> all of the subsequent movies and consumer facing products were just there to try and recoup some value from these (probably bad) investments that were made for just this one film.
Interesting. First time I've heard it mentioned that way.
My viewpoint at the time was that the 3d craze in tvs' was more due to manufacturers looking for the next big thing to compete with each other, and Avatar had come out recently and was doing well. Thus "let's add 3d" and every other kitchen sink / feature they could find. Thus smart tv's now, etc.
Television manufacturers are constantly looking for a premium feature, since the profits are so slim on the lower end.
3D was one such feature, but had a benefit for non-3D movies in that it needed significantly more backlighting for active glasses to not give an overly dim experience.
3D was also odd in that normally such features get adopted first by a higher tier "early adopter" market - but because of Avatar and other family friendly 3D content, it was generally purchased by families. Perhaps its biggest early negative was expensive active glasses handed to young children.
HDR was another, but is somewhat spoiled by the lack of any good certifications/branding. Anything which can _process_ a HDR signal will be sold as a HDR television.
Curved was so weird to me, but that is because I always mount my televisions. Curved was a byproduct of the processes allowing for it. Since the curve has a fixed radius, it does lock you into a viewing distance 'range' that isn't always going to work for people.
4K was yet another, and partly what pushed 3D out in the US market. Active 3D also had a hard time with pixel ghosting - each frame was different from the previous.
Smart TVs are a different approach - sell advertisement and premium channels, I suspect in the future even put services like Uber Eats on TVs, all for secondary revenue channels to make up for how tight the primary sales channel is.
I think the whole thing stems from a need to do something with all the expensive 3D camera technology that Cameron had developed, and all of the expensive 3D projectors (and even more expensive 3D imax projectors) that all the cinemas had to buy for Avatar. Whether the TV manufacturers were just jumping on the perceived hype I don’t know. But as may be obvious I have a lot of contempt personally for James Cameron for inflicting this horrible technology on the world for around a decade.
I see you’re making a lot of points on this post, but I did some quick reading and it seems like you might have some facts wrong. Maybe this is because you’re reading a hype article from 2009 published just 1 day before Avatar was released in theaters and also relying on your memory versus reading a 10+ year retrospective article. I’m not saying that Cameron and Avatar did zilch for 3D in the film industry. I’m saying that some of your justifications about the level and ways of impact might not be accurate.
For example, you keep saying that a lot of theaters had to buy expensive projectors for Avatar. However, the article you linked to does not imply this. Sure, I imagine some theaters did buy digital projectors in time for the premiere. But all the article says is that many theaters didn’t have digital projectors even just 1 day before Avatar’s release. So no, most theaters weren’t buying digital projectors and 3D glasses specifically for Avatar. They couldn’t have. They bought them afterwards for all of the _expected _ future 3D movies. The retrospective article I mentioned above explicitly states this.
Also, the statistics used in your article are a bit misleading. Sure lots of cinemas around the world did not have digital projectors at the time, BUT the _big_ ones (that serve millions of consumers versus hundreds or thousands per year) did have digital projectors.
Also, for example, you keep saying that studios “needed to do something” with Cameron’s 3D technology since it was expensive to develop. However, this is not true at all. Only Cameron used his technology. Most of the films released after Avatar weren’t even shot in 3D. They were shot in 2D and then converted to 3D which led to poor viewing experiences.
Avatar’s influence on the 3D industry seems less direct than you’re making it seem.
Here’s the 2022 retrospective article titled “What James Cameron and ‘Avatar’ Did (and Didn’t Do) for 3D filmmaking”:
Interesting. First time I've heard it mentioned that way.
My viewpoint at the time was that the 3d craze in tvs' was more due to manufacturers looking for the next big thing to compete with each other, and Avatar had come out recently and was doing well. Thus "let's add 3d" and every other kitchen sink / feature they could find. Thus smart tv's now, etc.