Manufacturers pull plug on 3-D TVS

It was not long ago that 3-D television was being billed as the next big revolution in home entertainment.

Now it appears that the muchtrumpeted concept has died an early death, as the only two major 3-D TV makers left have discontinued the product.

Last year Tv-making giant Samsung announced it would stop making 3-D sets, and now both LG and Sony have followed suit, leaving no major manufacturer left in the market.

The firms admitted a lack of demand was behind the move, as consumers were not sold on the idea of sitting in their living rooms wearing a chunky pair of 3-D glasses while watching TV.

‘‘3-D capability was never really universally embraced in the industry for home use, and it’s just not a key buying factor when selecting a new TV,’’ Tim Alessi, LG’S director of new product development, told tech website Cnet. ’’Purchase process research showed it’s not a top buying consideration, and anecdotal information indicated that actual usage was not high.

‘‘We decided to drop 3-D support for 2017 in order to focus our efforts on new capabilities such as HDR, which has much more universal appeal.’’

A Sony representative said: ‘‘Based on current market trends we decided not to support 3-D for our 2017 models.’’ TV makers are instead focusing on newer technologies such as HDR (high dynamic range), which displays a wider and richer range of colours, much brighter whites, and much deeper, darker blacks.

HDR also allows for more natural colours that are closer to how people see things in real life.

Hype around 3-D TV technology peaked about seven years ago around the time of Avatar, the first animated film to demonstrate how 3-D could be used to create entertaining visual effects.

Its fall out of the public eye is thought to be related to a lack of ‘‘must see’’ 3-D films in the years since Avatar’s release.

According to data from the NPD Group, 3-D TV sales have declined each year since 2012. From 2015 to 2016 their share of total TV sales halved from 16 per cent to just 8 per cent.

Over the same period, sales of 3-D-compatible Blu-ray players also fell to just 11 per cent of the market. The year before they had made up a quarter of total sales.

3-D TV’S fall from grace also follows in the wake of the failure of Google Glass, the separate invention which also required people to put on a clunky pair of spectacles.

Google invented the wearable smart technology in 2012 to perform a range of tasks from taking photographs to looking up maps.

It ceased production of Google Glass just three years later following lower than expected take-up. At the time it was criticised for being ‘‘embarrassing’’ to wear, lacking a specific purpose and being too similar to smartphones in terms of capability. – Telegraph Group