The Future of 3DTV

24/06/11 by Brian Gilmore

Posted in News

Last week I attended the 3D masters seminar at BAFTA in London, which focused on the future of 3DTV. It was a packed day of keynote speeches from industry professionals giving their opinion on the state of play of 3DTV.

The 3D industry is fairly mature now in Hollywood and the feature film industry but not without its issues, and 3DTV is still at the early stages of its development. As one speaker put it; the baby is born and is now a young child so let’s see what it grows into.

So, one year on from the big hype of 3D TVs and broadcasters starting to beam into our homes, what is the future of 3DTV or does it even have a future?

The short answer is yes, it does have a future and a place in our homes but it isn’t going to replace 2D television. It will be an option for a niche market that want to watch an event or special one-off program/film in 3D. I don’t think anyone sees us all sitting down to watch our daily soaps or the news in 3D. What added value would we get from that?

A lot of the major broadcasters throughout the world are actively investigating or trialing 3d at the moment as they see the potential in these event driven programs.

The biggest flag from all the speakers is that what is put out there must be a quality product. Putting bad 3D out to the market will only damage the industry and turn people away from the technology. We can see this happening in the film industry now as big blockbuster movies are nearly all released as 3D with no real thought as to why, and very little love in the end product. This has caused a backlash from the viewing public that are questioning all 3D movies and blaming the technology.

Chris Johns from Sky gave a presentation of where they are one year on from going live with their 3D channel. They see enough interest from the viewers to continue to invest in the technology and rollout. It is still a very new technology so they are still a lot of improvements needed in the TV sets and glasses. Unfortunately the holy grail of glassless sets is still 5-10 years away, as recently announced by all the major manufactures. Sky see that the content will be event driven;  so  films, sports, one-off documentaries (wildlife and natural history in particular ) and concerts are the main focus for the channel.

Regarding the technology and hardware, some very interesting facts were presented. Most large format TVs from 2012 onwards will be 3D capable much in the same way that all large TV sets now are HD capable, so as people replace their sets they will actually be getting 3D built in as standard. Then it will be just a matter of chose whether to watch 2D or 3D.  On average in the UK people replace their TV every 2.5 years so you can see how quickly the technology will get out there.

So how do we generate good content? At the moment the technical standards are still being worked on by various bodies like SMPTE and EBU but they are still a year or 2 away. Creatively good 3D content will come from film makers that have become comfortable working in 3D and understand it as a medium. The important factor here is that it is used creatively and has a purpose, and that it is not just driven by a technical requirement. So people in the industry need training and practice to get to grips with something that is not the same as 2D and should be treated differently.

To sum up the day and what I got from it; 3D for the home market is here to stay but will always be a niche market. It’s an exciting medium that has lots of potential to produce great, creative and engaging programming but only if it is used in the right way and for the right reasons. Not everything needs to be produced in 3D and there is no need to panic if we haven’t got onto the 3D bandwagon yet as its still very early days. But it is starting to mature and settle down into a proper medium now that all the hype has died away.

Luckily for us in the animation industry we don’t have  alot of the technical issues that live action people need to address, but the same rules applies about the content. There has to be a reason to produce it in 3D and use it creatively with care and attention.