Until now, 3D has been a “technologist’s wet dream”

Raymond Snoddy gives his views on 3D TV – hot on the heels of the IBC broadcasting exhibition and conference in Amsterdam: “The pressure will grow to persuade us to ditch our old HD sets and get the glasses on. It really is the next big thing…they hope!”

On Friday week, 3D television in the UK becomes real. Until now it has been a technologist’s wet dream, a gimmick, something to demonstrate in pubs and at conferences where broadcasting folk meet.

All that changes when Sky launches the first European 3D channel on October 1st.  It is a serious development and deserves to be taken seriously. But how long will it take to actually make an impact with viewers?

Obviously they get their rocks off on developments like 3D at the huge IBC broadcasting exhibition and conference, which has just ended in Amsterdam.  The cameras, the television sets were all there and the hard sell is already under way with channels launching all over Europe and the US.

The pressure will grow to persuade us to ditch our old HD sets and get the glasses on.  It really is the next big thing. They hope.

But in business terms, there was a commendable degree of realism and honesty in Amsterdam about how quickly 3D channels could actually get established.

At the conference everyone from Mike Darcey, chief operating officer of BSkyB, to John Honeycutt, the man in charge of 3D at Discovery Networks, were in complete agreement – 3D is probably not for everything, at least for now.

It will make its way through event television – the big sports event or concert, a special movie, something that will naturally persuade people to sit down, don their glasses, sit still and concentrate.

Why, for instance, would anyone want to watch a sitcom in 3D, at least until the technology improves?  Discovery could turn their splendid Deadliest Catch series about crab fishers in the wild seas off Alaska into 3D, but the result would probably turn half the audience seasick.

Equally realistically, no-one is prepared to even hazard a guess on how long it will take to pay off the enormous upfront equipment and production costs.  It’s just something that innovators (innovation is in the culture of both Sky and Discovery) feel they have to do.  It also neatly doubles up as a strategy for pricing rivals out of the market.

The new Sky channel, which will launch with Ryder Cup coverage and Flying Monsters from Sir David Attenborough will be multi-genre.

And equally realistically, Sky is not even trying to charge HD subscribers any more for 3D, a further indication of modest expectations.

The set manufacturers are also realistic about this new development. They may be gagging to sell new sets but at least they are, necessarily, all going to be multi-purpose sets. You can switch effortlessly from HD to 3D and back.

While 3D cannot be ignored it will take a lot longer than HD to be anything other than a minority pursuit.   Such developments – and the continual raising of the stakes – poses a tricky problem for terrestrial broadcasters.

ITV has only just managed to get its head around HD. But the terrestrials were in a combative mood in Amsterdam.

RTL chief executive Gerhard Zeiler made it clear he had no intention of going on to other platforms such as Hulu “at any price”.  RTL sold brands not single programmes and would insist on keeping control of its own advertising, which was doing very nicely thank you.  Although RTL programmes would aim to be on any platform where consumers wanted them to be “we will not depend on a single platform not owned by us”.

The RTL chief executive admitted that mistakes had been made on Channel 5 but insisted he had no misgivings about selling the channel to Express owner Richard Desmond. It had been a straight commercial deal and Desmond had offered the most.

Zeiler also predicted in future free-to-air broadcasters will receive a second revenue stream for their big networks from platform operators such as cable and satellite, something that is already happening in the US.

Ingred Deltenre, director-general of the European Broadcasting Union was also in feisty mood about the future prospects for public service broadcasting. She produced (from across the European Union) statistical evidence that despite all the innovation and thousands of new channels the public service broadcasters of Europe are not on the way out anytime soon.

Between 2000 and 2009, the number of television channels in the EU increased from just over 2,000 to more than 7,500.  In that time, how did the viewing share of the PSBs respond?  What a fall there was on average – all the way down from around 31% to 29%.  Some still have massive viewing shares – YLE of Finland 43.8%, VRT of The Netherlands 41.3% and RAI of Italy 40.7%.

But many of the PSBs around the world, including NHK of Japan, are planning to take the sort of risk the BBC is taking with Project Canvas. In Japan, they call it Hybrid TV – taking the internet directly to the television screen.

The hope is that viewers will use the facility to see PSB programmes they have missed. The risk is that they will use the technology to pull in others things from the internet – such as YouTube and Hulu.