CES: 3DTV Still Suffers From 'Black Hole Of Content' Panelists Say Cost of Production Must Come Down, Sets Must Increase
By Todd Spangler Multichannel News 1/10/2012 2:13:18 PM http://www.multichannel.com/article/478831-CES_3DTV_Still_Suffers_From_Black_Hole_Of_Content_.php Las Vegas — There's a dearth of 3D content on television two years after the first 3DTVs hit the market, but that should start to change as TV networks cut production costs and consumers buy more sets in 2012, industry executives said on a panel here at CES Tuesday. "We're now in a phase where we're concentrating more on the economics," said Vince Pace, chairman of 3D production firm Cameron Pace Group. "We're going to get the cost of 3D production down the cost of 2D production... It's natural that we will progress to a state where the economics will scale up to fill this black hole of content that exists." ESPN on Monday delivered its 188th live 3D telecast, with ESPN 3D's coverage of the Bowl Championship Series college football title game between LSU and Alabama. ESPN 3D launched in June 2010 with the World Cup. "While we at ESPN may have hit the [3DTV] on-ramp a year early, clearly the on-ramp is being built," said Bryan Burns, ESPN vice president of strategic business planning and development "This is an evolutionary process," Burns said, speaking at the "Spotlight on 3D Content" panel. "We are now seeing the seeds we have planted start to sprout." ESPN is producing more 3D content with what Burns called a "5D" approach: It uses 3D cameras to shoot an event but strips out the left-eye image to deliver the 2D version. "For us 5D is a way to get two shows out of one, which doesn't cost you as much as doing two separate shoots," Burns said. It's still early days for 3DTV, said Tom Cosgrove, president and CEO of 3net, joint venture of Discovery Communications, Sony and IMAX. "But people are realizing that this is a business that is not going away," he added. DirecTV launched 3net in February 2011, but the network hasn't signed up any other distributors. Cosgrove expects between 10 million and 14 million 3DTV sets in the U.S. by the end of 2012. "It's just a matter of that platform getting out there, and it's on us to get that compelling content out there." A challenge for 3D compared with HD is that it's very expensive to convert 2D content into 3D whereas standard-definition content can more cost-effectively be upconverted to HD, HBO chief technology officer Bob Zitter said. "We're looking to drive down the incremental cost of producing content in 3D," Zitter said. "That's going to be essential to creating more 3D content." Zitter noted that a one-hour episode of a TV series can cost anywhere from $500,000 to $6 million per hour, so the costs of 3D are "more easily absorbed in a more expensive project." Additional 3DTV events -- such as NBC's plans to offer the 2012 London Olympic Games in 3D to U.S. distributors -- will help grow awareness, the panelists said. "That raises the water in the bathtub for everybody," Burns said. The challenge moving forward for 3DTV networks is getting the message out to consumers, to let them know how to access the content. "As an industry we're still figuring that out and working through it," Cosgrove said. The driver for 3D, as with the adoption of HD, will be compelling content rather than the format per se, according to Cosgrove: "We need to get to the point where you're not watching it just because it's 3D -- you're watching it because it's a fantastic show... It's the content that is going to drive people to adopt [3DTVs]." -- ================================================= George Antunes Voice (713) 743-3923 Associate Professor Fax (713) 743-3927 Political Science Mail: antunes at uh dot edu University of Houston Houston, TX 77204-3011 _______________________________________________ Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
