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I have been told that a 3D tv has been developed where in you don't need the silly glasses.

http://thenextweb.com/asia/2010/08/24/3d-tv-no-glasses-required-coming-soon-from-toshiba/




V

Yeah, the Nintendo 3DS doesn't use glasses either, but it just means its even more important to be sat at the perfect viewing angle or else it doesn't work apparently. Not really an issue with a handheld console hovering in front of your face but might be troublesome with a telly.

Cinema 3D (realD is the latest system is it not?) has never blown me away, like Radiator says the movement just kills it and essentially you're looking at a darker and less crisp picture than you would be in 2D. Imax has really impressed me though the couple of times I've seen it, the depth can be pretty amazing. Most often its distracting more than anything else though. Roger Ebert (who's prone to talking a lot of pish generally I think) made the really good point that in using 3D you're actually limiting yourself, as drawing attention to things on different levels of the 2D image using focus techniques is such a large part of the director's language, and with 3D that gets lost because everything has to have the same depth of field. So essentially in 3D you're wasting the other dimensions.

I've probably articulated that really badly, but it certainly made sense when he said it.

I presume that with a 3D telly everyone will have to sit within a certain angle to the sides of the screen, or will that not effect your viewing pleasure 

Probably, plus the fact that the glasses themselves cost a fair bit, and even if you bought for everyone in your household if you had any guests over they'd have to do without. I can't see 3D at home being anything more than a faff myself.

OK, perhaps hate is a little strong, but what prevents me from buying one is that while HD is fine and dandy, SDTV and DVDs (ie 90% of the content I'd view on it) look significantly worse that they do on my CRT, so in effect it's a downgrade (a £300 downgrade!).

I've heard it argued that this is because LCDs show up all the faults that CRTs hide, but having researched it (and having once worked in a TV shop), I know that that simply isn't true - even on the very best LCD screen the SD picture quality is worse - old movies and certain TV series especially can look like horrendous, grainy mess - even worse than VHS!

Plasma screens are way superior, but more expensive and I don't want/couldn't afford a telly that big anyway. LCD beating Plasma is like Betamax/VHS - the inferior platform won for some reason.

So until they can make a flatscreen TV that displays SD well, or until HDTV becomes standard, I ain't buying.

Ah I see, fair point. I think a lot of it depends on what you play them on though, if your dvd player upscales then it actually looks pretty good (the 360 upscales dvds and I've found it looks better than on my CRT). My worry had been latency, which I thought would kill my gaming, but the Samsungs have a setting to almost cancel that out.

On prices, its not just HMV I find it with, I find if I'm after a graphic novel Forbidden Planet will 99.9% of the time charge whatever the rrp is, when Amazon will always have at least a couple of quid knocked off (and sometimes less than half the price FP are after).

I rarely ever buy anything (games/films/books-wise) in the high street shops these days, but bigger supermarkets can be a treasure trove of bargains - it's always worth a look on the DVD aisle - I came out of Asda with a huge pile of DVDs the other day - all between £2 and £4 each.

Truth be told I feel a bit anxious about spending more than a fiver on a DVD now as it really feels that as a format, DVD is where VHS was 7 or 8 years ago - rapidly approaching obsolescence (just as I have managed to amass an impressive collection of them!). It's a dilemna - I refuse to 'upgrade' to Blu-Ray, and doubt I ever will as I hate LCD TVs, but DVDs are starting to feel like more and more like a waste of money.

I had to restrain myself from buying Kick-Ass on DVD the other day - I really want it, but thinking about it if I ever want to watch it I can just 'rent' it from iTunes and watch it (in HD) on my iMac.

The old physical media habit is really tough to break though - the collector impulse is quite strong, and I still get an irrational urge to 'own' things...

Just out of curiosity, why the LCD hate? I'm not gonna argue with you are anything, just curious what it is you don't like about them, personally I've found switching up to LCD a revelation.

Online's definitely the way to go, I tend to look in HMV for an idea of what's out so I can order them off Amazon when I get home.

I mean, today I went in to have a look at their games sale, and the prices were pretty insulting. They genuinely don't seem to have a clue what certain titles are costing elsewhere.

Heard a few reports of it being fairly buggy (with bosses falling through the map and stalling the game etc.) but otherwise a lot of fun. Reckon I'll rent it.

