By Ken Park – Senior Manager, Korean FPD Market and Technology Research and Paul Gray – Director, European TV Research, DisplaySearch
Since the launch of 3D TV products from Samsung and Panasonic, 3D has started to become an established consumer product. There is already 3D buzz for gaming and content delivery using cable and satellite. The countdown to the FIFA World Cup in South Africa is spurring pay-TV providers to deliver 3D sports coverage, which will further simulate consumer awareness of 3D.
If 3D really brings enduring value to home viewing, it is certainly priced at a premium. For example, Samsung’s 9000 series retails for around $6000, and of course a 3D-capable BD player would also be needed; however, these products are not yet affordable to ordinary middle-income consumers. For them, 3D will remain a cinema (or possibly sports bar) experience.
The DisplaySearch pricing forecast for 2010 provides some clues on the price points necessary for mass adoption. Global TV prices are, in general, surprisingly low, and to hit tens of millions in volume, 3D will also have to dramatically decrease in price.
Table 1: WW Annual TV Unit Shipments by Key Price Levels (excluding sales taxes)
| Price | $2155 | $1600 | $1000 | $850 |
| Number of Sets Shipped above this Price | 1M | 2.5M | 10M | 20M |
Source: DisplaySearch Q1’10 Quarterly Global TV Shipment and Forecast Report
Most brands have positioned 3D as an absolute premium feature, above all others, even though the cost adder (excluding the glasses) is not very high. So where do the true costs lie?
All currently available 3D PDP sets are 50” or larger, with full HD panels. 3D LCD TVs start at 40”, and use 240 Hz panels. The fast switching of these panels reduces the effect of flicker and interaction with room lighting. Cross talk problems are also minimized by this fast switching, so that left and right images do not bleed into each other. There is a premium for 240 Hz panels since they require powerful co-processors, more exotic liquid crystals, extra memory and costly extra connectors and signal cabling to get a huge data rate onto the panel.
Can 3D work using cheaper 120 Hz panels? Hyundai IT launched “passive” LCD 3D TVs in 2008 using 120 Hz panels with a retardation film, in which only polarizer glasses were needed, not shutter. However, this approach resulted in a halving of horizontal resolution, so it was not HD. TV chip makers also have solutions for 120 Hz frame-sequential 3D, and some set makers are likely to try such products. The risk is that the image is prone to flicker, and many consumers would consider it unwatchable. We have not seen such a product demonstrated.
The issue of 3D resolution is also impacted by broadcast standards. For the foreseeable future, 3D broadcasts will be limited by two economic factors for service providers: compatibility and bandwidth. Because 3D set uptake remains small, broadcasters have to carry it at the lowest cost, which means compressing it into existing transmission channels. It will not be economical for the small number of 3D subscribers to get two channels’ worth of bandwidth for left and right views. Encoding using Blu-ray type compression would require new STBs. So half-HD 3D transmission may be a near-term approach, which would mean that passive glasses TV solutions might not be at a disadvantage in viewing broadcast 3D. However, having convinced consumers worldwide that HD is an absolute requirement for TV, it is hard to believe that the industry will now argue for consumers to settle for “half-HD” in order to get 3D
In order for 3D TV to become a mass-market phenomenon, set makers, content developers and broadcasters will have to continue to lower the total price of 3D hardware (including glasses), while delivering compelling content to consumers without unacceptable performance tradeoffs.
