To start with, I did enjoy quite a few operas transmitted live from the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, and recently enjoyed a 3D pre-recorded Carmen from Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London. Overall, my impression is on the positive side.
For the MET HD broadcast, this current season (2010/2011) is absolutely the best! I always complained in the past about that the operas selected for HD broadcast were too conservative, and too mainstream. I see another critical reason beyond the exposure issue (i.e., exposing, or lack of it, more interesting operas to a wide audience): These mainstream operas more often than not directly competes with local opera productions. Do I really want to see another La Boheme or Madame Butterfly, in addition to our local one and in addition to the many previous MET productions, and recordings available. My answer is quite obvious. Although most people agree that "nothing beats live opera performances", the convenience, the price differential, the star, and other factors work to the advantage of MET HD in the expense of local productions. Well, on the other hand, very few local opera companies could afford Wagner, or more exotic operas sung in languages other than Italian (or German and French, to a lesser degree). So, I was thrilled to see the 2010/2011 lineup that not only included the first two installment of the new Ring cycle at MET, but also non-standard fares like Boris Godunov (doubly lucky for me that our local Dallas Opera is putting on this one of my personal favorite too!), Nixon in China, and Iphigenie en Tauride (well, I think this is a great use of star power to sell rarely performed works, and, low risk too: you can sell almost anything when Domingo sings!). I'm looking forward with great anticipation to the next MET HD season too!
On 3/5/2011 I also saw in our local movie theater the 3D pre-recorded production of Carmen from Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London. I liked this production of my favorite opera a lot, the most cinematic among the ones I saw or watched on recordings. I did read the review by Los Angeles Times earlier, which is fairly lukewarm to negative, particularly about the singing, therefore not having high expectations ahead of time. But, I was pleasantly surprised that I liked this version much, much more than LA Times would lead me to expect. The true highlight for me is Micaela as portrayed by Maija Kovalevska, true to the character both vocally and physically, pure, innocent, but courageous enough. Christine Rice's Carmen also is much more convincing in the final scene than in the beginning. On the technical side, I don't really care if it's 3D or not. In fact, the shift in perspectives left me feeling a little weird, but not as bad as some other commercial 3D films (and the 3D worldcup final from South Africa between Spain and Netherlands) that gave me headaches.
I know there are other opera live/delayed transmissions to movie theaters, but no one as successful and as widely available in US as the MET HD ones. Even for people living in a major metroplex like DFW area, we hardly get any such opportunities. In fact, the 3D Carmen from Royal Opera is the first non-MET/HD I've watched in movie theaters. I'll definitely go watch more interesting productions from other opera houses, 3D or not.
I am also aware of the "LA Phil LIVE" with Dudamel from you know where, home of Hollywood. It sounds interesting, but less appealing to me because we do have a wonderful conductor, Jaap Van Zweden, conducting an excellent orchestra (did any mention that the former concertmaster of Concertgebouw is our new concertmaster starting fall 2011!) performing in the top-notch Meyerson Symphony Center designed by I.M. Pei. By the way, our new opera house, the Winspear, is so much more interesting and acoustically superior to the MET, where I have enjoyed operas from cheapest but still very good, you-can-hear-everything, seats (as compared to some not-so-cheap but hard-to-hear-anything seats in the MET). Well, if they put on some more interesting programs, beyond Beethoven, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky, (well, to be fair, they did have ADAMS: Slonimsky's Earbox and BERNSTEIN: Symphony No. 1, "Jeremiah" paired with Beethoven #7 for their first broadcast concert, which I kind of wanted to go but my schedule did not allow), I might dish out $$ to go hear Dudamel/LAPhil in a movie theater.