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One to One Magazine

April 2009

3D - The New Industry Battleground

Hurdles need to be cleared before 3D is ready for prime time. Joy Zaccaria speaks to a cross-section of players who need to come together to make 3D a must-have for consumers.

In order for 3D to be a viable viewing format, there needs to be a coordinated effort among display manufacturers, movie studios, content creators, production, post-production, and those behind the technology to make what was once a flat moving image into an image that has a new dimension.

The Consumer Electronics Show was a big 3D party this year. From broadcast to consumer electronics and the cinema, the whole industry is excited about the prospects of 3D. Regardless of who needs whom, Blu-ray and 3D need to work well together for either to succeed. Since video games are already being created with 3D information in them, this sector is leading the way.

Chris Chinnock, presidentof InsightMedia and leader of the 3D@Home Consortium.

Chris Chinnock

The big take-away from CES in Las Vegas in January is that3D is now squarely on the roadmaps for major consumer electronics companies – that’s a big change.This is top-line messaging from Panasonic, Sony, LG and Samsung. Wow! 3D went very well this year.

Based on all of the manufacturer demos and a lot of buzz at CES, we’re passed the hump and we have reached critical mass for 3D. This is notgoing to be a fad; this is a movement. Panasonic demonstrated a 103in plasma display with 3D content from the opening ceremony at the 2008 Beijing Olympics to knock your socks off. It was very impressive. Most people preferred the LCD TV. The plasma display used active glasses so those were a little heavier;
LCD had passive glasses, but that meant more pixilation – and it was a little brighter.

NVidia’s announcement regarding the new driver board and active glasses it is bundling with manufacturers to enable a whole new class of 3D monitors for 3D gaming could be a big initiative in the home for 3D. That was important.

There's going to be a lot happening in the next few years in this area, so it's going to be fun!

Sarah Carroll, director strategy consulting & continuous services, Futuresource

Sarah Carroll

Enthusiasm for 3D was clear in the keynotes at CES. Hollywood executives talked about how the industry has taken a massive step forward in terms of the viewing experience for consumers.

Display manufacturers were demonstrating 3D more enthusiastically than we thought they would be. We knew 3D was building, but there are still some issues that need to be resolved to make it a mass-market success. 3D can create great renewal in this business.

Hollywood won’t be happy unless they can exploit that 3D content in other windows, not least in the home via Blu-ray – home video is still the largest part of their revenue. The cinema window is important, but the holy grail is home video. For those in the broadcast industry, 3D also has the potential to rejuvenate a business where HD is starting to mature in some markets.

Bill Foster, senior technology consultant, Futuresource

Bill Foster

From a replicator’s standpoint, 3D is not a whole lot different since a feature in 3D will probably fit initially on a BD50. It may mean more production and a double inventory if a studio chooses to put out two SKUs – a 2D version and a 3D version.

3D on Blu-ray will have to be sanctioned by the BDA and it will have to be part of the format. There are lots of proprietary solutions going around but everything has to be standardised, otherwise Brand X’s Blu-ray player won’t show 3D on Brand Y’s plasma. That’s the neck of the hourglass. Standardisation takes time since everyone has to agree, but Hollywood can’t wait. There have been interim solutions such as the Hannah Montana discs that have come out in the coloured glasses format called anaglyph, but longer term a more sophisticated system will be required.

3D cinema is creating a groundswell, especially the movie Avatar, from James Cameron – everybody says that’s going to be the big one. In theory it is going to push cinema owners to put in 3D equipment. James Cameron has studied 3D very closely, and it’s felt in the industry that what he does with it will be stunning. He ‘gets it’. It’s not just about having things thrown at you and you ducking. There are aspects to 3D that are more subtle and he understands it.

