Few Surprises In Panasonic, Sony 3D IFA Introductions

BERLIN -- Panasonic and Sony both used last year’s IFA show to declare their intentions of staking leadership positions in consumer 3D technology. A year later, at back-to-back IFA news conferences Wednesday, both companies announced what they called “a full suite” of 3D product introductions to reach European stores in time for Christmas, albeit with few showstopper surprises.

One of Sony’s IFA highlights was the introduction of its first home cinema 3D projector. The SXRD-based BW-19ES delivers full 1080p to both left and right eyes. But Sony didn’t say whether the glasses used with the projector also will work with the Bravia TVs. Another highlight was Sony’s showcasing for the first time of a Vaio 3D laptop the company said it will begin selling next spring. But it offered few details of the prototype, except to say the laptop also will use active-shutter technology and glasses and has a screen that processes 240 frames a second.

"It is hard to imagine that only a year ago, the world had not glimpsed a single frame of Avatar, which by the way was shot with Sony’s industry-leading professional cameras,” Sony CEO Howard Stringer told reporters. “Many consumers and critics were skeptical about 3D. A year later, Avatar has led a 3D theatrical renaissance with a staggering $2.7 billion at the worldwide box office.” Stringer recalled that when he appeared at IFA last year, “I spoke about Sony’s determined advances with the next great consumer experience in 3D.” This year, Stringer said, Sony “is aggressively blazing the trail in every facet of the 3D universe."

Panasonic’s big 3D announcements at IFA included plans for an October launch of the consumer camcorder it unveiled last July for the Japan and U.S. markets. Panasonic also will market 42- and 46-inch plasma 3D TVs in Europe this fall under its VT-20 series, a derivative of the VT-25 line launched in the U.S. in sizes 50 inches and larger, the company said. For Europe, Panasonic will bundle two pairs of active-shutter glasses with each VT-20 set, it said. That contrasts with the strategy of bundling one pair with each VT-25 set it sells in the U.S. Panasonic also has disclosed plans for a more broadly distributed GT series of plasma 3D TVs in the U.S. that come bundled with no glasses at all in a move the company has acknowledged it’s making to keep the price of the sets as low as possible.

Panasonic’s 3D camcorder launch “marks a huge step forward for the industry,” Panasonic Europe CEO Laurent Abadie told the news conference. “For the first time, anyone can now capture and share their own 3D content.” Abadie said “for me, the 3D consumer camcorder really has been the highlight of this year’s innovation, and I hope it will change our expectation of content forever."

The Panasonic and Sony news conferences were a study in contrast about how to wow show crowds eager for a quality 3D experience and not have it backfire. That Panasonic installed more than four dozen 50-inch plasma 3D TVs in clusters in its booth so reporters could see the sets’ picture quality close up, and that was “a feat in itself,” a Panasonic marketing executive joked from the stage.

Reporters who arrived for the event found Panasonic active-shutter glasses on every seat. Screens overhead instructed them how to power up the glasses and warned what to look for should they malfunction or power down automatically after being idle for several minutes. The same marketing executive said of the glasses that “unfortunately, they're not a collectors’ item,” and politely asked reporters to return them to any Panasonic attendant when the event was done. That the glasses retail for $149 a pair in the U.S. might explain why one of the attendants was overly aggressive in trying to collect our pair. When leaving the event, we explained to the attendant we had turned the glasses in to one of his fellow employees. But when he didn’t take our word for it, he grabbed our elbow to prevent us from leaving until the attendant we gave our glasses to intervened on our behalf.

At the Sony event, Fujio Nishida, president of Sony Europe, proclaimed it a “breakthrough” that Sony would show virtually the entire presentation in 3D using Sony professional cameras and an image beamed onto a giant screen using a Sony Digital 4K projector. Standard RealD passive 3D glasses were on each seat when reporters arrived. But processing the 3D in real time caused serious lip-sync errors in the 3D signal onscreen, with the sound leading the picture by a noticeable gap.