sharp and smooth motion, and reduces the motion blur for a crisper image (Motionflow) and delivers a dynamic contrast ratio of 70,000:1 and brightness of 1,300lm. No complex lens switching between 2-D and 3-D is needed.

Panasonic has announced the development of a 3-D Full HD home theatre projector. In the earlier PT-AE4000E model, the company used 2.35:1 extra wide aspect cinemascope viewing with its Lens Memory Feature. Now it expands the viewing experience to 3-D, bringing a new level of large screen viewing experiences to the home.

The new 3-D home theatre projector was developed in collaboration with Panasonic AVC Networks’ Emotive Technology Development Centre and Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory engineers, who have taken key roles in meeting industry standards for 3-D.

Samsung boosted the resolution of its 3-D monitors. The company introduced a 4000 x 2000 pixel resolution 3-D television set (so-called 4k-by-2k). The number of typical pixels was multiplied by a factor of 100,000

That was done by shrinking pixels and using better transistors. In most cases, manufacturers can’t miniaturize pixels because the current silicon transistors can’t conduct electrons fast enough to work with smaller parts. Samsung, however, has metal oxide transistors, which can and do very well at conducting electrons quickly.

In addition, the implementation of the metal oxide backplanes is inexpensive and is one of the few mixes — IGZO: indium, gallium, and zinc — that work with current technology.

Current HDTV video comes in 1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720-pixel resolutions, depending on whether it’s 720p or 1080i/1080p. A 1080p television set has a bit over 2 million pixels, so 4k-by-2k would a major leap in performance.

See the original post here: http://blog.broadcastengineering.com/3-D/2011/06/28/slowing-3-d-sales-doesn’t-deter-television-manufacturers/