Consumers Get 3D Peak at U.S. Open Tennis at Two N.J. Stores

A two-store survey of 3D U.S. Open action Saturday in northern New Jersey revealed polar opposites in retail awareness of the technology. We stepped into a Sony Style store at the Garden State Mall in Paramus mid-afternoon, looking for U.S. Open action broadcast by CBS Sports over DirecTV. The 55-inch Sony 3D TV on display was showing the same stock footage as other HDTVs in the store. The 3D World Created by Sony section was empty, so we asked a saleswoman to put on the U.S. Open. After saying, “I didn’t know it was on,” she brought up ESPN and we directed her to the DirecTV n3D channel instead.

The live sports coverage, in 3D, drew a small crowd, who took turns donning glasses for a self-guided demo. “The ball looks like it’s coming right at you,” said a boy about 10. “Cool.” His father was more reserved: “It’s hard on your eyes when they switch cameras.” Another viewer was intrigued enough to imagine other 3D possibilities. “Boxing would be awesome in 3D,” he said.

As with other sports telecasts, we were most impressed by the depth. Court-level cameras shooting the players in their chairs during breaks also captured the support crew on the court, along with the ball judges in the corners, making us feel present at the event in a way that 2D doesn’t convey. While we had wondered how well 3D could handle the velocity of the ball in tennis, we were impressed by the smoothness of the ball speeding over the net. The whole demo area erupted with “whoa” when a ball came at us, making us all pull back. During the commercial break, n3D showed a Discovery Channel clip with a convincing simulation of a dinosaur walking up to the screen in 3D. When a 2D CBS Sports commercial ran, showing clips of football from 40 years ago, the dated look of the film-based coverage was a stark contrast showing how far TV technology has advanced. Our 3D glasses went in and out briefly, and a salesman gave us another pair with no explanation but to say, “they're broken."

We arrived at a Best Buy store in Paramus about 10 minutes before the Open coverage ended for the day. We caught the last 10 minutes on a Samsung 3D TV, which had been showing the Open from the broadcast’s start that afternoon, according to the salesman. The store was also showing the Open on a Panasonic 3D elsewhere in the store, he said. In other telecasts we've seen over the past few months, people unintentionally walking in front of the 3D camera caused a break-up of the 3D effect that made it jarring to watch. We noticed during crowd shots of the gallery that people walking in and out of the frame didn’t produce that disturbing effect. Executive Vice President Ken Aagaard of CBS Sports didn’t reply right away to a call regarding what on the production end had eliminated the effect.

Graphics sat comfortably in the frame of the screen, we noticed, and that hasn’t always been the case with 3D sports productions we've seen this year. We came away from our U.S. Open 3D viewing audition with the feeling that we had been looking through binoculars, the 3D glasses acting as a magnifier for the live action.