Every time we see another 3-D film — we just saw “Up” this past weekend, which I highly recommend — I tell my kids the same thing: Someday, when you have kids of your own, you’ll tell them stories about how when you were a kid, you had to go to a movie theater to see 3-D. And they will look at you as if you grew up in the Stone Age.
3-D has come to the multiplex movie theater in a big way in recent years. While 3-D projection systems have been available in big cities for many years, only recently has the technology propagated to the suburbs. According to the National Association of Theater Owners, the U.S. now has 2,385 3-D screens out of a total of 38,853 screens nationwide. That’s a huge increase since March 2008, little more than a year ago, when the number of 3-D screens was estimated at 1,040. And the recession may have slowed down the rate of expansion — many predictions have called for as many as 10,000 3-D screens in the U.S. by next year.
There is a certain irony to 3-D’s explosion in the U.S. theatrical market just as the long-planned DTV transition occurs in the broadcast market. It’s a reflection of how slow and how fast the pace of change can be: Just as the public policy is finally completed, some twenty years after the “high definition” debate began in the U.S. because Japan was seen as gaining an upper hand with its “HiVision” HD technology, now with 3-D consumers become aware again of yet another nifty technology their TV sets lack.
