Let me just come right out and say it: I’m a 3-D TV skeptic. I’ve seen it, several times, and I just am not feeling it. For those of you looking for bias in this post, well, there it is. A report from the Nielsen Company would suggest that I’m not alone in my skepticism.
The report, released last week, gauged consumer attitudes toward three-dimensional TV. Consumers were asked, “How likely are you to buy a 3-D TV in the next 12 months?” Their answers were grouped into two categories: those from people who had never seen 3-D TV in action, and those who had. Their answers could range from a “very likely” to a “not at all likely.”
Among people who had not seen 3-D TV before, 25 percent of them said they were “very likely” to purchase one in the next 12 months. But among those who had seen 3-D TV before, that number is cut in half, to 12 percent. That’s right, more of those who were able to see how it worked, didn’t want it.
On the flip side, among those who had not seen 3-D TV before, 13 percent said they were “not at all likely” to buy a 3-D display. But 30 percent of people who had seen 3-D TV before said they were “very unlikely.”
Now I’m no marketing expert, but I thought the idea was that once people are shown what your product can do, they are more likely to buy it. It seems troubling that, in this case, exposing people to a 3-D television may actually reduce their desire to buy one.
When asked what were their concerns about 3-D TV, consumers settled on three main points: the cost of the display, the availability of 3-D content and the requirement that you have to wear 3-D glasses to see anything.
The first two concerns are, to be fair, pretty easily addressable: prices will come down, as prices always do on consumer electronics. And if enough people buy displays, more content will be created.
But that last concern, the glasses thing, I don’t see how you get around that. Yes, companies are hard at work developing 3-D displays that don’t require glasses, but that technology (at least for anything as big as a television) is not available yet, and does not address the current crop of glasses-required displays.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: as long as people are required to wear goofy-looking glasses while engaged in what remains a social pursuit, 3-D TV will be at a disadvantage. I’m not saying it’s doomed, but it may never quite reach the escape velocity that the industry is hoping for.
By SAM GROBART, sept. 14, 2010
link to original post at http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/3-d-tvs-uphill-climb/