What the Wimbledon 3D announcement means

This week there has been a lot of hype on Twitter about BBC’s first ever 3D broadcast in July 2011. Here is a good in-depth “behind the scenes” report by 3DFocus.co.uk. So, what does this mean for the 3D industry. In my opinion these are the things to look out for: 1. Finally the public broadcasters are joining the 3D bandwagon. This group was among the slowest to embrace the technology. But with the BBC announcement and German pubcaster ZDF’s  announcement of a 3D distribution deal yesterday, this seems to change.

2. Obviously Sky’s 3D channel is getting a lot of traction and management claims that there are a substantial numbers of new subscribers signing up for Sky’s premium package just because of 3D. The usage patterns in the UK are changing more rapidly than expected and the BBC is forced to make this defensive move.

3. Sport remains to be the big driver (as mentioned before here and here) for 3D. And “Live” remains to be a big driver for 3D. At Dimension3 I learned more details about new services that enable live 3D broadcasts into movie theatres. Expect to see more of these in the future. Currently the NBA finals in the U.S. are big 3D events on TV and in movie theatres.

Certainly the Wimbledon 3D broadcast will attract a lot of attention to a new demographic (tennis fans as opposed to football fans) and will only mean more 3D TV sales, and create even more demand for quality 3D content.