David Chechelashvili, VP of marketing, iZ3D

David Chechelashvili

There are two major obstacles in the way of mass-market 3D acceptance. One is a more comfortable 3D experience. Most people associate 3D with the red and blue glasses from the ’60s and headaches and discomfort. Education is key to overcoming that image. At iZ3D we believe the user experience should be comfortable, so we use a technology called passive polarisation. It’s similar to what RealD uses in 3D movie theatres with polarised glasses thatare more like sunglasses – except they have eight choices of designer glasses. iZ3D targets gamers, so it is important that they have a
choice of cool glasses.

The second obstacle is content availability – that’s where the games come into the picture. Games are already made in 3D but 3D information built into games is not being utilised in regular screens. We’re taking advantage of the built-in 3D information. Once the 3D driver is installed on a monitor, any 3D game will work in it. In a couple of years when availability of 3D movies on Blu-ray increases, the adoption of 3D will move to the mainstream.

Neil Schneider, CEO, Meant to be Seen

Neil Schneider

Gamers are early adopters of exciting technologies like 3D and they are very much a viral community. Gaming is going to be the link: itis going to build the demand for 3D in the home while we’re waiting for the standards to take place. Once the standards are settled, cinema will follow.

One obstacle is the myth about 3D glasses. Articles criticise the ‘dorky glasses’ and there is a lot of judgement about 3D before the technology is actually tried. As far as the acceptance of 3D glasses goes, it’s very high. I think people will invest in autostereoscopic – meaning glasses-free technologies – but I don’t know if this is actually necessary. Are customers
really complaining about this?

Meant to be Seen ran a survey to determine what customers really think about 3D. One survey was designed for traditional 2D gamers who don’t own the equipment. Another was designed for people who owned modern 3D equipment such as monitors, head-mounted displays and glasses. I was surprised that, of the people who don’t yet own the equipment, almost 65 percent see 3D as intriguing while 27 percent said it was must-have technology.

I was most excited about the results of the 3D glasses questions. Based on traditional 2D gamers, people who don’t yet own the equipment, only 12 percentare against wearing glasses while playing video games.This jumps to 16 percent for Blu-ray, so once you’re dealing with Blu-ray movies instead of games, there’s more rejection.

There are disadvantages in home cinema compared with gaming. A gamer playing on a PC will spend top dollar on a computer and will want the best possible visual experience. He wants to be oblivious to everything else in the room. Instead of Blu-ray bringing 3D into the home, it’s gaming that will bring customers to Blu-ray.

David Naranjo, director of product development for the AV products group, Mitubishi

David Naranjo

With evidence from Beowulf that came out in 3D in 2007, and recently The Journey to the Center of the Earth and My Bloody Valentine, ticket sales have shown that some people are willing to pay up to twice as much for 3D in the theatres as for a standard version of the same movie. This means more revenue for the studios while showing these movies in fewer theatres.

At CES in January, Mitsubishi promoted technology to bring 3D to the home. We offer large-screen televisions that leverage 3D-ready capability: that means our TVs are able to display 3D content in a checkerboard format.

Mitsubishi is now partnered with NVidia, the makers of graphics cards, and a company called Aspen Media that makes PCs.This offers consumers a gaming solution that will allow them to play over 350 games that were created in 2D, and the
system renders them on the fly in 3D.

Many people are purchasing Blu-ray players. 3D should be an add-on feature for Blu-ray, as opposed to making someone buy a new Blu-ray player.

How the industry presents 3D will determine its success. You have to do it well for people to be grabbed by the wow factor. Mitsubishi is putting demo systems out at retail to display 3D content running off their TVs. This is building momentum. People see this transition like HDTV. In 1989 people knew it was coming and once they saw it, it was here to stay.

Rob de Vogel, senior director business creation, Philips

Rob de Vogel

We develop tools to create content in the right form for our displays. They are not for home use, but rather mainly they are active in the B2B world of digital signage and scientific specialisation.

We started with 3D in B2B because they are less price-sensitive markets and, importantly, it allows for more controlled rollouts.