Have tried this demo twice now, and both times I've found I get bored before the end so I still haven't finished it! I know it should be right up my alley, but something isn't clicking for me. Love the visual style but I think its the controls, in trying to make it really fast and frantic the conbat just doesn't have that meaty feeling I like. May still go back to it a third time though!

Every time I've been to see an Iron Man/Batman/X-Men/Spiderman (well maybe just Spiderman 2) movie I've come out feeling pretty pumped and walked into Forbidden Planet to get me some of that in comic form, and every time I end up looking at 5 different alternate universes and feeling utterly confused.

Case in point, loved The Darkness videogame so picked up a compendium of the first bunch of comics (I know its not Marvel or DC). It was expensive, about £45 for a GN but it was massive and I was really excited about how much reading there was in it...until it turned out that most of the stories made no sense because despite the book collecting every issue of The Darkness it was constantly punctuated with "SEE WITCHBLADE ISSUE #7" type notes and a whole heap of the stories didn't resolve because they'd crossed over into another character's comic and been concluded there. It were shit.

Marvel and DC are the absolute worst for it. Its all completely impenetrable, and if as is to be expected a lot of the audience grows apart from it and stops buying it, there simply won't be new readers filling their shoes because they'll probably all be as confused as me.

Just read this, I really liked it. I don't have the kind of comic budget that stretches to trying out heaps of new stuff, so the idea of another anthology to compliment my 2000AD/Meg sub makes me happy.

The content was great too, I'm sure when KickAss 2 warms up it'll be fun, although I don't like the idea of it being served in such tiny chunks. If it's gonna be the size of the first book then it'll be a a loooooong time before this finishes.

Really liked Turf, even in a story about vampires [spoiler]the aliens seemed out of leftfield and really unexpected, and if the turf war turns out to be between aliens and vampires with gangsters in the middle then that's a pretty sellable concept.[/spoiler] Didn't find it too wordy either, there was a lot of reading in it but apart from the vampire backstory exposition it didn't seem forced to me. Lovely art too.

As seems to be common, I didn't follow parts of Rex Royd at all. It seems like it could have benefited from a prologue chapter at least explaining the world and the backdrop to the story, it just seemed a mess as it is. In more experienced hands it would have actually been a decent wee story [spoiler]and the twist wasn't a bad twist, there just wasn't enough breathing room or cohesion in the story for it to have any weight.[/spoiler]I chuckled at a couple of the very Boyle lines though.

Nemesis seems really good and I gather is pretty popular so it'll be nice to read that. I notice Millar gets a bit of bad press around these parts but I really enjoyed Wanted and Kick Ass so I guess I must like him. Oh and the short strip at the end was a nice little bonus.

The text features were pretty poor, but were over really quickly and made up such a small part of the reading experience that I barely even registered their shitness as a negative. I will definitely be getting issue 2 and can see me getting a sub if the comic to feature ratio remains as is.

Not read it yet, but nice to see that t-shirt offer, have jumped right on that.

Really really glad you shared this here, its kept me going through a very dull and quiet friday night shift! That Showscan stuff is absolutely fascinating. Cheers!

Shit- really? I kind of hope they lose this in development hell.

The Tower is my personal Favourite thing of Kings, and while it could be awesome- It won't match what is in my head.

Kind of my feeling too. I think The Dark Tower is incredible, but I worry a lot of what seems really otherworldly and creepy/powerful/fully awesome on the page and in my head might not translate at all well to screen. Saying that, it won't hurt the books, I'll always have them so I am curious to see how it turns out.

After failing to find it in just about every newsagent/supermarket/weird little shop in Glasgow I eventually found it in Forbidden Planet. That made me chuckle a little as the whole "for people who don't go into comics shops" marketing strategy came to mind.

I'm guessing that just means its sold really well. Haven't read it yet, but after a quick leaf it seems like there's plenty of comic stuff. If its going to be "lad mag-esque" I would take pictures of boobs over articles about Manson and being stoned mind you, but that's just me.

I'd be well up for wearing a pretty simple tee with a 2000AD logo on the chest like that, and the old school logos have extra cool factor I think. That distressed look works great too.

Oh and I'd wear the hell out of that Tharg one and all.