Videogames to Help Drive 3D Penetration, ESPN’s Pagano Says
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- ESPN won’t be the only “driver” of 3D penetration in U.S. homes, Chuck Pagano, ESPN executive vice president of technology, said Thursday at a news briefing at Disney World, where he cited the significant role he thinks videogames and Blu-ray movies will also play. He thinks gamers in droves will buy 3D TVs to use with their PS3s and other consoles, and that standalone Blu-ray players will also be a significant factor, he said.
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Pagano and Anthony Bailey, ESPN vice president of emerging technology, don’t think the need to buy and wear 3D glasses will stop consumers from buying 3D TVs, they said. Home 3D will see the birth of a “whole new ecosystem” that will include designer glasses, and even glasses with the logos of consumers’ favorite teams, Pagano predicted. When viewers are caught up in a 3D experience, wearing the glasses doesn’t matter, Bailey said. He told us he wasn’t sure how much the glasses will cost, but conceded it “could be a problem,” at least early on. But both executives predicted the prices of 3D glasses won’t so cost-prohibitive that it turns consumers off.
How quickly the home 3D market grows will come down to the content that’s made available, said Bailey. You need strong 3D content to get consumers to buy 3D TVs, he said: “The adoption rate is going to go as fast as the content creation” allows it. He predicted it will “start slow and ramp its way up.” It'll take “12, 18, 24 months … before you start seeing mass adoption” of the technology, he predicted. There’s an entire “ecosystem” that needs to get up and running to support the technology, including cable and satellite providers, and mass adoption might not be as fast as HD was, he said.
Sky is testing 3D in the U.K. first in pubs and clubs, Bailey said, calling that “an interesting approach” to demonstrating and explaining the benefits of the technology, in comparison to the strategy in the U.S. which is to immediately bring the 3D experience into consumers’ homes. Not all programming will be available in 3D, however fast the installed base grows, he said. For example, he questions how many consumers would be willing to “walk around with glasses” to view news shows or soap operas, he said. On the production side, the extra costs involved in shooting programming in 3D will be another constraint, he said.
ESPN demonstrated a live 3D broadcast of a Harlem Globetrotters basketball game for reporters at the newly rebranded ESPN Wide World of Sports facility at Disney World. It was the first time ESPN tried to extract 2D programming from a 3D feed. The 2D broadcast was to run on ESPN2 and ESPN2 HD Friday, while the 3D version was going to be shown only internally at ESPN, Bailey said. There were no plans to broadcast the game in 3D on ESPN’s coming 3D TV station, ESPN 3D, which will show only live sports events, he told us.
Pagano said he’s concerned about reports that some TV makers will resort to using 2D-to-3D conversion chips in their sets, possibly as a means to keep the costs of their sets lower. “I'm not convinced that’s a smart thing to be doing,” he said. The industry is trying to show how great 3D looks, but the quality of the image will likely be inferior if conversion chips are used, he said: “The consumer will know.”
ESPN also said it designated the ESPN Innovation Lab at ESPN Wide World of Sports, formerly Disney’s Wide World of Sports, as “the hub for developing 3D technology.” The lab opened in October.