Communications, Television: Analysts Cautious on 3-D TV Take-Up (Satellitetoday.com)

Communications, Television: Analysts Cautious on 3-D TV Take-Up (Satellitetoday.com)

http://www.satellitetoday.com/eletters/ibc/2010-09-09/35002.html?hq_e=el&hq_m=2041282&hq_l=9&hq_v=4737859b62

* Alan Spicer’s Comments: Most of us just got HDTV in the last few years. In Marine, Yachting, the already had large flat screen TV’s (at least in the Salon) on many yachts. Some of them (trust me a boat gave me one) weighed a TON and didn’t have the newer HDMI inputs. A lot of below decks TV’s were analog 4:3 TV boxes of the old NTSC TV style. A lot of those are getting switched over on boats to flat panel TV’s. But High Definition Content was a little slow coming to yachting. DirecTV HD couldn’t be watched until just recently (last year?) on KVH Satellite Systems and also Seatel / Cobham just came out with a home dish in a Auto-Align System that gets the typical white Radome. That has to be a BIG antenna. KVH came out with a smaller HDTV antenna I believe it was last year.

Anyway like I was saying … a lot of people have already laid out cash expenditures for Flat Panel TV’s most of them lately being Digital (ATSC) TV, HDMI Input, and consequently HDTV capable. I wonder, like this article says, how many people are going to want to lay out cash again … to have 3D TVs ? I for one am not real excited about the idea of having to wear some kind of 3D glasses in order to watch TV. Sometimes I watch TV and work on the computer at the same time. Sometimes people are in a social setting … Let’s say on yachts … in the salon … it almost seems kind of rude to be sitting there with 3D glasses on. And like others have said the glasses are often specific to the TV model and they can get lost or broken. Anyway my complaints and opinions aside - here is the article I just spotted:

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While 3-D TV continues to dominate headlines and discussions due to early efforts by broadcasters such as DirecTV, Discovery and ESPN, many industry analysts remain cautious about the potential take-up of 3-D TV.

   “ABI is being a bit cautious with our forecast for 3-D-ready TV sales. We believe that the market will grow, but TV manufacturers are placing the technology in TVs without having a pull from consumers at this point,” said Jason Blackwell, senior analyst, ABI Research. “We have not completely finalized our 3-D TV forecast, but by 2015, 3-D TV will reach about 18 percent penetration of worldwide, flat panel-TV sales. In markets like North America and Western Europe, penetration will exceed 20 percent of flat panel-TV sales. We believe that HD and Internet connectivity will be more significant drivers for consumer purchases than 3-D alone.”

   Maxim Baudry, a satellite analyst at French telecoms consultancy, Idate, said, “It is only after 2015 that we think 3-D will become more popular, when price of TV sets decrease and the technology becomes more mature. There are a number of reasons why expect the take-up to be slow. Firstly, with the current economic context, people try to avoid expenses that they consider not so important. Secondly, a majority of households have already spent money for a brand new HDTV set, and they are not willing to spend immediately money for a new 3-D TV set. Thirdly, prices of 3-D TV sets are extremely high right now. Finally, 3-D content is not widely available yet on premium channels.”

   One of the questions now is does it make sense for broadcasters to make aggressive moves into 3-D TV? “Most leading broadcasters are considering 3-D and the implications of acquiring and offering 3-D content,” said Anna Hunt, senior analyst, IMS Research. “The cost for 3-D content production is quite high, and penetration of 3-D TV sets in the home is currently low, so everyone is taking cautious steps, looking to identify what type of content would benefit most from 3-D and how they can deliver 3-D content using existing infrastructure.”

   The additional effort required to produce 3-D programming and making sure it is high quality also is a detriment to many broadcasters, said Blackwell. “I don’t think it makes sense for everything to be broadcast in 3-D, and in many cases the effort would be better spent on HD,” he said.

(More at the link above.)

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Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net and http://www.wifiyacht.net

+1 954-683-3426

communications @ marinetelecom.net

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