This summer, with its wealth of 3D films, was regarded by some in the industry as an important moment for the future of 3D cinema. However, with high profile seasonal blockbusters like Harry Potter now behind us, a YouGov survey has found that the British public is divided over the latest incarnation of a format that always promises to change the way we all watch movies.
When I was 8 years old I saw my first 3D film. Accompanied by the rather ambitious tagline of 'The best 3D movie ever made!', Starchaser: The Legend of Orin was one of the first animated films released in the format and a shameless Star Wars rip-off.
So blatant was the plagiarism that the New York Times suggested George Lucas should call in the lawyers, and he may well have done had the film not died without a trace.
But I loved it. I loved every minute of it. I loved it even though I was sitting there wearing one-size-fits-all adult 3D glasses that were far too big for my head and only held in place with an elastic band my mum had fortunately just happened to have in her pocket.
This was in the mid-1980s and, although I did not know it at the time, it was right at the end of the second incarnation of 3D cinema that had only taken off at the start of the decade. While the first incarnation in the early 1950s had brought us such classics as Dial M for Murder and The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the early 1980s delivered Jaws 3D and Amityville 3D - and all of them failed to change to face of cinema.
So despite my enthusiasm, it was nearly a quarter of a century before I next donned the (now much better fitting) obligatory specs and saw a 3D film as the third incarnation of the technology took off. By that point, however, my youthful excitement had disappeared and my personal opinion was that it didn't really make much difference at all to my movie-viewing experience.
While it is fair to say that the big Hollywood studios are unlikely to be particularly interested in my own views, they are betting a great deal on what the public thinks of the new technology.
With that in mind, this summer was viewed by some commentators as a make-or-break season for 3D blockbusters. We have seen Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 all riding high in the box office charts. Even 'adult entertainment' got in on the act with the cinema release of 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy - described as 'like [being a] voyeur near someone's bed' by the film's producer, and rather less enthusiastically as 'part costume drama, part farce, part unsavoury celebration of sexual violence' by the Sunday Times.
However, YouGov's recent survey of British cinema goers aged over 18 shows that many are yet to be convinced by 3D. Fewer than one in four (22%) thought that watching a film in 3D made the overall cinema experience better, while nearly one in five (19%) thought the opposite and that it made things worse. 28% thought the experience was about same in 3D as it is in old 2D, while 31% said they didn't know.
The cinema-going adults were similarly divided when asked if they were more likely to watch a film in 3D or 2D, if it were showing at the same time and the ticket price was the same. Just under half (47%) said they would choose 3D compared to over a third (37%) would choose 2D.
Perhaps most worrying for the proponents of 3D was that only around 1 in 6 (16%) respondents agreed with the statement that '3D films are for people like me', compared to over two in five (41%) who disagreed.
However, there may still be everything to play for. For many of the questions the results were inconclusive, with not particularly strong views on either side, suggesting that a large numbers of people still have yet to make up their mind.
Only time will tell what effect public opinion has on this latest incarnation of 3D. It may yet be the future of cinema, but YouGov's results show it is not there yet.
And while it has also been suggested that the release of a 3D version of all six Star Wars films (rumoured to begin in February 2012) might help win film fans over to 3D, it is also worth remembering they already released a 3D version of Star Wars many years ago . . . and they called it Starchaser.
The survey was conducted between 4th and 5th September 2011 amongst a sub-sample of 2,259 British adults aged 18+ who said they visited the cinema. The overall data had been weighted to be representative of the GB adult population as a whole.
View the full results to the YouGov survey here.