3D HDTV: But I Just Bought A Set Three Years Ago!

Gman496

Super Moderator
Staff member
3D HDTV sales face an uphill battle in a slowing economy where most of the target demographic already upgraded their home sets during the DTV transition.


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Today, I received the following email newsletter from 3ALITY Digital, a provider of 3D HDTV technology for broadcasters, content providers and end-users. In essence, they are one of the companies that make the beam splitters and stereoscopic image processors used by TV studios to create the 3D programs, as well as the chipsets and electronics that go into 3D set top boxes and in TV sets.

The subject of the email was thus: the reported “fatigue” that users get while watching 3D HDTV programming is a myth, and the financial success of such 3D movies as Shrek Forever After and How to Train Your Dragon at the box office is proof that the genre is here to stay, and that people will want to have the same experience in their homes as they do in the movie theater.

Okay, fair enough. However, the email also cites that Sex in the City 2, which is a 2D film, was expected to do well and has so far underperformed. Something tells me, however, that this has very little to do with the technology used in the film but instead has to do with the God-awful writing and abysmal plot.

My wife was a hard-core Sex in the City fan, saw the first film, was disappointed, and after reading and watching the reviews of the new film on Rotten Tomatoes, decided to wait until it showed up on Netflix.

Let’s get back to the “3DTV Fatigue is a Myth” argument, however. I admit that I’ve been watching 3D content as far back as when the first IMAX 3D films came out, and that I’m a junkie for major new 3D film releases that really exploit the technology.

The best 3D film I have ever seen was IMAX: Space Station 3D, which was produced by NASA and Lockheed-Martin Aerospace and released in 2002, and I hope that some day it gets ported to the current digital technology and can be re-shown. Avatar was indeed a groundbreaking film, and I saw it twice in 3D. I’m looking forward to seeing How to Train Your Dragon when I have a spare weekend.

Still, the eyestrain issue is not a myth. As someone who is nearly 41 years old and with a major astigmatism, who has to wear pretty strong corrective lenses I find that I need to rest my eyes after about 30 minutes of watching 3D content, and 3D movies which have a lot of action and rapid changes of depth like Avatar can be nauseating sometimes and it absolutely does require adjustment.

In all fairness to the 3D HDTV format, I haven’t had the chance to experience a 3D HDTV store demo yet, but our own Editor-in-Chief Larry Dignan — who is about the same age as I am — did recently at his local Best Buy and told me he couldn’t take it after 4 minutes.

I would posit, however, that the 3D HDTV adoption challenges have very little to do with eyestrain and have a lot to do with wallet strain.

The current economy is a perfect storm for creating a difficult environment for adoption of new technologies, particularly if the human internalized price to incremental benefit calculus doesn’t weigh largely in their favor.

And to add to the pure economics of the situation — as name brand 3D HDTV sets cost more than twice that of their normal, name brand 1080p 24fps 120Hz counterparts — most of the people who may have been the target for brand new 3D HDTVs replaced their sets between two and three years ago.

I’m one of those many folks that will probably wait a while before jumping on the 3D HDTV bandwagon. I had both my bedroom and living room analog sets replaced in 2007, when the prices started to look attractive.

At the time, I spent about $1500.00 on my SONY BRAVIA 40″ and about $1200.00 on my SHARP AQUOS 42″, which were very good deals three years ago as I got them on corporate discounts.

By current standards, these sets are a generation behind, as they are 60Hz 1080p/60 sets, so while they can play Blu-Ray content, they can’t play 120Hz 24fps 1080p On-Demand content from my DirecTV DVRs (which were recently firmware upgraded to play 3D content as well, which I also won’t be able to watch)

This doesn’t bother me at all, as I really don’t play Blu-Rays much (I occasionally rent them by mail on Netflix, but I prefer to watch Instant View material on my Roku or iPad instead) and virtually all of the HD content I watch on DirecTV is 1080i or 720p, and this is unlikely to change for a very long time.

I suspect this is the case for most consumers, which bought up a lot of HDTVs in 2008 and 2009 when the DTV transition made just about everyone who had the financial means to upgrade go out and buy new sets. The prices have since stabilized and the buying spree has slowed considerably post-transition, with the lousy economy being a prime contributing factor.

A quick eyeball of the big box store web sites shows Tier 1 Japanese and Korean brand 120Hz 42″ sets selling in the $800.00 range.

If you are willing to go with a tier 2 or tier 3 Chinese or Taiwanese brand at 120Hz, you can probably save another $100.00-$200.00.

If you want a high-performance, videophile targeted 42″ 240Hz 1080p set at that same price range, you”ll need to go to a Tier 2 manufacturer, or you’ll spend a great deal more money.

Everyone else who resisted or held off — the old folk — stuck with their old sets and went with converters or basic cable. Granted, when their old tube sets eventually give up the ghost, they’ll have to upgrade — reluctantly. But unless the 3D HDTV sets prices are on par with the regular $800 or less 40″ 120Hz sets — which they aren’t currently, none of these last holdouts are going to buy them.

I expect that I will probably end up replacing my sets in the next 3 to 5 years, but I am a relatively aggressive technology consumer. With a $1200-$1500 investment per unit, that sort of 7-year amortization and replacement period makes sense with a major appliance like that. If you’ve bought a few $800.00 sets in the last year or so, it’s still probably unlikely you’ll get rid of them in less than five years.

I also expect that since these LCD sets are entirely solid state with no moving parts and with minimal heat generation that a 10 year lifespan is not an unreasonable assumption given my light to medium use of my sets, so your less aggressive consumers are more likely to be thinking along those lines of longer replacement periods.

Are you ready to jump into 3D HDTV, or are you expecting to wait three to five or even more years for the technology to commoditize and to recoup your existing HDTV investment?


Article courtesy of: Znet
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