Consumer Education Crucial to Home 3D, Makers, ESPN Say

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. -- There’s still “a lot of confusion” among consumers about 3D and many of them still “don’t understand” many aspects of the technology and its benefits, said Andy Parsons, chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association’s U.S. Promotions Committee and senior vice president of new product planning at Pioneer Electronics, at the 3D Entertainment Summit Thursday. The key is educating consumers with accurate information, he said. His take was echoed by various manufacturers and Bryan Burns, vice president of strategic business planning and development at ESPN.

Educating consumers is potentially the largest stumbling block facing 3D this year, said Burns. But, like others at the Summit, he said he was confident that consumers will buy 3D TVs once they see good demos of it at retail and elsewhere. Citing a recent CEA study, Burns said 42 percent of consumers who bought a large-screen TV in the last 12 months plan to buy a 3D TV in the next three years, and it’s expected that 142.1 million 3D TVs will be sold globally in seven years -- 71.1 million of them in North America.

Getting consumers into stores to see 3D TVs poses a challenge for the CE industry, speakers at the conference said. About 75 percent of consumers haven’t even seen current 3D technology properly demonstrated on a TV, said Marc Finer, technical director of the Digital Entertainment Group, and a marketing consultant to Sony. And many consumers will only go to a store to see 3D when there’s a special event, said Frank DeMartin, vice president of marketing at Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America.

The National 3D Demo Days events that CEA and ESPN sponsored Sept. 10-12 were a success and consumers who attended participating events at various retail stores were especially enthusiastic about seeing football in 3D, said Megan Pollock, CEA director of communications. But she said more such events are needed and more retailers need to take part.

Retailers also need to create a presence for 3D and demonstrate it in multiple locations of their stores -- not just in the TV section, but also in departments that sell products such as computers, said Richard Doherty, director of media technology strategy at Microsoft. And the content that retailers demonstrate 3D with needs to be strong, said Burns. Demonstrations are the key to promoting 3D, and it must be done right, said Rich Marty, vice president of new business marketing at Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Speakers were mixed on the significance of 3D glasses as a potential barrier to 3D sales. “Ultimately the holy grail” will be the arrival of autostereoscopic 3D in the home that doesn’t require glasses at all, said RealD CE President Bob Mayson. But he said “much higher resolution than we have today” is required for such displays. While most home 3D TVs now use active-shutter glasses, he predicted that passive glasses like those supplied to theaters by RealD and other companies will become more widespread in the home over the next couple of years. Active-shutter glasses pricing will come down, and $20-$30 “is possible” in the next 1-1.5 years, he said. But he cautioned that not all active-shutter glasses are of the same quality, and cheaper glasses will likely be inferior to the pricier ones.

The cost of glasses is not the dominant factor stopping many consumers from buying 3D TVs, said Panasonic Chief Technology Officer Eisuke Tsuyuzaki. It’s the lack of enough content, he said. “I think people make too much of the whole glasses issue,” he said. One other issue that retailers need to watch for is theft when demonstrating 3D because certain people will steal glasses or anything else “that isn’t nailed down,” said DeMartin.

It’s “difficult to say” when 3D will be included on all Blu-ray players, said Jonas Tanenbaum, vice president of flat-panel TV marketing at Samsung. But the feature “will permeate a larger and larger part of our line” of Blu-ray players starting next year, he said.

Bundling select Blu-ray 3D movies with 3D TVs has been “helpful” for selling products initially, said Sony’s Marty. But he said Sony felt it was important to also sell all its own Blu-ray movies individually or it would take “too long” to grow the market. While Disney is only offering certain Blu-ray 3D movies as part of bundles, Gabrielle Chamberlin, its senior vice president of product management, said the exclusive window “won’t be lengthy” and her company intends to sell all such movies openly at retail as well. It’s important for the studios to clearly label Blu-ray 3D movies to tell consumers what the box contains and what it doesn’t, said Marty. He thinks it’s important, for example, that consumers be told the 3D in the box is the new technology, not the old anaglyph process, he said.