Dorrian Porter is founder of Northern Imagination.

On January 1, 1999, I immigrated to Silicon Valley from Canada to work as a corporate attorney for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. I watched in amazement as 400 companies went public that year (about a quarter of them through my law firm), and in March 2000 I felt compelled to leave the firm and start a company called HigherMarkets. It was around the same day that the Nasdaq peaked at 5132.52.

The experience and timing of my departure — and the name of my first company — sadly signified a tight connection for me between money and entrepreneurship.

Money has a nasty habit of invading the definition of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, where we tend to measure success by funding rounds, valuations, and liquidity events. I often run with a definition of an entrepreneur defined by money: People who don’t know your financial situation think you’re rich, and people who do think you’re crazy. An entrepreneur can be a person spending $10,000 to open a shop or $100 million to build a new kind of car.

Long before the car company, there was an inventor named Nikola Tesla who navigated choices of money and entrepreneurship as we all do in the Silicon Valley. Tesla immigrated to the east coast of the United States in 1884, initially to work alongside Thomas Edison. That relationship didn’t last, but Tesla is credited with the inventions that fueled the rise of electric company Westinghouse and made alternating current the standard of electricity we rely on today.

Larry Page of Google, who mentioned Nikola Tesla on a recent earnings call and describes him as one of the greatest inventors ever, has said you might want to be more like Edison than Tesla. In fact that comparison may only be true in textbooks.

A closer study of the events of the 1890s, for example, reveals that Edison faced similar entrepreneurial challenges to Tesla: Edison was kicked aside from General Electric, the successor company to his own, leading him to swear off the same financial backers for the next 30 years. Tesla, on the other hand, generously allowed Westinghouse to renegotiate a patent deal that enabled the financially strapped company to establish the electricity standard we rely on today.

Tesla made it clear that being a great entrepreneur — one who commercialized a critical standard that powers innovation 125 years later — isn’t necessarily about the money.

Despite the fact that I couldn’t live without two famous early inventions of Edison’s — photography and film — Tesla’s contributions are the ones that can spark Silicon Valley’s imagination on an even bigger scale now. Tesla made a commitment to the study of wireless energy and wireless information transmission beginning in the 1880s that led him to explore communication with other planets, to evaluate ways to transmit energy wirelessly around earth, and to care about taking advantage of the sun’s radiation and earth’s vibrations to prevent the squandering of natural resources that was occurring rapidly around him.

Sound useful today?

I love Instagram as much as anyone, but my nine-year-old daughter points out that less time on my iPhone can equal more time on things that really matter. Tesla focused on discovery in areas that really mattered, and he faced a great deal of ridicule — and no doubt financial impact — for it.

As the need to invite more immigrants to the Silicon Valley only increases, we need to send the message more than ever that our love for creative invention and a focus on the biggest challenges are more valued than money. There are some outstanding financial backers in the Silicon Valley, but the majority of venture capitalists face their own short-term problems that don’t always allow them to live up to the long-term horizons mentioned on their websites.

Whether you’ve just helped fund a startup or raised money for one, or whether you’re running a big company or working at one, we all need to be looking for ways to hail the inventors around us regardless of financial outcome. We don’t necessarily need to shift our models of capital allocation or stock grants to do it, but we do need to change where we spend our time celebrating. I’ve heard a lot of lip service paid to words like innovation and creativity in the Silicon Valley. It’s up to each of us to defend those words in a way that means something more than the next acquisition.

The free exchange of information and affordable access to sustainable energy — both issues worked on by Nikola Tesla in his time — have the potential to solve critical issues of poverty and education, and inspire peace, around the world. Wireless information transmission and energy remain two of the Silicon Valley’s biggest opportunities.

Hail to the inventors who are working on those challenges today without regard to financial outcomes. Hail to Nikola Tesla.

Dorrian Porter organized Northern Imagination in 2013, a company that seeks to positively impact the wellbeing and happiness of people via creative projects, ideas, and inventions.  He just launched a Kickstarter campaign to build a statue of Nikola Tesla in the Silicon Valley to fuel creativity on the big issues of energy and wireless. You can watch a short video and participate in the campaign here:  http://kck.st/ZWLzgG.

photo credit: Recuerdos de Pandora via photopin cc

The latest Kickstarter darling comes from an unlikely source: teen television.

