Buy Or Don’t Buy

Hey, remember when “Avatar” made lots of money? Let’s use that as an opportunity to learn all the wrong lessons!

From USA Today:

This week, ESPN announced plans to launch an all-sports 3D [television] network on June 11, starting with World Cup soccer and eventually including the Summer X Games (extreme sports) and college basketball and college football. ESPN 3D will have at least 85 live 3D sporting events, the Disney-owned network promises.

This is a horrible, horrible idea for many reasons. Let us number them:

1. 3D looks really cool and immersive on large screens. On smaller screens the effect will be like watching a will.i.am hologram*: You can appreciate the hard work behind it, but it still kind of sucks.

*That reference brought to you by time machine from November 2008

2. This goes double for sports.  The types of films that are released in 3D generally have two things going for them. One, they have a lot of stuff going on in many many different levels of vision. Two, they tend to fill their frames. In sports broadcasts, all the action is generally consigned to one plane, and there’s a lot of empty space in the frame*.

*That reference brought to you by my undergraduate education

3. People will put on 3D glasses to see a film because theaters are dark and being silly with strangers is part of the communal cinemagoing experience*. I venture that people will be much less likely to put on 3D glasses to watch TV in their well-lit living rooms. Also, isn’t TV in general supposed to be moving away from ‘appointment television’? What’s more ‘appointment’ than a show that requires to remember where you left a pair of glasses?

*That reference also brought to you by my undergraduate education. I need to get my $200K worth somehow.

4. Most importantly, though: Why sports? Like many people who enjoy watching sports, I am not very good at playing them. I cannot throw, I cannot catch, I cannot kick. I can’t run fast in a straight line, or in any direction at all.  Watching sports in 3D would be a reminder that I am not watching a virtual-reality chess match put on for my enjoyment and analysis, but an actual event played by actual humans who are in much better physical shape than I am.

I don’t know if my self-esteem could handle it.

(Photo edited from user Gatorsfan530’s photostream)