Sony 3D Camcorder Doubtful Anytime Soon, Top Strategist Says At IFA

BERLIN -- Sony’s top strategist for Blu-ray and 3D said at an IFA media briefing Friday that it’s doubtful his company would market a 3D consumer camcorder before work is finished on a 3D spec for the AVCHD format that Sony developed jointly with Panasonic. The executive, Akira Shimazu, senior general manager in charge of Sony’s Blu-ray and 3D strategy office, steered well clear of criticizing Panasonic’s new 3D camcorder introduction, which has won high praise at IFA for its ability to help consumers create their own 3D images, thus filling the content void left by the fact that so few Blu-ray 3D movies broadcast 3D programs are available.

"It would be easy for us to introduce a point-and-shoot, but we would need to give consumers many kinds of warnings about how not to shoot 3D,” Shimazu told us. For example, he said, Sony would need to tell the parent who operates a 3D camcorder to instruct his children not to run too fast toward or within three meters of the lens, Shimazu said. Sony’s professional 3D cameras contain sophisticated electronics that correct left-eye, right-eye synchronization problems, Shimazu said. “It would be very difficult to build those electronics into an affordably priced consumer 3D camcorder.”

Shimazu declined comment on what an AVCHD spec for 3D would contain, or when work on such a spec could be finished. But he said work on such a spec has started. Panasonic representatives didn’t respond right away to requests for comment on Shimazu’s remarks that work on a 3D spec for AVCHD has begun.

Shimazu spoke at a seminar that Sony executives staged to promote Blu-ray as a writing format for PC archiving. AVCHD is “a very Blu-ray-friendly format” for creating content for archiving on read-once or rewritable, high-capacity Blu-ray media, Shimazu declared. The industry is expected to sell 9 million AVCHD cameras globally this year and 17 million in 2011, he said. Together with the estimated installed base of 38 million PS3 and 26 million standalone Blu-ray players, “it’s time to promote” Blu-ray writing.

Throughout the presentation, the executives depicted Blu-ray recording as better and more efficient than DVD writing. For example, Thomas Nedder, managing director of Sony Optiarc Europe, which makes Blu-ray writable drives for PCs, said writing 25 GB of data to one Blu-ray disc at 12X speed requires only 11 minutes. Writing that same 25 GB of data to DVD at 24X takes 6 minutes longer and requires five 5-GB discs, Nedder said.

Fewer discs means “no more digital mess,” said another executive, Hidetoshi Takigawa, director of Sony VAIO Mobile operations in Europe. Sony thinks the industry will ship 310 million recordable Blu-ray discs globally in 2012, Takigawa said. The “market price” for Blu-ray recordable discs is fast becoming cheaper than DVD on a “per gigabyte” basis, he said. In Q-and-A, Nedder said it wasn’t their intention to position Blu-ray recording as a competitor to DVD writing, but to dispel consumer misconceptions that Blu-ray as a recording medium was either too expensive or not viable.

Sony Optiarc plans Q4 shipment in Europe of a BWU-500S internal Blu-ray writer for PCs that operates at 12X speed and also will play Blu-ray 3D movies, Nedder said. It’s expected to sell for below 200 euros, he said. Also shipping Q4 is the “ultra portable BDX-S500U external writer that operates at 6X speed and also will play Blu-ray 3D discs, he said. The external writer is expected to sell for under 250 euros, he said.

IFA Notebook

"Consumers appear to be willing to buy” 3D TVs, “but the game is just starting,” Bryan Burns, ESPN vice president of strategic business planning and development, said in an IFA keynote Friday. Time Warner Cable’s agreement late Thursday to carry ESPN 3D raises to 60 million the number of “available to” homes capable of receiving the new network. ESPN defines “available to” as having the programming in the pipeline to those homes, he said. All that’s required is for the household to go out and buy a 3D TV set, he said. ESPN 3D launched June 11 with 45 million “available to” homes through its carriage agreements with Comcast, DirecTV and AT&T U-Verse, Burns said. On Sept. 10, through a promotion with CEA called “3D Demo Day,” ESPN 3D will beam the service 3-11 p.m. to about 1,000 CE stores in the U.S., Burns said. Each of the stores “in its own way will market the availability of 3D content,” Burns said. “It is the first step in making 3D content available for consumer sampling. We hope it leads to set purchasers and calls to our distributors.” ESPN 3D beamed its X Games 3D coverage in July live to Foxtel, Australia’s largest pay-TV operator, Burns said in responding to a audience question whether ESPN would soon make its 3D content available to European affiliates. “It was our first chance to test if we could actually pull that off,” Burns said. “It worked very, very well and the Australians loved it. I think now that we have that experience in our back pocket, we'll be more aggressive in opening dialogs with our distributors in Europe and around the world to provide our 3D content that we have in the United States for their use around the world. That will come soon, I believe.”

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Though 3D TVs are “the new kid on the block,” sales of the sets already accounted for 4.8 percent of the total euros Germans spent on TV in July, Euronics International President Hans Carpels told the IFA DisplaySearch Business Conference Friday. In France, it was 4 percent, Carpels said. Euronics is Europe’s largest CE retailing buying group, he said. It’s comprised of 6,400 retail companies encompassing 11,000 storefronts and accounted for sales of 14.1 billion euros last year, he said. By comparison, Dixons, the U.K.’s largest CE chain, did slightly more than the pound equivalent of 9 billion euros, he said. Though 3D TV is off to a fast start in some markets, issues abound, he said. For example, Euronics recently surveyed members and found to its surprise that not all 3D TVs that leave the shop are tied to sales of 3D glasses, even for sets that don’t have the glasses bundled in, he said. When he questioned retailers for the reasons why, the overwhelming response was that “there’s no 3D to look at,” he said. “We would like to stress that we want real 3D content, not the 2D with 3D tricks and gimmicks added, because the consumer wants to dive below the chair” when viewing 3D entertainment, he said. “He wants to have the special effects. He doesn’t want the gimmicks. So we would like to have a bit more influence on broadcasters to include regular 3D programs. And we believe that 3D sports is a great asset.”