3-D football, NFL style? Vote in Diane Pucin’s poll!

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

No, it wasn’t perfect.

The ‘proof of concept’ trial balloon 3-D broadcast at a movie theater Thursday night -- a game between the Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers -- had some glitches. The satellite feed went out a couple of times in the first half. There were some unsynchronized camera movements that made my head dizzy, some unfocused camera switches for which I had to take off the way-cool, retro-black 3-D glasses until the picture got unfuzzy. But mostly watching the game in a three-dimensional format felt like a step into the future and not as if this were only a gimmick.

What did it look like without the glasses? Click here to find out.

But before I go on, here is a poll I put together to hear what you think of 3-D. The voting is open until Tuesday at midnight.

Anyway, there were two plays in particular that made my head snap.

The first was the 46-yard catch by Chargers’ receiver Vincent Jackson (see the photo of that catch here) in the first quarter. The cameras caught the ball from the moment it left the hand of San Diego quarterback Philip Rivers, followed it up and up into the night, made you feel as if there were a hint of a night breeze as the pass followed a rainbow-arced path until it dropped into Jackson’s hands.

The second was the 87-yard punt return by San Diego’s Darren Sproles; Sproles dove into the end zone, and people in the theater crowd were yelling ‘touchdown’ seconds before any official raised his arms to signal a score.

Sproles’ TD was called back because of a hold, but it felt as if Sproles had run straight through the screen and into the room. One man turned to his seatmate and said, ‘I didn’t know Sproles was so short.’ Yes, Sproles is short for an NFL player. He’s only 5-foot-6, and in 3-D there was the real sense that Sproles was pocket-sized compared with the other guys on the field.

While one of the aims of the 3-D experiment, said John Modell, an owner of 3ality Digital, the Burbank-based company that produced Thursday’s game, is to give a viewer a true ‘stadium’ experience, it seemed better than that.

You felt as if you were sitting in the stands, only with the ability to see the field as if it were in high- definition television quality. Simply by slipping on a pair of glasses and tilting your head back a little, you could see the crown of the field, feel as if you could catch a pass, exclaim as one man did, ‘I’d think I could touch that cheerleader’s assets!’

Yet the cheerleader was safe, and so were her assets.

Certainly the NFL didn’t commit the effort to conducting this experiment for altruistic reasons. It is not just trying to offer a better viewing experience just because it can.

Three NBA games have also been produced in 3-D, including the 2007 All-Star Game. Fox Sports is planning on offering the BCS championship game on about 150 movie screens next month for some sort of unannounced fee.

And, honestly, I’d pay. It’s a lot easier to park at a movie theater, and this theater validated. Try parking at the Rose Bowl this weekend for the USC-UCLA game, or getting that parking validated.

The popcorn is better, the bathrooms cleaner than at most stadiums. Plus the view from the (relatively) cheap seats is sure better than from row 80 at the Coliseum. If you’re in most of the rows at an NFL stadium, you often need binoculars to get an up-close view of the game. With 3-D, you need the glasses and a movie screen. It’s a fair tradeoff.

Even better will be the day there’s a 3-D-enabled television and your 3-D glasses at home. There were two such TVs in a VIP lounge at the Los Angeles theater. It was a similarly ooh-and-aah experience on the smaller TV screen. It will be several years before there’s a 3-D-capable television in every living room, but I’d buy one now if the price was right and there was enough programming.

After watching this single game, I feel as I did the first time I saw a college basketball game in high definition and the first time I watched the Food Network and ‘Animal Planet’ and a Ducks hockey game on HD. Now it’s going to be hard to go back to plain old digital HD television.

I’d gone to this game skeptical. My only memories of 3-D were of some long-ago monster movie in which the cardboard glasses were clumsy and ineffective, everything seemed herky-jerky and I was left feeling a little queasy, a smidgen dizzy and with a spring-loaded headache from trying to focus.

That wasn’t the case this time. I was eager for halftime to be over so I could see more. I wondered what a Super Bowl halftime show would look like in 3-D, and while some viewers left Thursday night asking for ‘more cheerleaders,’ I’d be happy with more Darren Sproles making his cuts and following his blockers into the end zone, where you could, indeed, make the call.

Know what would be really cool in 3-D? Hockey. Imagine a well-struck puck coming at you. The theaters might need to put up a plexiglass shield just to make you feel safe.

-- Diane Pucin

First pop-up photo: What the screen image was without the glasses. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times