Stop the insanity: CNN's 'hologram' was horrendous
Can someone please explain to me why so many people are making a big deal about this CNN "hologram" that the channel unveiled during election coverage Tuesday night?
According to CNN, it was real "hologram" technology that beamed Jessica Yellin, a CNN correspondent from Chicago, to the CNN press center in New York, where Wolf Blitzer could grill her about what was going on in Chicago.
First off, let me say that it wasn't even real "hologram" technology, which annoys me from the start. Don't say it's a "hologram" technology unless it really is. If CNN was truly using a "hologram," it would not have employed a green screen and overlay images. Instead, it would have captured scattered light and then reconstructed it back in the studio.
Oh, and it probably would have bankrupted CNN too.
But I digress. Everywhere I turn, someone is saying how "cool" CNN's so-called "hologram" was. Uh, no.
Allow me to explain something to those who probably also get excited about buying a new hammer or watching a new Starbucks open up in their neighborhood: the "hologram" technique made the show look shoddy and stupid, and made Ms. Yellin look like a well-designed video game character.
Now, I know what you're saying: "But Don, you see, by using its 'hologram,' CNN is embracing technology and taking news reporting one step further."
Sorry, but I think that if you believe that, it's time for you to stop drinking Wolf Blitzer's Kool-Aid.
Nothing about the CNN "hologram" made sense. Part of the value of sending reporters to different areas to cover what's going on is to allow viewers to look beyond the onscreen reporter, and see the raucous environment. And it also affords the reporter the opportunity to walk around and show viewers some of the visual highlights at the event.
But with the help of its "hologram," CNN destroyed the value in sending a reporter, and instead made it, in the paraphrased words of Wolf Blitzer, "a more intimate setting" for the interview that eliminated all the noisy people that would have been standing behind her.
Spoken like a true apologist.
Just because the idea of a "hologram" is interesting, it doesn't mean that every time that someone pretends to use one, we have to think that it's the greatest thing in the world. The "hologram" looked ugly, made Ms. Yellin look awkward, and it didn't provide any real value to the viewer.
I applaud CNN for at least trying something new. But if show producers are smart, they'll shelve their "hologram" idea, and move on to something bigger and better, like transporting Ms. Yellin back and forth between Chicago and New York next time. I think that'll keep them busy for a while, and help us enjoy some quality programming, while they're trying to figure out how to reconstruct atoms.
I know the idea of a "hologram" is alluring to some. But let's not allow our hopes for the future cloud our judgment.
CNN's "hologram" was dumb.
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Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
spot on!
CNN has nothing more to deliver, and since they are bias anyway...play some camera tricks to make people wow.
!inverse137.
high tax? bush cut tax.
corrupt government? there is equal number of corrupt democrates senitors and congress just as republicians...both side are taking money. So is Obama. The internet does not give him the hundred millions to spend on his campain...
or else, he took public financing.
President is the person to blame.
The swaps trades start getting popular in clinton year, so is the low interest rate housing bubble and the internet bubble. The good clinton year is when everything start bubbling up. Including not killing Binladin when clinton has a chance and let the talibans expends to the whole alfgan.
then bush took over and it all blow up in front of his face.
I will blame bill clinton for not doing anything when he could have instead of bush.
yea...your good economy time in clinton year comes from all the stock and housing bubbles that everyone borrows too much and spend too much.
Check your facts.
Oh, and st430, I understand that you have to shut your brain off to be a Republican in this day and age, but if you could turn it back on long enough to type (you know, so that you actually come across as being functionally literate), it would be great, thanks.
It's ironic that they used 32 HD cameras to film the subject, only used two, non moving, cameras in the main studio, so there were only two views ever shown. They could have impressed us if the studio camera moved around and we got to see a changing view of the subject.
Fox Snooze came in 3 or 4 places behind CNN.
