by Phil Lelyveld
The three speakers on Day 2 of the Seoul International 3D Fair addressed the business and strategy side of 3D.
Philmoon Sung, the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Stereo Pictures Korea noted how his 2D-3D conversion company has grown from 30 employees in 2009 to over 400 today. He waxed philosophical, saying that future generations will just accept and expect 3D experiences, and that the development of mankind will speed up as we increasingly think in 3D.
Hollywood must produce more 3D content, he said, so more devices can be sold and the economy can grow. He also noted that the content industry is an environmentally green industry, so its growth will benefit society.
Daniel You, SVP Bus Dev and Mktg at Gangwon Information and Multimedia Corporation went into great detail on the economics of 3D animated content – which his company creates and licenses. Many companies want to license his content on a profit-sharing basis. But when he asked Jupiter, a Japanese cable company offering a profit-sharing deal, how many 3D subscribers they have, the answer was “zero!” There are many conferences and demonstrations of 3D content and displays, he said, but no profits in 3D content yet. He has no data on which to base pricing and windowing models.
Mr. You remains hopeful that by 2013 enough 3D TVs and other displays will have been sold to make content production economically viable. But for now, to all those who say that producers are holding back the market by not producing enough 3D content, he says ‘if you want it, offer reasonable deals so I can afford to make it.’
He expects to close a reasonable deal for “Cloud Bread,” an animated series, with Finland, Norway, and Ireland distributors in February.
Mr. You closed by saying that Korea cannot compete with India and China on the cost of 2D-3D conversion production, so it must invest in developing intellectual property.
Chris Yewdall, CEO of DDD, gave an excellent history of HDTV, and compared its evolution to 3D’s. It took 25 years from the first test HDTV demonstration to the first commercial broadcast (1969-1994), but only one year from the first mass market 3D TV becoming available to the first 3D satellite broadcast (2007-2008).
Mr. Yewdall described the cost, quality, and quantity trade-offs between native 3D, Hollywood-quality 2D-3D conversion, and chip-based automated 2D-3D conversion.
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Because it takes at least 1,000 hours of content to maintain a 24/7 3D channel for one year (with shows repeating 9 times), chip-based automated 2D-3D conversion will be a necessary contributor to the content mix in order to make the channel economically viable.
He listed many 3D-enabled TVs and laptops that contain 2D-3D conversion chips, and pointed out the recently announced Quartics SmartCable HDMI cable with built-in 2D-3D conversion. Chris also spoke about the many 3D-capable videogames currently on the market and in development
2D-3D conversion does not compete with native 3D content, he concluded. It complements it in the content mix available to the consumer, making the entire 3D experience a more attractive purchase proposition.