Regarding:
“I don’t see this as the end of active 3D models, but I clearly expect consumers to move to passive 3D models. They now have a choice across a range of brands, features, and prices, and they are going to favor the less expensive (and no-maintenance) passive glasses over the shutter-glasses models. I don’t expect active 3DTV technology to disappear overnight, but I do expect the market share to trend rapidly in the passive 3DTV direction.”
End of active-shutter? Move to passive models? Rapid trend to passive?
I rather would have written the above to reflect market facts as follows:
“A few new passive models have been announced at CES 2012. The 10% passive model market share as of Oct 2011 is relatively low compared to the active-shutter market but passive is still necessary as an “alternative”, should be announced that way, and hopefully grows for those that need it. The addition of a these new few models opens the choice and benefit those consumers that have problems with active shutter technology, or have issues of price and fragility of 3D glasses, although while still offering a per-eye inferior image resolution quality that should be educated. The real competition in image quality would be when the 4K technology of the recently shown passive 84” from LG is also applied to smaller passive panels to offer active-shutter’s full 1080p resolution per eye and lower visibility of the FPR lines.”
Facts:
90% of the 3DTV models in the market as of Oct 31, 2011 (according to 3D University of Insight Media’s data base) was made of active-shutter models, the other 10% was made of passive models from 3 companies (Vizio, LG, and Toshiba), a similar scenario applies to 3D projectors, with only one passive model from LG when all the other manufacturers are active-shutter.
From the point of “view to buy”, when a consumer actually tries to see a demo of the only passive 3DTV (LG) Best Buy and HHgreg sell (if available and if works) it is surrounded by active-shutter models from Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, etc. Toshiba is not even on the floors, even when Toshiba is at Best Buy’s web site. Toshiba and Vizio passive 3DTVs may be bought/ordered from Costco, Sams’, etc along with the wine and food.
However, history tell us that, even when a technology is not properly shown, and its pros/cons are not fully disclosed in retail floors to properly educate consumers, can still attract consumers that look for cheap price tags without even looking at an image they would not know how to evaluate. This means we still have lots of work to do for them.
Best Regards,
Rodolfo La Maestra
