3D TV: A Perfect World?

Though I have yet to experience it myself, it seems 3D Televisions are gaining ground in the market.  Coming from my research in reader and audience relationship to the arts, I wonder, how does 3D Television affect viewers?  How does the experience of watching TV shape our senses of the world, of ourselves, of our very realities?  Since the content on 3D Television is largely the same as the 2D models- viewers are still watching football, Animal Planet, and sitcoms- it is the viewing experience of these seemingly 3-Dimensional images that differs.  Will the new visual effect change the way viewers experience the representations on TV?  Will it become more real for the viewers as Sony and Panasonic claim? And what would it mean to call the 3D television experience more real?

This commercial "Sony 3D: A Perfect World" from Sony Australia claims, like most 3D marketing, to deliver a world on TV not only as realistic as your actual life, but actually more real and even perfect.  These are not unfamiliar claims; its almost cliche to note that advertisements are well known for over-the-top promises.  But what happens when 3D TV delivers such realistic 3D representations of the world that viewers actually believe the representation is realer than the material world?  In its artistic manipulation of reality, 3D Television can come closer to a perfect world; it can eradicate poverty, war, disease, environmental devastation simply by not showing it on TV.  And if viewers buy this 3D TV reality, and immerse themselves into these fantasy worlds, what becomes of the rest of the material 'real' world?   This is the futurist in me, projecting far ahead, imagining how the dystopian tendency could play out with this technology.  I don't wish to make the reductive claim that  3D TV is an evil technology; as a TV and movie watcher,  I embrace the progress in visual technology and love the immersive fun of 3D IMAX movies. But I do want to open up a conversation about 3D TV and film technology and how it affects us as viewers.

On a sidenote, this post on Reddit is another instance in a greater trend on how our consumer culture understands the real. How do we gauge what is real? This is the bigger question that drives my research right now. 

Shout out to The Morning Benders, the song in the commercial is "Excuses" from their album Big Echo. This is a great album.