Bad Economic Times Bring Some Good News for 3D in the Home

BSkyB is planning to launch Europe’s first 3D TV channel in 2010. That’s a big expensive undertaking, you’re thinking. It is, but it turns out the recession has been good for business at BSkyB. With the economy in the doldrums, more people have chosen to stay home and watch High Definition (HD) television, creating a nice nest egg of funds to help roll out 3D. Today, Sky HD offers 33 HD (2D) channels and CEO Jeremy Darroch said the company hopes to grow the system to 40-50 HDTV channels before the end of the year, including one 3D channel.

Here is the background on the financial side of the equation. BSkyB increased full year pre-tax profits to June 30 to £456 million from £60 million. Revenues also rose 7% to £5.3 billion. New customers are now subscribing at the fastest rate experienced during the past five years. This is in part also attributable to the fact that, in January, the company reduced the cost of its HD set-top box by two-thirds to £49. Since then, the company has signed up 534,000 HD customers, with more than half signing up in the past quarter bringing the total to about 1.3 million. The average amount each customer paid during the year rose to a new high of £464. The number of customers leaving Sky has remained constant at 9.9%. Sky had 9.4 million customers by June and projected reaching 10 million by December.

The new 3D channel is planning to offer a broad selection of 3D programming. This is expected to include movies, entertainment and sports. Add to this the potential availability of the approximately 60 movies that Hollywood is planning to release in 3D over the next 18 months.

Sky’s commitment to 3D is a result of several years of investigation and a prominent "trial run." Sky was the first European TV company to broadcast a live event in 3D TV in April 2009 - a performance by Keane live from Abbey Road Studios. It was presented via the company’s satellite network and required customers to have other aspects of the company’s existing HD infrastructure including a Sky HD set-top box and a suitable 3D Ready TV. As a practical matter, this means that users had to wear glasses. Since the 3D channel will use the existing infrastructure and bandwidth, spatial compression of the 3D content is needed to deliver it to the STB. The content is most likely to be viewed on a line interleave (x-pol) type of 3D TV. TVs of this type from major brands are expected in 2010 to support this channel.

In further support of its 3D launch, the company has also enhanced its 3D television production facilities. A key part of this is high-definition 3D cameras based on two lenses.

Brian Sullivan, Managing Director of Sky’s Customer Group, explained that well over a million homes have "future-proofed" themselves with Sky HD. The idea being that the HDTV box being installed in customers’ homes is a platform upon which the company can innovate, adding more services and value to the subscription over time.

To that end, Sky confirmed that it will launch a comprehensive 2D "pull" Video-On-Demand (VOD) service next year. It will to provide Sky HD customers with additional choices and controls to complement the current Sky Anytime "push" VOD service. This new service will use the broadband capability of existing Sky HD boxes.

So...the broadcast piece of the 3D puzzle is being worked by a serious player. We will all have to wait just a little while to see (in 3D) how well it comes together!

By Art Berman, DisplayDaily