[TVB Europe]
…Tom Morrod, senior principle analyst for TV and broadcast technology at IHS Screen Digest and IHS iSuppli, is not convinced that people want to watch 3DTV at home due to the current raft of technology which, “while improving, is entrenching a lot of bad 3DTV sets into the homes of primarily trend setters, early adopters and the people who pay high-end subscriptions to pay-TV.”
The problem, as Morrod sees it, lies with active TVs with low frame rates and lots of cross talk which create a poor viewing experience. These were shipped in volume early on, by every major brand, and took a chunk of the early adopter market, but subsequently proved not to be good enough to encourage much actual viewing of content in 3D, which has stifled demand and revenue from this key segment of consumers.
“Some newer higher frame rate active sets incorporate ‘blank’ frames between frames to reduce cross-talk, and are much better than those that have low frame rates, and don’t,” says Morrod.
“By making 3D inaccessible as a premium technology to these consumers simply by virtue of poor first generation sets, and therefore putting them out of the useful market to support 3D for maybe another four to six years, we’re effectively making 3D stillborn and it will probably take both a second generation of technology – especially the passive glasses which deal with most of the technical problems; and a partial replacement cycle to make sure that the high-value consumers who are able to support the market are actually sitting in front of TVs that are good enough at displaying 3D that they will want to support it and pay to support it. …