After years of rumors and waiting, fans of the detective series Veronica Mars got their wish today with the launch of a Kickstarter to revive the series as a film. Fans ended up raising $1 million on the crowdfunding site in around four hours, beating out the previous record-holder, the PC game Planescape: Torment, by two hours.

Veronica Mars starred Kristen Bell as a teenage detective who solved mysteries far outside the scope of a typical high school student. Think Dashiell Hammett meets The O.C. The show ran for three seasons, but fans have been clamoring for more ever since it was taken off the air.

By reaching $1 million, the project is now halfway toward completing its $2 million goal. Warner Bros. still owns the rights to the series, but creator Rob Thomas notes that the studio will come aboard if there’s enough interest from fans.

“Kristen and I met with the Warner Bros. brass, and they agreed to allow us to take this shot,” Thomas wrote on Kickstarter. “They were extremely cool about it, as a matter of fact. Their reaction was, if you can show there’s enough fan interest to warrant a movie, we’re on board. So this is it. This is our shot. I believe it’s the only one we’ve got. It’s nerve-wracking.”

Breaking Kickstarter records so quickly is exactly the sort of fan response Warner Bros. needs (and it didn’t even have to lift a finger!). I’m a huge fan of the show, and I’ve also been covering news about this potential movie for years now, so it’s good to see something really finally begin to take shape. (Full disclosure: I’ve also backed the project with probably more funds than is wise.)

The project’s success also bodes well for the future of film production and distribution. Television producers can now tap directly into their fandom to fund projects, even if they’re still shackled to a huge Hollywood studio when it comes to ownership rights. It’s also a big deal for fans of cult TV shows: We saw Universal revive Firefly for the film Serenity, and Netflix brought back Arrested development from the dead, but now there’s yet another way to bring their beloved shows back to life.

Update: The Veronica Mars movie reached its goal of $2 million in just 10 hours. Needless to say, fans are taking this well.

Hallelujah! It's a green light my friends. I love you all, but particularly the donors among you. #Veronicamars .@IMKristenBell—
Rob Thomas (@RobThomas) March 14, 2013

Production is scheduled to begin this summer, with a release in early 2014.

The Black List is a network that connects scripts with the people who turn them into films. It started out as an informal survey of not-yet-produced screenplays, grew into a trusted annual list of the best 75 scripts in Hollywood, and is now a full-fledged marketplace.

Three out of the past five Best Picture winners and seven of the past 12 screenwriting Oscars victors were on The Black List before they went into production. Over the years, films on The Black List have been nominated for 148 Academy Awards and earned over $16 billion in worldwide box office sales. Of the 600 scripts that have been on the list, more than 200 have been produced as movies.

So what is the secret to The Black List’s success? Picking screenplays to turn into movies is in many ways a riskier endeavor than picking startups to invest it. Hollywood does not have the same process of due diligence as Silicon Valley does, and success is ultimately up to the whims of the viewer.

Franklin Leonard is the man behind The Black List, and he said crowdsourcing is the answer.

On one side of the marketplace, screenwriters submit their work which is evaluated by a team of readers. If it is good, they post the scripts on the site. On the other side, over 1,000 film industry professionals are registered members of the community. They have access to the curated selection of screenplays and vote to create a ranking system that surfaces the best content.

“Over 30,000 pieces of material are registered at the Writers Guild of America every year,” Leonard said in an interview at VentureBeat’s office. “Of that number, only 200 are released. How do you make sure those 200 are the best? The current filtering mechanisms are inefficient. By taking a systematic, crowdsourced approach to identifying quality, regardless of executive considerations or making money, and aggregating that, the scripts end up being successful.”

Leonard started The Black List to solve his own problem. He was working for Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company and spent an excessive amount of time reading bad scripts. He sent out an informal survey to 75 of his colleagues asking them to respond with their 10 favorite screenplays that had not yet been made into movies. The document continued to circulate and grow to such a degree that Leonard decided to turn bring The Black List to the next level.

Eight years after the initial survey, The Black List has grown into much more than a place to compare notes on scripts. Now, the network involves a real-time list that tracks all the activity on the site as well as a screenplay-recommendation engine. In October, The Black List extended its mission to make it easier to screenwriters from around the world to upload their scripts into the database, giving them access to the closed circles of Hollywood’s elite.

