3D Report: 3DTV Sales Rise Despite Consumer Indifference (1 Viewer)

The article says "revenue rose 64%". That's pretty amazing. I remember selling 55 inch 3D TV's for $3500 (that was a sale price) back in 2011. Now you can buy a 55 inch 3D TV with the same features for $1750.
As a salesman I would not promote the TV as being a 3D TV. I would find the TV with the features the customer was looking for and if it also was "3D Ready", that would be an added feature. Also, I would demonstrate 3D TV's to customers even if the TV they were interested in was not 3D. Some were blown away by how clear the 3D picture was and would pay the increase in price. Others could not see 3D, gave them a headache or made them sick to their stomach. They of course would definitely not buy it.

In the Target ad this weekend, a 50" Samsung plasma 3D TV was selling for something like $695! I couldn't believe my eyes. (Maybe I dreamed it!)

MattH. said:

In the Target ad this weekend, a 50" Samsung plasma 3D TV was selling for something like $695! I couldn't believe my eyes. (Maybe I dreamed it!)

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There's no model number in the ad but I guessing it's the Samsung PN51E490 51 inch 720p model that's $649. Plasma's are always cheaper in price than LCD's. They are also harder to sell as a lot of people do not like the glare from the glass screen. In a room with very litte sunlight they are fine.

Sales rose because the majority of good TVs are 3D TVs. The article said only 16% of those polled were actually looking for a 3D TV. When I purchase a new TV, it will be 3D, not because I want it but because the better performing 2D TVs are 3D TVs.

I think there are lots of people that would love to have 3D but already have a perfectly fine HDTV. When it finally comes time to replace their current HDTV, I can see those people upgrading to 3D. It helps that the price of 3D TVs has declined drastically from a few years ago.

RolandL said:

There's no model number in the ad but I guessing it's the Samsung PN51E490 51 inch 720p model that's $649. Plasma's are always cheaper in price than LCD's. They are also harder to sell as a lot of people do not like the glare from the glass screen. In a room with very litte sunlight they are fine.

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I didn't buy a Plasma because I was stuck in the '08 days when they were the evil energy-sucking, border-burning "SUV's of home theater", and had to search around to get an online Memorial Day "bargain" on a Panasonic LCD/LED for $895.
If Plasmas have redeemed themselves (which I doubt, the greedy bums ), there's a lot of price accessibility to be found there. I have a small city apartment, not an entire home-theater den with a rumbling surround system, so 37-40" fit me perfectly.
Basically, the mistake was in selling a new format JUST as folks had finally gotten themselves upgraded to 2-D Blu-ray and 1080p HDTV.
The "indifference" seems to fall into three categories:
1) Those with a sworn blood oath against theaters charging them for glasses and cheap Warner conversions, determined to expunge 3-D off the face of the earth for our children's sake,
2) Those rationalizing their own fear of upgrading again, by saying "What if there's not enough titles?...Do I have to watch everything in 3-D?"
and
3) Those who would like to (or at least as soon as the catalog picks up), but buying the set, player and glasses in one go requires a little too much devotion.
Me, I'm always an early adopter when I can afford it, and even I wouldn't have jumped in so early if Sony hadn't upgraded my existing Playstation 3's player for free.

I don't think consumers are "indifferent". I think there's a hardcore of video/ home theatre enthusiasts who have an antipathy towards 3D and vent their spleen in forums like this one in the hope of strangling the 3D baby at birth. I think the actual situation is that for most consumers who are in the market for a new HD tv set, they see the comparatively small margin between a standard HD set and a 3D-ready set and say "what the hell". I think it's also why passive 3D is AFAIA outselling active 3D in spite of the definition question.
Certainly on this side of the puddle, more than 3DBD sales, 3D display sales are being driven by the promise of 3D coverage for sports events and the Jubilee. I believe Sky has been instrumental in pushing 3D adoption here in the UK.
Although I have a 42" LG 3Dtv, I actually quite rarely watch 3D material. I have a handful of 3D titles, and no problems with watching them, but most times I want to watch the movies I'm more inclined to put on the "flat" version and save the 3D experience for "special occasions". The tv gives me an outstanding picture compared to my old display, so really the 3D element is icing-on-the-cake. I suspect many adopters have a similar experience.
I suspect a hike to 4K resolution will be similar. People will claim their 1080p set gives them satisfactory images, but as 4K displays become the norm more and more people will start to appreciate the higher resolution gives better results for larger displays and eventually everybody will have them. It's not like there isn't a precedent - I remember a little thing called colour being introduced in the 1960s-70s.

