“Don’t hold your breath for stand-alone 3-D Blu-ray of ‘Avatar’” |
| Don’t hold your breath for stand-alone 3-D Blu-ray of ‘Avatar’ Posted: 11 Nov 2010 09:45 AM PST Almost a year after its theatrical debut, "Avatar" is due to arrive December 1 as a 3-D Blu-ray disc, but only if you buy a Panasonic 3-D TV to go along with it—and according to the movie's producer, it could be a long time before you can order the 3-D Blu-ray of James Cameron's blockbuster on its own. "Avatar" producer Jon Landau says that the 3-D Blu-ray for "Avatar" will eventually become available as a stand-alone disc, but only once there are more viewers out there with 3-D TVs in their living rooms.
"We were ahead of the curve on DVD with 'Titanic' and we don't want to make that mistake again," Landau recently told HollywoodinHiDef.com owner Scott Hettrick. Landau added that when "Titanic" was initially released on DVD, in 1999, DVD players were only in about 500,000 U.S. households, resulting in "disappointing" sales. There's already a best-selling Blu-ray disc of "Avatar" on the market, and the predictable "extended collector's edition" (chock-full of extras missing from the initial bare-bones release) is due next week—but those discs are the 2-D version of the movie. Of course, 3-D in your den isn't just a matter of having a 3-D Blu-ray player—or a PlayStation 3, now that the console's been updated to play 3-D Blu-ray discs. You'll also need a 3-D-capable TV set (not to mention pricey 3-D glasses), and according to industry analysts, sales have been (unsurprisingly) on the slow side. Bundling the 3-D Blu-ray of "Avatar" with Panasonic 3-D TVs—and only Panasonic 3-D TVs, given that this is an exclusive deal—could be a "great way" to jump-start the number of 3-D TV sets in U.S. homes, Landau argues. But as Hollywood in HiDef's Hettrick points out, there's a "chicken-or-egg" phenomenon at work here. After all, part of the reason that 3-D TV sales have been so slow is that there's so little 3-D content to watch. Indeed, home video executives are touting next Tuesday as "Blu-ray 3-D Day" because 10 more 3-D Blu-ray discs—including "Clash of the Titans," "The Polar Express," "A Christmas Carol" and IMAX titles like "Deep Sea 3D" and "Space Station 3D"—will be hitting the market (along with one racy 3-D video, "Erotek Dimensions 3D"), Variety reports. By the end of the year, the number of 3-D Blu-ray movies available is expected to hit a grant total of ... 24, or 36 if you count the movies that are bundled with TVs (like "Avatar"). So, when will James Cameron & Co. decide that there are enough 3-D TV and Blu-ray owners out there to justify a stand-alone release of the 3-D "Avatar" Blu-ray? Hard to say, although Hettrick notes that Panasonic's exclusivity deal with 20th Century Fox might last as long as a year. — Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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