[by Meant To Be Seen]

Some interesting news out today.  With an expected release date towards the end of June, Nvidia has announced plans to release an inexpensive $99 version of their GeForce 3D Vision glasses.

We haven’t sampled a pair yet, but the big difference is that these units are wired rather than wireless (which are only $50 more, by the way).  To make the glasses more comfortable, the frame is more flexible around the ears.  For those concerned about a price versus image quality relationship, the lenses are identical to what Nvidia has been marketing until now. 

There are some byproduct advantages to wired 3D glasses.  First, the wired versions include compatibility with portable security devices – so glasses theft will be greatly reduced from retail and LAN party environments.  The synchronization is also getting taken care of through the USB port, which means the glasses won’t strangely go blinkety-blink-blink when there is more than one pair of 3D Vision glasses in the room (caused by IR interference).

During MTBS’ press briefing, we asked about the occasional synchronization issue with the 3D Vision glasses where they occasionally lose synch with the odd frame here and there.  Would there be a difference between the wired and wireless versions?  According to Andrew Fear, Senior Product Manager at Nvidia,  the 275.XX GeForce 3D Vision drivers have already rectified that issue, and it has nothing to do with whether or not the glasses are connected via USB.

In our opinion, when all is said and done, it comes down to pricing strategy.  At $99 a pop, it’s only $50 away from what tenured 3D gamers paid for their first LCD shutter glasses on eBay with the added bonus of true software support (from Nvidia).

With the display industry moving towards standardized 120Hz and polarized displays, it no longer makes sense to market shutter glasses for $250 a pair.  The bigger financial opportunities are likely accelerated performance hardware sales (thanks to power hungry 3D gamers), improved content sales (by 3D gamers looking for 3D content), and mass market bundling (software/hardware licensing with vendors).  These advantages equally translate for AMD and Intel, which explains why they don’t care so much about making money from 3D glasses, and are more interested in content and 3D technology enabling relationships (e.g. DDD, iZ3D, etc.).

The exception to the rule will be 3D glasses or 3D displays that are obvious improvements over the status quo.  When will we be seeing product releases or announcements like this?  Not sure…maybe mid-summer?

See the original post here; http://www.mtbs3d.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12499&catid=35

[By BROOKS BARNES and MICHAEL CIEPLY, New York Times]

Has the 3-D boom already gone bust? It’s starting to look that way — at least for American moviegoers — even as Hollywood prepares to release a glut of the gimmicky pictures.

Ripples of fear spread across Hollywood last week 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. While event movies have typically done 60 percent of their business in 3-D, “Stranger Tides” sold just 47 percent in 3-D. “The American consumer is rejecting 3-D,” Richard Greenfield, an analyst at the financial services company BTIG, wrote of the “Stranger Tides” results.

One movie does not make a trend, but the Memorial Day weekend did not give studio chiefs much comfort in the 3-D department. “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 45 percent of the business, according to Paramount.

Consumer rebellion over high 3-D ticket prices plays a role, and the novelty of putting on the funny glasses is wearing off, analysts say. But there is also a deeper problem: 3-D has provided an enormous boost to the strongest films, including “Avatar” and “Alice in Wonderland,” but has actually undercut middling movies that are trying to milk the format for extra dollars.

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

Muddying the picture is a contrast between the performance of 3-D movies in North America and overseas. If results are troubling domestically, they are the exact opposite internationally, where the genre is a far newer phenomenon. Indeed, 3-D screenings powered “Stranger Tides” to about $256 million on its first weekend abroad; Disney trumpeted the figure as the biggest international debut of all time.

With results like that at a time when movies make 70 percent of their total box office income outside North America, do tastes at home even matter?

After a disappointing first half of the year, Hollywood is counting on a parade of 3-D films to dig itself out of a hole. From May to September, the typical summer season, studios will unleash 16 movies in the format, more than double the number last year. Among the most anticipated releases are “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” due from Paramount on July 1, and Part 2 of Part 7 of the “Harry Potter” series, arriving two weeks later from Warner Brothers.

The need is urgent. The box-office performance in the first six months of 2011 was soft — revenue fell about 9 percent compared with last year, while attendance was down 10 percent — and that comes amid decay in home-entertainment sales. In all formats, including paid streaming and DVDs, home entertainment revenue fell almost 10 percent, according to the Digital Entertainment Group.

The first part of the year held a near collapse in video store rentals, which fell 36 percent to about $440 million, offsetting gains from cut-price rental kiosks and subscriptions. In addition, the sale of packaged discs fell about 20 percent, to about $2.2 billion, while video-on-demand, though growing, delivered total sales of less than a quarter of that amount.

At the box office, animated films, which have recently been Hollywood’s most reliable genre, have fallen into a deep trough, as the category’s top three performers combined — “Rio,” from Fox; “Rango,” from Paramount; and “Hop,” from Universal — have had fewer ticket buyers than did “Shrek the Third,” from DreamWorks Animation, after its release in mid-May four years ago.

“Kung Fu Panda 2” appears poised to become the biggest animated hit of the year so far; but it would have to stretch well past its own predecessor to beat “Shrek Forever After,” another May release, which took in $238.7 million last year.

For the weekend, “The Hangover: Part II” sold $118 million from Thursday to Sunday, easily enough for No. 1. “Kung Fu Panda 2” was second. Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” was third with $39.3 million for a new total of $152.9 million. “Bridesmaids” (Universal Pictures) was fourth with $16.4 million for a new total of about $85 million. “Thor” (Marvel Studios) rounded out the top five with $9.4 million for a new total of $160 million.

Studio chiefs acknowledge that the industry needs to sort out its 3-D strategy. Despite the soft results for “Kung Fu Panda 2,” animated releases have continued to perform well in the format, overcoming early problems with glasses that didn’t fit little faces. But general-audience movies like “Stranger Tides” may be better off the old-fashioned way.

“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,” Mr. Greenfield said on Friday.

See the original story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/business/media/30panda.html?_r=1&emc=eta1