EdReedFan20 said:

I think there are lots of people that would love to have 3D but already have a perfectly fine HDTV. When it finally comes time to replace their current HDTV, I can see those people upgrading to 3D. It helps that the price of 3D TVs has declined drastically from a few years ago.

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I agree. People will wait until they need a new TV (unless they have a lot of disposable wealth). When I upgraded my TV from a DLP to a LCD/LED, I went with a 3D TV. So far, I'm not blown away by 3D on TV; but I am hoping for the release of some golden age 3D flicks. However, I would not have upgraded to 3D if I did not want a better 2D TV than the one I had.

Consumers are "indifferent". Only 14% said it was a must have feature and that still does not mean people are buying a new TV to have 3D. The problem is the title of the article implies people are buying 3D TVs despite not being really interested in the feature as if they had a choice of a 2D only TV at the same level and actively chose the 3D option. The last quote of the article is the closest to an accurate interpretation of the data.
“Our research suggests ownership of 3DTV doesn’t necessarily mean consumers have adopted the technology,” he said. “Getting owners to put on glasses and watch content is the real measure of 3D’s success.”
Why not make the claim that people are buying new TVs for Netflix streaming as I am sure there are many more TVs sold recently with that capability than a year ago? Why not for surfing the internet? There are lots of secondary features consumers are forced to buy if they want a TV of a certain image quality. Correlation is not cause.

Exactly. People aren't necessarily adopting the technology. Sales of 3D displays have risen because it's practically impossible to buy a mid-range to high-end TV (and increasinglly even an inexpensive set 42" and up) that does NOT have 3D capability. You get it whether you want it or not. The last line of the article says it all - where they should be looking for data indicating adoption or lack thereof is in the sales of 3D software and glasses.

Mark Oates said:

ICertainly on this side of the puddle, more than 3DBD sales, 3D display sales are being driven by the promise of 3D coverage for sports events and the Jubilee. I believe Sky has been instrumental in pushing 3D adoption here in the UK.

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You're lucky (except for Sky being Rupert Murdoch, of course. ):
If we HAD more 3-D news/culture/sports broadcast stateside, the public would see 3DTV's as TV's--in the sense of color vs. B/W or HDTV vs. SDTV--and not as expensive home-theater movie toys.
That's how it worked with HDTV, when we started getting the satellite networks and the BBC imports on the one or two PBS-HD affiliates in the early days. (I remember our local PBS affiliate showing the same twenty-minute HDTV demonstration film--with tech columnist Robert Cringely explaining the history of color TV and discussing the applications of digital broadcasting with Julia Child and Mister Rogers--every night for three years at the same 2am slot before the '08 digital changeover. Since PBS HD stations had almost nothing to show but their own local productions, and it was sort of a communion ritual of devotion and commitment for early HDTV adopters to watch it if you were up that late and it was on.)
At the moment, we've got 3Net, showing old IMAX documentaries and Discovery-Channel style reality fare (rodeos, jet planes). ESPN 3D jumped in too early and fell out too early, while the anti-3D Jihadists cheered the usual weekly "death of 3D" in every media headline to scare other studios off. 3Net tried airing pro-golf finals in 3D, and asked viewers to tweet their responses--Most joked "why golf?" but liked what they saw and wanted to see more.
But we don't, and that only gives more comfort to the Jihadists saying "3D is nothing but cheap conversions and crappy kiddie films!", with no evidence to embarrass them out of their creaking old bigoted cliche'.

Mark Oates said:

I suspect a hike to 4K resolution will be similar. People will claim their 1080p set gives them satisfactory images, but as 4K displays become the norm more and more people will start to appreciate the higher resolution gives better results for larger displays and eventually everybody will have them. It's not like there isn't a precedent - I remember a little thing called colour being introduced in the 1960s-70s.