“We are expanding beyond the highly insular, incredibly opaque universe that is Hollywood,” Leonard said. “In a world where if you don’t have the right network or connections, you don’t have the opportunity to tell your story in film, we are saying that if you are good, the only distance between you and becoming a full-time Hollywood screenwriter is your talent. The things The Black List is highlighting are things will see in movie theaters in two, five, 10 years down the road and at the Oscars.”

Hollywood is a prime example of an industry where business is primarily done offline in closed circles and the Internet is creeping in to democratize it. Leonard also envisions a future where data is a key component of making movies.

“The industry is going to have to start being a little more data-intensive about how they make decisions,” he said. “Everyone in Hollywood likes to quote Bill Goldman, who said, ‘Nobody knows anything.’ This is a good way to justify an expensive movie no one goes to see. This may have been true five years ago, but data and statistical analysis can provide insights that are an advantage over a willful, no-knowledge perspective on making business decisions.”

Argo is the latest to join the ranks of The Black List trophy case, along with The King’s Speech and Slumdog Millionaire. While The Black List does not take responsibility for the success of any movie that comes out of its list, Leonard said the “correlative relationship” is undeniable. Rather, it acts as a catalyst to bring certain projects into the spotlight.

Photo Credit: Jenni from the block/Flickr

Cambrios Technologies is announcing today that it has hired John LeMoncheck as its new chief executive and raised $5 million in a fourth round of funding from strategic investor Samsung Venture Investment.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.,-based company uses nanotechnology to create a thin transparent film that can conduct electricity. The film turns out to be ideal for adding touchscreen capability to any kind of display, from a smartphone to a big flat-panel TV. It has the dual benefit of being able to conduct well and be transparent at the same time.

LeMoncheck (pictured) said in an interview that his jobs is to help the company develop the sales and marketing chops to sell its solution across a variety of industries.

Michael Knapp, founding president and CEO of Cambrios, will become chairman. The goal of both investment and the new CEO is to accelerate product introductions and commercial growth in the consumer electronics markets. LeMoncheck was previously CEO of SiBEAM, a pioneer in 60-gigahertz wireless networking chips. He sold that company to Silicon Image last year for $25 million. That wasn’t the highest price, but it was the right destination company for the technology and it underscored how tough it is to get new semiconductor companies off the ground, LeMoncheck said.

By contrast, LeMoncheck believes that Cambrios has a unique opportunity to capitalize on its transparent conductor technology in touch, display, solar, and lighting markets.

The technology has interesting roots. It was born from a collaboration of Angela Belcher, a chemistry researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Evelyn Hu of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Belcher saw how abalone and other sea creatures used proteins to build orderly, inorganic films based on calcium and silicon. She found proteins that would do the same with inorganic materials that had industrial applications. They found materials that would self-assemble themselves into thin layers of film.

In 2002, Hu and Belcher created Cambrios and got their first round of funding, $1.8 million, in 2003. They recruited Knapp and raised a second round of $12 million in 2005. The investors included In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the Central Intelligence Agency.

“John’s successful track record of collaborating with customers and developing essential industry-wide partnerships makes him the ideal candidate to lead and help cultivate new relationships for Cambrios,” said Leighton Read, current board member and a partner at Alloy Ventures, an investor in Cambrios.

The Samsung investment will help the company launch the ClearOhm materials, which include a silver-like material that can be sprayed like an ink onto a clear film, creating a web of microscopic wires on the film that can be used to conduct electricity and thereby form the basis for a touchscreen. The coating of ClearOhm works a lot better than the existing solution of indium tin oxide, Lemoncheck said. It results in a much more transparent display that is good at conducting electricity; normally, there’s a trade-off between conductivity and transparency.

Dong Su Kim, investmet director at Samsung Ventures America, said that Cambrios leads the market with the development of this kind of material using nanotechnology.

“We started out with a film, but we did that to seed the market,” LeMoncheck said. “Now we are increasingly selling the ink for that film.”

The ink business is a lot less capital-intensive than the film business, he said.

The first device to use the new displays were a smartphone from China’s Huawei Technologies last year. That device proved the technology and sold in the hundreds of thousands. Synaptics partnered with Cambrios on the technology.The technology can also be used for electro-magnetic shielding for displays, helping them handle touch operations more accurately.

The indium tin oxide market was about $2.5 billion last year, according to LeMoncheck. Cambrios has 43 employees. The film is sold by the square meter and the ink is sold by the bucket, LeMoncheck said.

