AllThingsD » high-def

Are You Ready for 3-D in Your Living Room? Hollywood Can't Wait.

Peter Kafka — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:30:09 +0000

3-D was a big buzzword at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show, and it’s even bigger this year.

It’s hard to find a TV manufacturer that isn’t showing off sets promising to let you replicate the “Avatar” experience at home. And programmers are promising to produce entertainment you’ll want to see in three dimensions. Sony (SNE), in particular, is making a big bet here.

But even if you believe there’s an audience for this stuff, the 3-D advocates have one big problem in front of them: Lousy timing. American consumers are finishing the end of a major TV replacement cycle, which means it will be some time before they’re ready to plunk down big money again for new screens.

If you want a reality check on 3-D’s impact on consumer electronics and the entertainment industry, check out this brief interview I conducted with DreamWorks Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg yesterday (apologies for crypt lighting and distracted camerawork–you can at least hear him, though).

Katzenberg is definitely a believer–his studio just announced that all of its future releases will be available in 3-D–but even he thinks it will be “a ways down the line” before DreamWorks (DWA) sees a lift from the sale of 3-D DVDs.

Katzenberg, along with Disney’s (DIS) Bob Iger, can afford to wait a bit for the 3-D boom because both studios cater primarily to families who are still buying DVDs, even if those numbers are dipping.

The rest of Hollywood will be more impatient. The industry depends on home video for a large part of its revenue and an even bigger slice of its profits, and those sales have been dropping off dramatically.

The high-def Blu-ray format was supposed to spur consumers to buy more discs, but it took years for the industry to settle a costly format war, and Blu-ray is only now starting to get a little bit of traction. The studios can’t wait that long for 3-D to take off.

[ See post to watch video ]

Sony Hopes 3-D Pops TV (And Blu-ray and Vaio and PlayStation) Sales

Peter Kafka — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:25:16 +0000

Big, beautiful high-def TVs are so plentiful and so cheap that nearly everyone who wants one has one. So what can TV manufacturers do to goose sales? Add new features and hope consumers clamor for them.

Hence, Sony’s announcement that it’s making a big bet on…3-D TVs. CEO Howard Stringer is using the IFA Technology Show in Berlin to announce that Sony will make 3-D Bravia sets.

And 3-D Vaio laptops. And 3-D PlayStation3s. And 3-D Blu-ray DVD players.

No plans for a 3-D Walkman, though. (But wait!)

This is a recurring theme for Sony, by the way: Stringer also talked up 3-D in January at the Consumer Electronics Show. I still wonder about the actual demand for this; I sampled some new-fangled 3-D at CES and left underwhelmed. But the stuff I saw–a live broadcast of the college football championship game–was, admittedly, an experiment.

In any case, even if you believe Stringer’s assertion that consumers really love the new 3-D experience, there are some big hurdles before Sony (SNE) or anyone else in home electronics can capitalize on it. For instance:

A looming format war, the same thing that kept Blu-ray from taking a running start at the DVD market.
Ginormous prices: Sony hasn’t said how much its 3-D-enabled TV sets will cost, but the ones that rival LG go for something like $5,500.

Yahoo Shares Trade South for Winter

John Paczkowski — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:44:31 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

TiVo Time-Shifts DirecTV Partnership

John Paczkowski — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:44:45 +0000

So, TiVo’s on-again, off-again relationship with DirecTV? It’s on again. After ditching the TiVo (TIVO) platform in Feb. 2007 for a competing personal video recorder made by sister company NDS Group (NNDS), DirecTV (DTV) has circled back to embrace the PVR pioneer’s platform once again. This morning the two companies announced plans to build a version of TiVo’s PVR that can capture DirecTV’s entire lineup of digital and high-def channels. The device will arrive at market by 2009, when it will be offered alongside DirecTV’s existing line of set-top boxes.

Why the sudden interest in a renewed partnership? Could be the recent change in management at DirecTV, which was taken over by Liberty Media (LINTA) in an $11 billion asset swap with News Corp. (NWS) (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones and of this Web site). Or could it be that DirecTV simply saw the writing on the wall after TiVo successfully sued Dish for infringing on its patented time-warp technology?

Perhaps a little of both, hmm?