Sony Slams Rivals By Name For Inferior 3D TV Quality

SAN FRANCISCO -- Sony’s 3D TVs are better than Panasonic’s or Samsung’s, Sony executives said in a media briefing Wednesday. Though the executives in their spoken remarks avoided mentioning their rivals by name, a flyer they handed out specifically slammed Panasonic and Samsung 3D TVs as inferior to Sony’s on picture stability, brightness and energy efficiency.

Sony is “not the first company to introduce 3D television,” but is the best, Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow said. “We're trying to do it right. We're working hard to make sure -- even though we were not the first -- that these TVs are truly a significant consumer experience, way beyond our competition’s."

In Q-and-A, Glasgow said “the truth is we could've shipped at similar timing to our competitors” in early March, when asked if Sony lost ground to Panasonic and Samsung by not shipping its own 3D TV models until late June. “But we wanted to have a million or 2 million people take a look at things first, give us ideas on how to fix things, how to make it better,” he said. “So we didn’t feel that being first was as critical as really having the best possible experience for the consumer.” Asked if he was suggesting that Panasonic and Samsung sacrificed quality for speed to market, Glasgow said: “I'll let you suggest anything you'd like. I do think that for every competitor and for ourselves, there’s still a lot to learn here. Companies that are willing to invest and learn will provide the best overall experience."

Sony thinks “the biggest learning experience at this point is how to create the right content” in 3D, Glasgow said. The best 3D content needs to be as “natural as possible,” without the “distortion and aberrations” that make people sick, he said. Ultimately, Glasgow would like to see home 3D go glasses-free, he said. “I think we all would. And I think that’s going to be possible, but not today. It’s years off, and it’s going to take different technologies than we know of, but we'll figure it out."

Sony’s 3D TVs boast “a stable infrared signal that comes from the television, interacts with the glasses and gives you a clear 3D picture pretty much regardless of where you're sitting in the room,” said Chris Fawcett, vice president of the company’s U.S. TV business. “That doesn’t exist in all 3D televisions. So that’s one aspect that Sony has taken advantage of.” Sony also has a technology that’s “driving the picture” called LED Boost, Fawcett said. “It turns the light in the picture up brighter in the time when your 3D glasses open, allowing more brightness to come through, so you can see a better quality picture. It makes a big difference. If we pull the blinds up and plug this room with light, you're still seeing a top-quality, high-definition 3D image.”

Sony’s 3D technology “also works very well in high-speed action,” Fawcett said. It minimizes “crosstalk, so you're seeing a solid, clear and crisp image on the screen,” he said. Sony’s 3D active shutter glasses “accentuate” the 3D experience, he said. The sides of the glasses block out distracting room light and the frames are adjustable, he said. Sony also has developed smaller glasses in blue and pink to fit children, and women and men with smaller heads, he said.

Though Fawcett, like the other Sony executives present, refrained from referring to Panasonic and Samsung by name, flyers that Sony handed out at the briefing summarized his remarks without pulling punches. The flyers, headlined “3D As It Was Meant to Be,” said the 3D signal from the Sony TVs is “more stable than Samsung’s, which means a wider viewing angle so everyone in the room can enjoy Sony 3D from a comfortable seat.” The picture on the Sony 3D TVs “is not only brighter even in well-lit rooms but more energy efficient than Panasonic 3D Plasma HDTVs,” the flyers said. It ended with this tagline at the bottom: “You have not seen 3D until you see it on a Sony.” It’s not clear whether Sony plans to distribute the flyers at retail, but Fawcett said the company began running versions of the message in trade ads this week using slightly different wording.

As for Sony executives at recent trade events who have criticized the messaging in Panasonic and Samsung TV ad spots for their 3D TVs, Fawcett said he thinks “there’s nothing inherently wrong with things coming out of the screen,” as both the Panasonic and Samsung commercials depict. But “it sparks of the gimmickry that’s hamstrung 3D over its life,” he said. “And I think that’s part of the issue, which is this isn’t just stuff jumping out at you.” It’s more important to think about 3D “in all its depth, and all its dimensions,” Fawcett said. The “palette” of 3D story-telling “changes the dynamic of how you're presenting something to the audience,” he said. “And that’s one of the things that I think is really important to how we're trying to educate the industry and to how we're trying to educate ourselves. 3D is a lot more than just reaching out, the ladder comes swinging over your head, the feather tickles your nose. It’s not that kind of action. It’s more than that, and that’s the thing we want to emphasize and to get people to see this.”

Other Sony disclosures: (1) “You can bet that Sony will be there,” Mike Abary, new senior vice president of Sony’s Home Division, said when asked when the company will field its first 3D-capable Vaio PCs. “Timing is the only question,” said Abary, who had headed up Vaio operations before being named to his new Sony post. “At this point, there are other applications right now that are more entertainment-centric” for 3D, he said. “That’s why TV is such a big focus,” as are Blu-ray 3D players and 3D-ready home theater systems, he said. “But we think that PC gaming will be popular” as a 3D home entertainment medium, “and we will be there,” he said.

(2) Sony in the long term expects to be the global share leader in 3D TV, both in units and dollars, Glasgow said. Of the 100 million 3D TV sets Sony has said it expects the industry to sell globally in the next three years, Glasgow wouldn’t be pinned down to predict what share of those sets sold will belong to Sony.

(3) “So far things are going exactly as we planned,” Glasgow said of Sony’s sales in the fiscal year that began April 1. “They're positive. It’s hard to predict the economy, but we've got good growth already over last year in our first quarter, and we expect to significantly exceed last year’s numbers. So we feel very positive about that. We know there’s a lot of shaky moments in the stock market and in our economy, but it always seems to be that way. And we're staying cautiously optimistic, which is a term we've used several times before. We think we can drive the business this year, and we thing 3D will certainly be a key part of that."

(4) LCD TV and home AV products “overall have been steady in the market,” Glasgow said. “We haven’t seen dramatic surprises in any way. In digital imaging, it’s stronger than we thought, and our Handycam line basically is up to 40 percent market share. So it’s staying very positive for Sony, and we see that continuing … People are buying things. That’s good for our business.”