Japanese film site Eiga.com (translated via Andriasang) has revealed the first pictures of the full cast of Ace Attorney, the upcoming live action film based on Capcom’s Phoenix Wright franchise. Credits and a gallery below:

• Phoenix Wright – Hiroki Narimiya
• Miles Edgeworth – Takumi Saitou
• Maya Fey – Mirei Kiritani
• Mia Fey – Dan Rei
• Manfred von Karma – Ryo Ishibashi
• Larry Butz – Akiyoshi Nakao
• Dick Gumshoe – Shunsuke Daitou
• Lotta Hart – Mitsuki Tanimura
• The Judge – Akira Emoto
• Misty Fey – Kimiko Yo
• Sayuri (the bird)

I have to say that Capcom is responsible for some of the worst video game movie adaptations of all time and that at first glance, Ace Attorney doesn’t appear to break that mold. But what do I care? Resident Evil has already been defiled and pissed on more times than I care to count, so at the very least it can’t be as bad as that, right?

Ace Attorney’s plot follows a case where Miles Edgeworth has been arrested as a suspect in a crime, which will either make the dynamic between Edgeworth and protagonist Phoenix Wright more intriguing, or disjoint it completely. Japanese moviegoers and American torrenters will find out when the film hits theaters on February 11.

If you’re going to reply in the comments, please use this handy custom Objection! web app to properly convey your feelings.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Northern Five Entertainment and Airsoft GI recently released their joint Left 4 Dead short film to the world.

Sporting Hollywood-level production values but produced on a shoestring, the video quickly surpassed half a million views on YouTube, and the teaser trailer alone garnered over 400,000 views.

GamesBeat sat down with Northern Five director and co-founder Adrian Picardi for an exclusive interview to discuss the film’s budget, concept, reception, and why Hollywood is so damn bad at making video game movies.

We also have a gallery of 173 (count ‘em!) exclusive behind-the-scenes images and a Making Of video on the second page of this interview.

GamesBeat: Can you detail Northern Five’s relationship with Airsoft GI? Did they put up the funds for the production?

Adrian Picardi: A childhood friend, Tim Seargeant, who is now the online face for Airsoft GI, had wanted to make a fun video with us for awhile. It wasn’t until when he convinced his boss to allow us to shoot at their property and store front that we were able to conceptualize the idea. This really wouldn’t have happened if both N5 and A.GI weren’t passionate on the idea. It’s like the Avengers only with our favorite videogame characters.

GB: What is the intent of the film? What are you or Airsoft GI hoping to accomplish with it?

AP: For N5, absolutely nothing but hope that it could bring a smile to the gaming community.

GB: Can you talk about the budget for the film, and break down how it was distributed?

AP: We had just enough of a budget to feed the entire crew, ship out the costumes from across the country, and pay for a couple of the props and some of the crew’s gas. Everything else was donated. The entire crew came out for two nights unpaid. I couldn’t believe how passionate everyone was. It was a really fun experience.

GB: I understand you had a crane? Is that a hard thing to acquire?

AP: Yes! Very hard. Luckily we worked with an amazing gentleman on a couple older projects and were able to build a great relationship with him and his company. When we told him it was fan film he was instantly on board and came out for a couple hours with the crane on the second day of shooting.

GB: How did you conceptualize the idea?

AP: At first we were going to do a full on Battlefield 3 video but so many had been already created. The same went for many of Valve’s other properties, so we felt it was time to try something different with one of our other favorite games. There are so many zombie fan films out there and since we wanted to make this for the gaming community we took it into a different and unique direction.

GB: What sort of script was in place?

AP: The script was worked on in a collaborative fashion. From there we had to accommodate what we could and couldn’t achieve in two nights and with the prep time of only two weeks. We actually had the entire Left 4 Dead cast in the film but couldn’t find an actor in the character’s age range who was willing to stay up for two nights in a row for no pay. So we ended up tweaking the script. We actually tore out 4 pages of the script on the first night of shooting because initially we were suppose to shoot for three nights but it was due to rain on the third day.

GB: How do you go about wrangling in all the necessary talent and crew?

AP: We posted a casting call online. From there we had to sift through the talent to see who looked like the video game characters the most. Since we had a very tight pre-production schedule we hired them without having the proper casting session but I feel we were very fortunate that we had found a great team of people who actually looked the part.