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I know what 4K is (and dang, Yellow Submarine and Chitty/Bang look good), but I keep looking at "We're all going to buy 4K sets next year!" and see the delirous excitement between corporations (and not audiences) for SACD, DVD-A, and D-VHS after DVD had first caught on.
It's just not something you can sell to the Average Folk, and even when you can explain it, there's that blank look of why they think they need it.
People know what 3D is, it's Like What You Get At the Movies: If you had a few spare glasses and invited your neighbors over to watch Avatar, they'd be amazed, and there'd probably be another set sold before the year was out.
If you invited them over to watch "Baraka" in 4K, they'd be amazed, but they'd blame it on the Blu-ray player or just having an HD screen. It's a bit obscure and tech-niche a premise to sell, even if you explained that the K was how many pixels the original sourced image had.
It looks good, but unless I'm mistaken, "Why do I need it and why should I have to sell my old set just after I got it?" seems to be the same charge that the Haterz are currently leveling at 3D.

dpippel said:

The last line of the article says it all - where they should be looking for data indicating adoption or lack thereof is in the sales of 3D software and glasses.

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Which is also a problem: For years, you couldn't BUY most of the in-demand software that would sell (you can buy the Shrek Trilogy now, of course, but try buying Avatar or Star Wars: E1), unless you committed yourself to buying the hardware. Of one certain brand. And/or extra pairs of glasses--also of one certain brand--whether you needed them or not....And if you did, how many times would you be buying them?
Studios are just now coming off the Exclusive Bundle mistake that may have been the most disastrous and costliest blunder ever committed in the sixty-year history of high-tech sales. We now have individual disk-title software sales to go by, but as it's been quiet since the fall disks of Hugo and Tintin, and we don't have the summer disks of Avengers or MIB3 yet, we pretty much have to take it all on faith.

I think - at least for the UK - 4K will start out in Pub Land. There are a lot of pubs here that boast Sky Sports football coverage, and there are noises about some of them offering the 3D Olympic coverage. When the industry starts pushing 4K, the front line for sales will be the pubs - most have one or two screens at least. If one (enormous) screen is belting out a 4K picture and the other the usual image punters are used to, they're bound to start asking how they can get such a big, sharp picture.
1080p and 3D were rushed to the market by the manufacturers before the content providers had the software to entice consumers. Sky (spit!) has pretty much driven the uptake of HD and 3D in the UK with other content providers lagging significantly behind. I suspect 4K will be their baby, but I think (hope) the manufacturers will have learnt their lesson about jumping the gun.

dpippel said:

Exactly. People aren't necessarily adopting the technology. Sales of 3D displays have risen because it's practically impossible to buy a mid-range to high-end TV (and increasinglly even an inexpensive set 42" and up) that does NOT have 3D capability. You get it whether you want it or not. The last line of the article says it all - where they should be looking for data indicating adoption or lack thereof is in the sales of 3D software and glasses.

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For most of the 3D LCD and Plasma sets that I have sold, the customers paid the extra money for 3D active glasses. The passive 3D sets came with free glasses. It was rare that a customer would buy a 3D set with no 3D glasses purchased.

I just got a new 3D set this month as part of a happy accident, where my previous HDTV developed a problem that couldn't be fixed so I got money from the warranty to get a new set. I love it and will buy as much 3D content as I can. (I have however been boycotting 3D movies in theaters because of the extra charges- theater prices are already too high to begin with!)
One thing I don't understand is why don't ALL current Blu-Ray players pass the 3D signal? You still have to look out in order to get a player that can do it; I can see some people getting a new TV then being mad that their player won't support 3D. (This is kind of like how the first generation of DVD players could not output DTS audio signals, but once that became available every player afterwards could.) 3D glasses have got to be easier to get ahold of too. I got two free pairs with my Sharp, and have now been looking for at least one extra pair but you can't just walk into a store and buy them. (I purposely chose active 3D because even though the glasses are more expensive and complex, the picture is MUCH better than passive. I saw 1 of each type of TV in a store showing the same thing and there was no comparison- the passive set looked like my old CRT!)
It would be nice if 3D movie prices dropped a bit too. I overpaid for a few just to have something to watch on my new TV, but in the future I won't buy movies as freely. When Target has the 2D versions of Hugo and Tintin on sale for $20 but the 3D versions are $35, that isn't going to help anything. They should include the 3D version in EVERY package anyways- it looks like the latest Spy Kids movie is not available without a 3D disc, and is priced low too!
And of course I do want more 50s-80s classics in 3D.

