Was a new 3-D TV on Your Shopping List?
Christopher Carter
Welcome to CES 2010 consumers. If I can have your attention please I'd like to kick off this year's show by telling you those HDTVs you've purchased over the past 3 years, the ones that were required to meet the Government's HD conversion requirements and to allow you to view enhanced content on DVDs and Blue Ray - they're obsolete!! We now have this hot new format for your entertainment pleasure called 3-D TV that is a MUST HAVE!! While those LCD and Plasma HDTVs still work, you won't be able to view any 3-D content on them. You need this NEW and IMPROVED TV that only costs a few hundred dollars more THEN THE TV YOU JUST PURCHASED FOR CHRISTMAS!! We know, we know, we read the quote in the WSJ by the CEO of Vizio that the "technology is not that difficult" to include in the TV. I guess we could have incorporated it into the current sets a year or so ago and saved you the incremental cost of buying yet ANOTHER flat panel TV from us. Our bad. And we read the quotes by the Director of the 3-D@Home Consortium stating that "3-D TV is here to stay" and that consumers "don't have a choice". To quote Roger Clemens, I believe the director "misspoke". Consumers do have a choice, a choice of many different models of 3-D TVs from CE Manufacturers! You also like wearing glasses to watch TV, don't you? If not, you'll just LOVE the new models and styles we have for your viewing pleasure! This 3-D TV thing is not just about technology, its about fashion. Did you not see Jay Z on New Year's eve singing with Rhianna, wearing dark shades? Did he not bring it? That's how you will look watching 3-D TV in the dark in the comfort of your home. Sans Rhianna. And our stylish shades are only $50 - $100 extra!! I seriously doubt CES will open this way, but it should. The CE and Entertainment industries have invested billions of dollars in 3-D TV and are not about to turn back now. Unfortunately your flat panel TV will not be able to display entertainment in 3-D, so if you are enthusiast and must have the latest technology for your viewing pleasure, open your wallet, again.
What really confounds me is the apparent lack of understanding of consumer desires, industry trends and what might best help consumers have a more valuable entertainment experience. Anyone who reads the papers or listens to the news knows the country is struggling to exit a recession, people are losing their jobs, have limited disposable income and other entertainment providers are raising prices (ask Time Warner Cable subscribers how the Fox resolution impacted their cable bills). Yet the CE and entertainment industries are promoting a new technology that will cost more money and that creates obsolescence in the living room of a recent TV purchase.
There is also a trend towards integrating social network sites and functionality into the viewing experience. Do the 350M people using Facebook not indicate something about consumer interest? Some TVs offer access to social networks via partnerships or through 3rd party boxes like Roku and Boxee, but not your TV as a standalone device.
At the same time smaller companies are trying to help consumers by developing solutions and devices that allow them to access content, via computer but moving towards the TV, to by-pass exorbitant entertainment costs, especially cable TV bills. Two of the most recent offerings are by Popbox and the new Boxee STB. If you have read prior posts you know I strongly believe that the CE industry has the ability to incorporate the necessary technology into a TV to permit direct access to the WWW, not just specific sites like Netflix or Amazon.com. I even asked the former CTO of Panasonic, who is now the President and CEO of Cablelabs, why, if I can access web video content on my mobile phone can I not do the same on my TV? He felt the market would not support the incremental cost of a TV with this functionality, yet techies everywhere are spending $500 or more to develop their own workaround solutions, usually a combination of digital broadcast TV and online services like Hulu, and ditching cable TV.
And was it really important for Panasonic and LG (I believe) to incorporate Skype into a TV set? People are paying $150 a month for Cable service and Panasonic wants you to be able to do free video calls in your living room. Awesome!!
Don't get me wrong, I'm a technology nut. But I'm also a business person who is asking where are the marketing hats at these companies and what was their input into these product decisions? Did they perform any market research to support consumer demand for 3-D TV? Having worked at Panasonic, knowing their limited marketing budget and how product development works at that company, I can tell you, with comfort, they did not do any research. Market research for Panasonic consisted of those 4x6 inch cards that came in product purchases that you were supposed to return to "register" your product with the company. The business model in the CE world is quite simple. Engineers in Asia factories build it, the merchandisers in the USA push inventory through the sales channel. The old "build a better mousetrap" mentality. Along the way the CE companies battle in format wars and spread money around like water trying to convince targeted partners in the entertainment industry to jump on board. Its how Panasonic won the VHS battle and how Sony won the Blue-Ray battle.
When push comes to shove, CE companies are hardware companies, not solution providers. They have limited, if any, expertise in software development which is why integrated companies like Apple excelled in creating portable media playback devices and now dominate the digital audio category. Not one device from a CE company has been successful.
The ultimate test of a movie or TV show, in any format, is its ability to inspire and entertain, to drive emotion and tell a story. If the entertainment industry can not produce content to do this in 2-D, 3-D is not going to save them. 3-D technology can provide depth of viewing experience, not depth of emotion.