26 TVBEurope
www.tvbeurope.com July2013
3D Perspectives: Is the fate of 3DTV linked with 4K?
By Melanie Dayasena-Lowe
ADRIAN PENNINGTON, editorial consultant TVBEurope, chaired a panel with Anthony Geffen, CEO and executive producer, Atlantic Productions; Duncan Humphreys, creative content director, CAN Communicate; and Andy Quested, head of technology, BBC HD & 3D.
GIVEN THE apparent lack of audience take-up of 3D services worldwide, is 3DTV destined to remain a niche set of content? Geffen: 3D is a difficult market to work in because if you’re just making it in TV it’s very difficult to make the numbers add up in the factual area. Sport and other things could be very different. I think a lot of the hype around it was they thought the take up of TVs would be a lot quicker. We hoped it would but I never thought it would. For broadcasters the concentration has been events while we wait for the audience figures to grow and for the technology to change. If you’re in a new medium you’ve got to look at all the different eyeballs and where those eyeballs are. Has TV been a smash hit success? I think it probably hasn’t yet. But technology is changing, which brings 3D right back into the game.
Can you tell us about your experiments with drama or how long form genres might be treated with 3D? Geffen: We had to develop a team with a different set of skills, who thought about it differently and used 3D to its best ability. We have been
Anthony Geffen (left) and Duncan Humphreys discuss the fate of 3DTV at BAFTA
looking at other genres such as the thriller area. Once we’ve got those techniques and you start to push those into the thriller genre it’s very exciting because you can make a compelling and frightening tale in 3D. People have only just begun to use those techniques — partly because they are too expensive and partly because they haven’t had a chance to experiment with them.
How are 4K tests dovetailing R&D with that of 3D at Wimbledon, or how might they in the future? Humphreys: The 4K tests at Wimbledon are just two cameras but not fibre linked to the truck. It’s local record but using the 3D positions that aren’t used in the first week. We’re going to look at the coverage, what you get and how best to cover tennis. Already we’re finding we’ve got issues with lenses in a live OB environment. I’m a huge 4K fan so 4K to me is like using a film camera. It’s a wonderful thing to do. But in the live OB market
there’s still a lot of questions that need to be answered. There aren’t the lenses in existence right now that cover a sports event in an OB way. I can cover it in a very filmic/cinematic way. There are still a lot of problems to cross before we get there.
Looking at the 2014 World Cup, what would it tell the industry/consumers if there were 4K tests but no 3D matches? Humphreys: The 4K tests will be interesting. It’s not just an issue of a desire to do it or funding to do it, it’s an issue of actual physical space. Squeezing cameras into a sporting environment is getting harder and harder. I do question whether there might be a whole hybrid solution that evolves.
From the tests the BBC has conducted over the last couple of years, what are the lessons the BBC has learnt about what audiences want and is autostereo the panacea? Quested:What has worked really well for us is CG-based or
augmented-based 3D. It works extremely well and piques the interest. Traditional 3D/drama 3D — take it or leave it. Sport sometimes is just too long. A five-hour tennis match is probably too long whereas a 90-minute football/rugby match is probably the maximum people want to sit through and watch 3D. Glasses I think are a barrier. There’s public disinterest — certainly for glasses in the home. It’s OK when you go to the cinema as you make a conscious decision to do that and I think that’s where TV differs from cinema. When we do alternate methods of delivering 3D such as on BBC iPlayer, people watch more because they make an appointment to download or view.
When do you think the first mainstream, cheap, decent quality autostereo panels are going to arrive on the market and is that really the answer? Humphreys: I don’t think manufacturers helped in the early days of 3D by selling screens that weren’t really up to scratch. There’s a bit of a 4K obsession. It’s an interesting area and 4K is a fantastic acquisition format. People have a natural affinity to 3D; they just don’t want to wear glasses. Geffen: I don’t think we’re yet into a world where you want to watch 3D all the time. Quested: 4K will take the buzz away from 3D. It will stop people concentrating on 3D in the public domain. It will allow us to get some sets out there that are capable of doing 3D better than the current sets can do.
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