Jesse Skeen said:

I just got a new 3D set this month as part of a happy accident, where my previous HDTV developed a problem that couldn't be fixed so I got money from the warranty to get a new set. I love it and will buy as much 3D content as I can. (I have however been boycotting 3D movies in theaters because of the extra charges- theater prices are already too high to begin with!)
One thing I don't understand is why don't ALL current Blu-Ray players pass the 3D signal? You still have to look out in order to get a player that can do it; I can see some people getting a new TV then being mad that their player won't support 3D. (This is kind of like how the first generation of DVD players could not output DTS audio signals, but once that became available every player afterwards could.) 3D glasses have got to be easier to get ahold of too. I got two free pairs with my Sharp, and have now been looking for at least one extra pair but you can't just walk into a store and buy them. (I purposely chose active 3D because even though the glasses are more expensive and complex, the picture is MUCH better than passive. I saw 1 of each type of TV in a store showing the same thing and there was no comparison- the passive set looked like my old CRT!)
It would be nice if 3D movie prices dropped a bit too. I overpaid for a few just to have something to watch on my new TV, but in the future I won't buy movies as freely. When Target has the 2D versions of Hugo and Tintin on sale for $20 but the 3D versions are $35, that isn't going to help anything. They should include the 3D version in EVERY package anyways- it looks like the latest Spy Kids movie is not available without a 3D disc, and is priced low too!
And of course I do want more 50s-80s classics in 3D.

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Some of the theaters here in Connecticut offer one day a week where the price is $8 all day for any movie including 3D.
3D is an extra feature on blu-ray players that people should not have to pay for if they are not interested in 3D.
You should be able to get 3D glasses from the store you bought them from. We sell them where I work at P. C. Richard & Son.
With passive 3D sets you are getting 540 instead of 1080p.

Originally Posted by RolandL /t/320892/report-3dtv-sales-rise-despite-consumer-indifference#post_3928455
For most of the 3D LCD and Plasma sets that I have sold, the customers paid the extra money for 3D active glasses. The passive 3D sets came with free glasses. It was rare that a customer would buy a 3D set with no 3D glasses purchased.

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Interesting. Two of my family members and five friends have purchased new LCD or plasma displays over the past year and only one of those people, a plasma buyer, shelled out money for the active glasses. The other two plasma buyers passed, as did I when I bought my ST50 a few months ago. Of those eight new display owners, myself included, only two have ever used the 3D capabilities of the display and only one watches 3D material with any regularity. Most people I talk with see it as a gimmick, and most also cite the higher cost of 3D Blu-ray titles and the "complexity" of getting the system set up as a deterrent for them. So from my own admittedly anecdotal experience, that's hardly a ringing endorsement of the technology.

RolandL said:

You should be able to get 3D glasses from the store you bought them from. We sell them where I work at P. C. Richard & Son.

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Sharp isn't one of the major brands, it's not likely the poster would have found them--
The "big three" of Sony, Panasonic and Samsung have their bundles and separate-glasses at every Best Buy, but the Sharp and Vizio users may have to go online.
Even then a universal-access brand purchased on Amazon might have better quality.

Ejanss said:

Sharp isn't one of the major brands, it's not likely the poster would have found them--
The "big three" of Sony, Panasonic and Samsung have their bundles and separate-glasses at every Best Buy, but the Sharp and Vizio users may have to go online.
Even then a universal-access brand purchased on Amazon might have better quality.

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Most of the 3D sets we sold were Sony, Samsung and LG. Very few requests for Panasonic or Sharp 3D.