GB: What was it like working with cosplayers and models who don’t typically “act” as is needed in a film like this?

AP: I was actually extremely worried that they wouldn’t understand the filming process and just become fed up with all the madness. But everyone who came out for this shoot was amazing and was a blast to work with. Meagan Marie, whom I was a fan of after seeing her GOW Cosplay article, came out and was completely thrown off guard since she had never acted before. But after a few takes she picked up on everything very quickly and did a kick-ass job. They all were really fun to work with.

GB: I heard it was pretty cold during the shoot. Is weather something you planned for, and how did you deal with it?

AP: We were hoping for three dry nights but it rained the last day so we changed the script. Since everyone came out for free we couldn’t reschedule either. So we ended up not shooting the entire thing that was originally planned but it still worked out for the most part in the edit.

GB: I think my favorite thing about fan films is that none of them are directed by Paul Anderson. Hollywood has become notorious for taking popular video games and making nightmarishly-bad adaptations. Why do you think that is?

AP: Because I believe most of them never played the actual video game until they acquired the script! So far I can’t say I’ve seen a hands down amazing Hollywood “game to movie” yet.

GB: What is it about Hollywood filmmakers that makes them want to adapt something by stripping out pretty much everything that made the video game version popular in the first place?

AP: Money? Making a movie for only the gaming demographic means less money made. At the end of the day it’s still a business and risk-taking moves can be frowned upon at times, such as making a true-to-heart video game adaption. But I have no doubt in my mind after the comic book pool and 80’s-90’s remakes run dry the film industry will start diving into the video game arena even more so then now. I’m betting with the huge success of Call of Duty they are already planning on turning it into a movie… I mean they already made a Jeep based off the game why not a movie? I just hope they put the source material in the right hands.

GB: Did you look at any other fan films before making yours? Did you learn any interesting dos or don’ts that you’d care to share?

AP: We did. We realized we wanted to make something different, something they haven’t seen before, and rather something for the entire rapidly growing gaming community at large. One thing I learned — and I’m actually slapping myself in the face for not thinking of this — but we should have called it something different other than Left 4 Dead since the twist came out of nowhere for most people.

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If you liked King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters, you’ll love Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters, a new documentary showing the world’s best Tetris players as they hone their skills (and talk plenty of smack) gearing up for the Classic Tetris World Championship.

According to the movie’s official website, “From the days of Thor Aackerlund and his historic victory at the 1990 Nintendo World Championships right up to the present and Harry Hong’s perfect max-out score, this documentary expertly chronicles over two decades of Tetris mastery.”

Portland filmmaker Adam Cornelius started making the documentary about Hong, who was the first Tetris player to officially reach a max-out score. He raised a slim $1,610 for that project on Kickstarter.

However, when Tetris master Robin Mihara informed Cornelius that as many as two Tetris players might have actually been better than Hong, the scope of the film changed.

“He took the news well,” wrote Mihara in a blog post, “and from there we fantasized about holding a live contest with all the greats, and having big screens, announcers, spotlights, all like we did [at the Nintendo World Championships] in 1990.

“The next day I got a call from Adam. ‘OK, I want to do it. You’re my star. You put it together.’ I was in my car speeding to his house in 30 seconds.”

Ecstasy Of Order: The Tetris Masters is currently in post production and will be in the festival submission process during the last few weeks of 2011. So far, the documentary is an official selection of the Austin Film Festival and SF Doc Fest.

The producers are accepting donations through the film website via Paypal to help complete the documentary. Go be a nice gamer and give ‘em a couple bucks for curiosity’s sake.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview will debut at select Landmark Theaters on November 16 and feature nearly 70 minutes of unedited dialogue between Cringley and Jobs first captured in 1995 for the PBS miniseries Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires.

The three-part documentary series was focused around the founding of the personal computing industry, and included bits and pieces of a colorful interview with Steve Jobs in which he lambasted Microsoft and its products.

“That candid, controversial, and funny interview with an old associate … was by far the best TV interview Jobs ever gave,” according to promotional materials shared with VentureBeat. “Yet less than 10 minutes were used in the series and the other 59 minutes were lost forever when the master tapes disappeared in shipping.”

The tapes were said to be recently recovered in London. Cringley then connected with Mark Cuban, co-owner of Wagner/Cuban Companies and operator of Landmark Theaters, to bring the footage to audiences.

