3D TV – Is it really the future of watching football?

On the 31^st of January 2010, a select few lucky wabbits were treated to a glimpse of the future. Arsenal vs Manchester United became the first live sporting event to be broadcast in 3D, in 9 select pubs around the United Kingdom, and presumably some tense darkened executive screening rooms somewhere at Sky HQ, not to mention Rupert Murdoch’s secret underground volcano lair. With 3D ready TVs going on pre-sale this week and Sky announcing today that they’ll launch their new 3D channel on April 3^rd for the visit of Chelsea to Old Trafford, the future of football viewing is already here. But as we get a step closer to virtual reality, in actual reality, will it catch on?

3D is great in occasional titillating isolation, but will it really become a must have en masse in the way Sky, James Cameron et all clearly hope it will? Sky will not make their remaining 5 or so 3D football broadcasts available in the home this season. Only select pubs will have access to that content initially. The channel will only showcase adverts for the technology itself for home viewing, which will be free for Sky HD customers until a subscription worthy package can be worked out next year. This will likely just consist of fish or lions or planets or something, as anyone who’s ever been to the IMAX cinemas when there isn’t a decent film on will no doubt be accustomed to. Quite what will be worth watching for the first few years is debatable. HD TV is still the new darling, and even it hasn’t settled particularly comfortably with the populace so far. Every new TV may be “ready” but it’s owners aren’t, and don’t particularly want to shell out considerably more moolah just to watch a rather sparse amount of exclusive channels and the option of seeing Pat Butcher in graphic detail. 3D worthy programs are likely to be even sparser, and while football is a great flagship format for the technology, Emmerdale isn’t, and the required necessity of looking like a wally in silly glasses is a stumbling block the genre can’t avoid. The glasses themselves are rumored to be priced in or around the hundred pound mark, so the notion of mass gatherings around your mates house to watch balls fly in your face for an hour and a half will be redundant if your mates aren’t willing to shill out a wedge to buy their own specs. If you can get them cheap – and Sky are said to be working out ways of making takeaway disposable ones available for the pub broadcasts – then it would still require all in attendance to possess them for any universal fun to be had. Anyone without the required eye-wear would feel like a right melon at a carvery. Even the rather untroubling palaver of whacking on your frames to simply settle down with your Mrs to watch Ground Force 3D will no doubt get a little tiresome after a while. Finding a stray remote is hassle enough as it is. It’s an exclusive, rather than inclusive activity, which at least HD is untroubled by.

I’m probably sounding like a grizzled old curmudgeon by now, and I should probably say that I’m incredibly excited by the idea of watching Hull vs Burnley in a glorious extra dimension, but I just can’t see the lasting mass appeal. I can’t imagine the giddiness of ducking to avoid a Wayne Rooney pile driver being anything other than a fleeting amusement, and the compulsion to worry if a Rory Delap throw in has knocked anything off the coffee table would probably get quite annoying eventually. As would the notoriously large amount of spiting that goes on in football. I certainly don’t want to pay half the price of a car to re-create the sensation of being spat at. I could just go down to AFC Wimbledon in an MK Dons shirt to do that. And why now? We’ve had the technology to create spectrum 3D on television for decades and it’s never caught on before. Has Avatar really provided the tipping point? I suppose it’s proved that people will lap up any old rubbish as long as it’s rendered in realistic perspective, but 99.99% of all TV programs aren’t even fractionally as well made as Avatar – even if they’re no doubt all better scripted. It also took Cameron 4 years to make that, I’m not really prepared to wait that long for them to make an episode of Deal or No Deal worthy of buying a 3 grand Telly for.

And what is the end game? Holographic projections have already been used in football. Peter Schmeichel beamed a couple of Aalborg players into a Danish studio to interview before one of their Champions League ties last year (see below).  Is this the future? Wayne Rooney would possibly be much better at interviews if he didn’t have to look anyone in they eye, but how far can we take it beyond that? Will we eventually be able to combine the two technologies and fill out entire stadiums to watch 3D holographic projections of matches anywhere in the world? Will people even need to go to football in 50 years? Or will they simply be able to slip a Petr Cech style helmet on and be transported into a virtual Kop. It’s all fascinating Buck Rogers stuff, but I still don’t know if it’ll catch on. And if it doesn’t, does that mean the end of the obsession? Is this just a fleeting fad like it was in the 80s or is it here to stay regardless of how many units Sky can shift?

I just can’t answer that, so maybe someone at Sky could give me an invite to their next screening so I could investigate this vital matter further (cough cough, nudge nudge, wink wink.) It’s certainly interesting while it lasts. If only they could work out a way of viewing it without the glasses and we’d be laughing. Sort it out boffins – to infinity, and beyond!

You can follow Oscar in glorious low definition 2D on Twitter; http://twitter.com/oscarpyejeary He cares deeply for you, and your inane natterings.