Saturday, March 19, 2005
Get Ready for the Return of Sensoround
Excerpt from Larry's Slashdot reply to: Lucas To Redo Star Wars In 3-D
... Maybe the 3-D will be good, maybe not. I have wondered why Disney/Pixar haven't re-released their films in 3-D. Some have been presented in IMAX (though not 3D IMAX as far as I know). Here you know the 3D re-rendering will be spot on. Technically it would have to me 2-orders of magnitude easier than converting 2D photographs. Disney will be Making a Toy Story 3 (alone), I'll be very surprised if it isn't Toy Story 3D.
That said, my viewing experience at home on HDTV is often better than what you see at the Cineplex (especially stuff shot directly in digital, rather than converted from film). I would gladly pay full ticket price to watch my stuff at home while in recent release if I could get it. The point is Cinemas will increasingly have to compete with a viewing experience in the home that rivals that of the theater. Just going wider (Cinemascope) like they did in '50s (and wider yet in the late '60s with Cinerama) won't cut it. People will increasingly start to wait for Movies to come out in Blu-Ray or HD-DVD if the industry doesn't do something to augment the viewing experience. Start looking for things like Sensoround to make a comeback, introduced for the 1974 disaster flick "Earthquake." Also expect several variations of motion simulation, some quite cheap like tilting chairs, and other that require individual pods with 6 degrees of freedom and everything in-between.