The unrated program will air at Landmark Theaters across the the U.S. on November 16 and 17, with 7:15 and 9:00 p.m. showtimes at most theaters. Would-be viewers can catch a screening of the program in New York, Lost Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley, Palo Alto, Seattle, San Diego, Denver, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis, Chicago, Indianapolis, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Atlanta and Milwaukee.

[Image via IMDB]

A judge issued a preliminary injunction in an ongoing case between Zediva and the MPAA, ruling that Zediva’s business is one big copyright violation.

A Zediva spokesperson told VentureBeat, “Today’s ruling represents a setback for the hundreds of thousands of consumers looking for an alternative to Hollywood-controlled online movie services. Zediva intends to appeal and will keep fighting for consumers’ right to watch a DVD they’ve rented, whether that rental is at the corner store or by mail or over the Internet.”

Zediva launched with the idea that it could operate a physical DVD rental business, just like a Blockbuster or the hard-copy side of Netflix’s business. However, instead of sending the DVDs from a brick-and-mortar retail store, Zediva streamed the DVD content over the Internet.

Why exploit such a loophole? Physical DVD rental stores don’t have to negotiate licensing fees with film and television makers; video-on-demand services do. Video-on-demand businesses are required by the MPAA to provide a high-quality viewing experience to users and to take certain piracy-prevention measures. Also, video-on-demand services have to agree to “exclusivity periods,” wherein the copyright holder (a.k.a. film studio) licenses the works to be shown on cable TV but not online. By setting itself up as a physical DVD rental shop, Zediva skirted these fees and restrictions — at least in the short term.

Testing the strength and flexibility of this particular loophole might have seemed like a faster, cheaper way of starting a new company at the time. But even at the startup’s launch, we noted it would be “just a matter of time” before film studios tried to put a stop to the company. Predictably, the MPAA came after Zediva with a lawsuit back in April, a mere month after the launch.

In its original complaint, the MPAA stated, “The DVD ‘rental’ label is a sham… Zediva’s mischaracterization of itself is a gimmick it hopes will enable it to evade the law and stream movies in violation of the studios’ exclusive right.”

In his decision, U.S. District Judge John Walter wrote that not only does Zediva infringe on movie studios’ copyright; the startup is also making things harder for legitimate video-on-demand startups that have taken a lot of time and paid their dues (literally) to operate their businesses.

“[Zediva] threatens the development of a successful and lawful video-on-demand market and, in particular, the growing Internet-based video-on-demand market,” Walter wrote. “The presence of Defendants’ service in this market threatens to confuse consumers about video-on-demand products, and to create incorrect but lasting impressions with consumers about what constitutes lawful video-on-demand exploitation of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works.”

A Zediva spokesperson told VentureBeat the startup has been working on its DVD-streaming technology for two years. Zediva closed its first round of funding shortly before its launch.

Image courtesy of christianspenceranderson.

Dolby’s newly announced next generation 3D glasses feature 3M’s new multilayer optical film lenses and are designed to be more form fitting to a person’s face. They are scratch resistant, have anti-glare coating and most importantly, have been produced specifically with the cinema exhibitor in mind — meaning they want theaters to use these as the standard.

The reason theaters are still using crappy 3D glasses has to do entirely with cost. The lenses needed for Dolby Digital 3D projectors are expensive, as would be the cost of tracking high-end glasses. Therefore, material costs are kept low to allow for theaters to wash and reuse whatever survives after a film has been viewed by the audience.

Dolby’s new 3D glasses have a list price of $12, which I’m assuming is comparable to the costs of what’s currently being used by theaters. The glasses can be washed for reuse and also contain individually serialized RFID tags for tracking and management purposes.

The end result will hopefully be that theaters switch over to these new ergonomically and aesthetically pleasing 3D glasses, since they improve the quality of service without breaking the bank. The best case scenario for consumers is that ticket prices will stay the same, but judging from previous actions by theaters that’s highly unlikely.

Dolby has several motivations for putting this much effort into upgrading 3D glasses for theaters. The biggest reason is likely the growing level of consumer negativity towards 3D films and their desire to keep demand high for 3D projectors. However, Dolby doesn’t make any money off of cheap 3D glasses that are sold to theaters. If theirs were to become the new standard, that would certainly change.