Simple answer: Yes

It really isn’t a matter of upgrading one’s TV to accommodate 3D. With 2.4 TVs per household and many people having only purchased their first HDTV, there is a lot of short-term demand for new sets which can be 3D capable.

 

 

It really is not a matter of upgrading one’s TV to accommodate 3D. According to multiple sources, the market for flat panel TVs is growing, even during the current economic meltdown. There are, on average, 2.4 TV sets per U.S. household. Many of these households have only bought their first HDTV and will be looking to replace older TVs with newer flat panel TVs. When they do so, making sure the new device is 3D capable adds little to no cost to the purchase. In fact, many people already have 3D enabled TVs and 3D enabled Blu-ray players in their homes and they are not even aware of it (there have been unsubstantiated claims of over 1 million such stealth sets in U.S. homes).

 

While there is a lot of empirical data to project TV sales in North America, tracking 3D is much harder. Most of the news and claims by manufacturers seem to be anecdotal. Still, the fact that the news is being made by manufacturers such as Sony, Samsung, Mitsubishi and Panasonic  is worth taking note. And when companies as diverse as Japan’s Nippon Broadcasting and British Sky Broadcasting Group begin to actually move toward providing a schedule of 3D broadcast programming, one can see that the beginnings for the infrastructure to support 3D TV is very real.

 

For 3D in the home to become ubiquitous, homes that rely on over-the-air broadcasting will have to be included. The challenge is OTA broadcasting of 3D signals in a 2D ATSC world. And for this there are competing technologies from TDVision Systems Inc. and SENSIO Technologies Inc. (TSX Venture Exchange:SIO) that allow discrete left and right eye stereographic moving images to be broadcast through a 2D channel. These systems require a decoder in the TV or somewhere between the TV and the antenna, but the systems do exist and both companies are having discussions with all of the leading 3D TV and disc player manufacturers for inclusion of the codec in their systems.

 

Third in the list of technology hurdles is the current lack of standards. This, too, is a short-term problem which is being actively worked by the Society of Motion Picture and Television engineers (SMPTE). In their press release of 22 Apr 2009, in which they announced the requirements for a stereoscopic 3D Home Master standard, they also predicted that the standard will be completed by June 2010. With such a standard in place, the risk to manufacturers will drop exponentially as they design new and better technology for this market.

 

The biggest challenge is not technology and the sale of TVs or even the demand for them; it’s lack of content. Hollywood is just gearing up for 3D production and until there is a ready supply of it, making a business of 3D television will be slow in coming. The silver lining, however, is that increased demand will hasten the development of 3D content which in turn will support increased 3D production capacity which is still in very short supply. 3D content is being supported by major studios, A-list artists, and top producers. The interest is continuing to grow and while some say that Cameron’s Avatar will be the definitive moment for 3D, it is unlikely that this one movie will stop forward progress while its success will almost certainly quiet any naysayers. As more filmmakers begin to see 3D as an important tool in helping them tell their stories, the circle from artist to consumer will be complete.