Studios may be keeping 3D Blu-ray titles like “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” off shelves in favor of licensing them exclusively to electronics companies to use as bait to buy 3D TVs and 3D Blu-ray players, but Fox has found a way to make “Ice Age” available in 3D to an even bigger market than Blu-ray: it will be released on DVD this Tuesday, Sept. 21.
Consumers don’t need a 3D Blu-ray player or a special 3DTV. This will play on any DVD player and any TV. Expensive battery-operated shutter glasses with dark polaroid lenses aren’t even required. The $29.98 2-disc set, which is priced at $22 on Amazon.com, includes four pairs of the familiar cardboard glasses with newly designed magenta and green lenses. The second disc is a 2D version of the movie.
The 3D is displayed in a second-generation version of the original anaglyph system from Burbank-based TrioScopics is said to be brighter and more colorful than the 3D used on Warner Home Video’s “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and a bonus feature on Dreamworks Home Entertainment’s “Monsters vs Aliens.”
A Fox media release calls it the “eye-popping TrioScopics 3D format” with “breakthrough glasses design” that offer “long term viewing comfort – you’ll forget you’re wearing glasses…”
Over the past several years several studios, including Disney and Warner, released movies in 3D on DVD, including a Hannah Montana concert film and the most recent chapter in the “Final Destination” franchise, but that was before a standard was established and a market is trying to be created for a new digital full HiDef form of 3D for the Blu-ray Disc format.
John Lowry of TrioScopics has maintained for the past couple of years that his less expensive system offers quality 3D to the far larger DVD market immediately while awaiting the potential 3D Blu-ray market to develop.
But others in the industry worry that this kind of system could undermine the take-up rate of the 3D Blu-ray market, and perhaps 3DTVs in general. Worse, there is concern that offering a second 3D technology will confuse the consumer and cause them to unfairly judging the merits of home 3D on the TrioScopics process rather than via a theoretically superior HiDef system.
Lowry will be showcasing 10-minutes of scenes from the 3D DVD of “Ice Age” and other titles today (Wednesday, Sept. 15) at the 3D Entertainment Summit at the Universal Hilton in Los Angeles and will be on a panel at 11 a.m. to discuss the monetization of existing 2D movies for 3D.
— By Scott Hettrick
Anaglyph 3d (red&green) wash out the colors of any decenty picture quality & pales in comparision to the Full HD 3D of the new Stereoscopic 3D on blu-ray.
The electronic companies have another thing coming; the shutter glasses are a joke, and they are no better then the green/magneta 3D experience(which I feel are superior to the new shutter systems they are raping you with.) What the studios fail to realize is the technology that is powering the new nintendo 3DS; which requires no glasses. This my friend is going to squash every sale of 3D HDTV sets. I applaud Fox for putting out a 3D movie for every one to enjoy without shelling out a bundle of money.I saw the demo of Monsters vs Aliens, and it royally sucked. The 3D was non existent. On the plus side; Ice Age DoftheD on dvd green/magneta was amazing. I am a true 3D fan, and the technology with the shutter glasses is old tech. That was around sine 1981. The companies are just double dipping. Shame on them!!! Stay away from shutter 3D systems; they are not the same as the imax shutter systems which you loved. Take care.
“Eye-popping?” Triscopics picture quality has not improved compared to what the process delivered with Coraline on Blu-ray and Bob’s Big Break on DVD (packaged with a non-3D Monsters vs Aliens) then I think it is lame. Let’s put it out of it’s misery.