Use of masking technology (green screen) and the low number of angles does not mean it does not capture light (defined as recorded on cam) and reconstruct it (video overlay).. The only problem was that most of the angles were simulated from a 3D model, and not an analog playback.. But arguing against that would be like saying a compressed digital movie is not a movie, because it is stored in format that does not depict all the movie information.
This is a quality argument, but no matter how primitive, it is still a hologram technology. But since we could not see the 3D model at home, what really was the point. Sure it was stupid and overblown, but it was still a creative implementation, and even a bit more practical than other ones.
As you say, both the electric batteries and gas engine provide propulsion. That is the definition of a hybrid. There are certainly many different types of hybrids possible, as the mix of the 2 or more concepts can be anything. But saying it's not a hybrid because the electric doesn't provide complete propulsion ignores the very definition of hybrid.
The Chevy Volt for instance is not a hybrid. it's an electric vehicle that will have multiple ways to charge the batteries; but the propulsion is completely electric.
The more salient point that Don makes though is that CNN, like many other news programs, are trying to add value by making flashier graphics and fancy sets, which really doesn't improve the quality of the news or the clarity with which it is communicated at all.
When you have two alternatives working for the same result that's hybrid.
Now the touchscreen tech they had going OTOH was first-rate, in spite of the occasional glitch caused by Blitzer's mis-handling.
/P
Then again, the reporters would get mad at him as they watch themselves on the monitor talking to him on live TV while they're shivering in the cold and his hologram on location looks dry in his nice suit unaffected by the rain... as if they weren't miserable enough already stuck to that assignment....
Just a thought...
(Probably not a good idea, but the reporters could also actively vent their frustrations at his "hologram", but then that could be perceived as a threat somewhat)
Why would anyone build an entire universe when a hologram would work just a well? Actually better!
Space travel is then a snap (child's play). We may soon build "universes" with our own technology. Then we will have holograms within holograms and possibly and explosion of such creations to follow. Big, Big, Bang!
-Dr. ?shroomer, Ls.D
As for the technology, I remember reading some 25 years ago it was said that by the year 2000 holographic TV would be common place. Holograms in the simplest form are hard to produce. Truthfully I think that effect was good but more than likely could have done it better with some effort.
Oh- and projecting a supposdly 3d image onto a studio to be viewed on a 2d television? Yeah, that's genious right there. What a waste. All flash and no substance- pretty much what we've come to expect from the Communist "News" Network.
Star Wars was NOT the first film to create a fictional hologram. I believe that is Forbidden Planet 1956)....Morbius creates a hologram of Altara using a machine that reads brain impulses.
Where are the Death Star plans?
Wolf Blitzer was looking into a Monitor to see her!
When you look at a real *HOLOGRAM* you actually *SEE* the image.
Just like Star Wars.
We have the technology.
Why send the reporter to Chicago and bring her back as a 3d image? Ask her to stay in the studio itself and speak. Viewer can't anyway see the reality of crowd behind her. I don't see it'll impress the viewers.
But, I agree the technology would be really impressing if the reporter 3D image appears before the CNN viewers at home.
Wannabe Luddite, get thee behind me. = ^ )
Reisinger: "...the "hologram" technique made the show look shoddy and stupid..."
Reisinger: "I applaud CNN for at least trying something new."
Uh, what?!
But perhaps this could drive on to something better. The hologram "purists" have a point, but more rightly should go back and watch their old VHS recordings of Star Trek and give this a rest.
On the other hand, perhaps all the hype will just encourage the networks to keep on with the glitzy, gimmicky crap..but then again: what else is new?
Time will tell.
Either way, this article is a useless rant...
- by neighborhoodcomentator November 6, 2008 8:31 AM PST
- I think what was a more interesting, and effective application of the same concept, was NBC's use of hologram like bar graphs and election maps, etc.
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- by November 6, 2008 1:27 PM PST
- Yes. That technology was both useful and effective. ...and I don't think they called it a hologram, did they? It's just 3D graphics synced with they're in-studio camera... like the virtual lines on a football field in a live TV sportscast.
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