We think 3D is absolutely the next big thing but it will be a controlled rollout, first in B2B, then controlled environments,
then packaged media, then full fledged television. 3D is not so much about a display or a Blu-ray player, it’s about the
whole chain: production of content, editing, distribution of content and playing it back to home.

Mark Horton, strategic marketing manager, Quantel

Mark Horton

Quantel has been out on the road for nearly a year, showing stereoscopic 3D to everyone we could. As a manufacturer of high-end visual effects and editing systems for film and television, we learned a great deal from individuals and companies who are already involved in stereoscopic 3D.

I’ve drawn two conclusions from the road trip: first, there is a lot more stereoscopic 3D happening out there than people realise. And, second, this is potentially the biggest opportunity for our industry in years and we need to work as an industry to make ithappen. If we get it right, everyone wins.

This industry is ultimately about entertaining and educating people. Channel proliferation has changed the economics of broadcasting, as have games and the web. Broadcasters are adapting by cutting costs, improving efficiency, offering HD services, increasing the use of user- generated content and looking for new delivery revenue streams.

These are all good measures to improve their position versus other broadcasters – but stereoscopic 3D offers the prospectof grabbing back viewers who spend their time on the web or playing games. Today, if you shoot digitally, post digitally and transmit digitally, stereoscopic 3D is less difficult than many imagine. Also, well-shot stereo may have some compression-friendly characteristics – there is similarity between the ‘eyes’.

I have been told that there are still many issues to be resolved for working on 3D content in post-production and that customers have all the day-to-day issues of conventional 2D projects multiplied by at least two. 3D projects mean double the recorded material – that means double the disc space, double the rendering overhead and double the issues with moving media.

There are issues in off-line. You can’t judge depth effects, you can’t judge the pace of the project (3D feels better with longer, slower shots), you can’t easily see if there are colorimetry, positioning or synchronisation issues between the cameras etc. That all means off lines are guesswork and much more fixing needs to be done in the online sessions.

While 3D post is still suffering its growing pains, colour TV was difficult as well.

Nicholas Routhier,CEO,Sensio Technologies

Nicholas Routhier

Sensio already has a library and rights to 40 titles such as Jaws 3D, and we’re the only one signing deals with studios.

Big studios like Disney, Warner and Universal are pushing more for 3D on the theatrical side. They have great titles and executives are asking: ‘When are we going to release 3D for the consumer market and get all the extra revenues?’

Disney has the same roadmap for 3D that it had for digital cinema. It wanted digital cinema to happen, so it made Chicken Little and pushed and advocated 3D, and now you have digital cinema worldwide. Before there was 3D, digital cinema was going nowhere. Disney is thinking that, similarly, 3D is going to be the killer app for Blu-ray. 3D requires more bandwidth and, in the DVD specs, there’s not much room to manoeuvre. Blu-ray has extra capacity on the disc, more bandwidth.

The DVD Forum is looking at standards. Sensio has met all the requirements of the DVD Forum and they have been accepted as an optional standard – the way DTS is for audio. It’s the first time any standards body has recognised the technology as a standard for 3D distribution.

Guido Dalessi,CEO,Singulus Mastering

Guido Dalessi

3D glasses are a hurdle preventing a real consumer market pick-up. The screens that do not require any special glasses will greatly improve market acceptance potential.

In the past one or two years a lot of people have purchased a HD flatscreen TV, and I am not sure that these people will consider purchasing a new display for 3D again on a short notice. I would not expect 3D TV to become an immediate consumer success, but it probably will be in a couple of years. It will depend a lot on the availability of the right content.

At the same time, the extra dimension could be appreciated in the same way as going from mono to stereo sound, giving a clear next step forward in the desire to totally experience movies.

www.3dathome.org

www.futuresource-consulting.com

www.insight-media.com

www.iz3d.com

www.mitsubishi.com

www.mtbs3d.com

www.philips.com

www.quantel.com

www.sensio.tv

www.singulus.de

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