3DTV: Is it Really Coming at You, Or Does it Just Look That Way?

Announcements are coming fast and furious about new 3DTV technologies for the home as many TV manufacturers at this week’s CES in Las Vegas are showcasing their latest efforts to make in home TV viewing more realistic. The question that many have yet to ask is whether 3DTV is ready for prime time. To answer the question it may be helpful to draw parallels to the growth of HDTV.

Current statistics state that nearly 50% of US homes have at least one high definition TV set, indicating that HDTVs, once the domain of videophiles early adopters, have become a mass market consumer good. That said high income households ($75,000+ annually) still over-index while lower income homes lag. This trend has been helped along by the HD wars that have been brewing between cable distributors, telcos and satellite providers. Early on, there were only a few HD channels available. In recent years, the number has ballooned to the point where 100 HD channels has become the standard offering with cable providers touting even more “HD choices” on their On Demand platforms.

To be sure, the adoption of HDTV has been impressive, given that it has been only ten years since the introduction of early consumer sets. However, one would be wise to consider the “chicken and egg” nature of new TV technologies. Adoption tends to follow rather than lead content availability. In recent years, programmers like NBC-Universal, Discovery Communications, Disney and MTV Networks have been aggressively rolling out HDTV simulcast channels. By converting their popular programming to HDTV they are in essence acting as arms dealers in the HD wars between multichannel providers. For the most part those channels have been provided to the consumer for little or no incremental cost. For the cable and satellite operators and programmers, plant and studio upgrades to provide HDTV has been seen as a cost of doing business to attract and maintain the growing legion of HDTV set owners. The availability of top rated programming (particularly sports) in HDTV has certainly spurred the growth of HDTV adoption.

Enter 3DTV. While 3D programming on TV has been presented from time to time as a gimmick to attract viewers (e.g. the 1997 Third Rock from the Sun two part “Nightmare on Dick Street” episode) or in an effort to heighten awareness for commercial products (e.g., the combined “Monsters vs. Aliens” trailer/SoBe commercial aired during Super Bowl XLIII in 2009), the jury is still out on whether 3DTV has a true future. Like HDTV (and DVD) a large deal of the growth potential for 3DTV rests on a three legged stool: 1.) the adoption of industry standards, 2.) the speed at which content is provided in the new format, and 3.) the ability for distributors to carry enough 3DTV signals to make adoption compelling for subscribers.

When considering standards, it is important to consider whether the goal is to present 3D images with the use of eyewear or headwear (i.e., traditional red-cyan glasses, polarized glasses, or synchronized shutter glasses) or without eyewear using an autostereoscopic display. In large part this is a matter of the consumers’ willingness to use eyewear. There is certainly a willingness to do so in a movie theater or theme park setting where the image is projected on a large screen and viewer immersion is near total. Where offered, 3D versions of movies generate on and a half times the revenue of the standard 2D version. However, there is doubt as to whether consumers are willing to don eyewear in home for extended periods of time for content presented on a smaller screen. One thing is for sure, consumer will not stand for multiple formats delivered on the same screen, constantly having to switch between different sets of glasses. The inconvenience and confusion will undoubtedly lead to high rates of dissatisfaction which will be communicated at lightning speed via online blogs and word of mouth, dooming 3DTV immediately. By far, the most impressive technology from a viewer standpoint does not rely on the use of eyewear, so called autostereoscopic display.

From a standards perspective, little is needed to display images that require eyewear. Most of those technologies have already been used on existing networks and TV sets. As far as the more impressive autostereoscopic display, last February SCTE (Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers) announced a committee to work on standards for the provision of 3DTV over cable networks. When formed, they announced that standards like these typically take 12-18 months to be created. So far there is no word out of this group. Likewise the MPEG (Motion Pictures Experts Group) Industry Forum has recently formed the 3DTV Working Group which will be meeting for the first time CES on Saturday, Jan. 9. The purpose of the group is to coordinate 3D standards activities between mastering and display technologies. That means that 3DTV are being showcased at CES before the industry has even met to discuss standards!

Until these standards are developed and costs to produce or upconvert content to 3D is known, it is difficult to say at what rate programmers will deploy full time HDTV channels. Suffice it to say that if recent HDTV history is any indication, it will be a matter of programmers and distributors working together taking the lead in making content available to viewers. From the programmers’ standpoint, their involvement will be driven by the operators pressuring them to provide 3D content as the operators see the demand from their customers and the distributors have the bandwidth on their plant to make the content available. As with HDTV, once/if 3DTV sets reach a critical mass, the floodgates will open and all of the programmers will want to jump into the pool. However, the bottleneck will remain in the distribution plants. From the operators viewpoint, the provision of additional feeds of programming (whether in HD or 3D - requiring eyewear or not) will require the use of additional bandwidth, which is an already precious and scarce commodity. How operators deal with this dilemma, either by expensive rebuilds, further division of plant by pushing fiber further out, through the deployment of IPTV technologies, or improved compression technologies, will determine how quickly 3DTV is deployed.

At the end of the day, for all of the talk about 3DTV at CES, the consumer electronics side of the equation - which has yet to even set standards - is at the mercy of the programmers and distributors when it comes to the future of the sales of 3DTV sets. For now it seems that the future of 3DTV is best viewed using eyewear of the rose colored variety.