After HD and 3D, Immersive TV is the latest innovation demanding attention, but all fans want is quality coverage
If you thought TV screens were big now, just wait: in September, Porsche Design will be launching its C SEED 201 – an outdoor TV which, you might just be able to guess, will measure 201 inches along the diagonal. That means it's about 80 inches (6ft 8in) high and 90 inches long. In short, it's gigantic. And it will fill up your field of view very easily. That's what you need for the "immersive experience".
But having a big TV is not the only thing. For more and more fans, as the price of travel and tickets rises, the attraction of being there palls compared with the comforts of home, where you can invite friends around or even use facilities such as the free internet calling service Skype or gamer networks to connect to friends elsewhere and talk about the game.
The biggest challenge, though, is not getting people to watch the game. It is getting them to take an interest in the innovative ways that it is being presented. Sky now says that more than 100,000 people use its 3D channels, though it is not a paid-for service; it is offered free to those who take the top tier of movie and sports channels, because those are the ones which look best in 3D. The number has grown slowly since January, when it was 70,000, but as an add‑on rather than a direct revenue generator, it is not being pushed hard – yet. Nor is it a big proportion of the 10.3m Sky subscribers; but it shows there is plenty of room for 3D to grow into. After all, the Premier League was once just shown on plain TV on Sky. Now it is available in high definition (HD) or 3D. With Sky pushing for newer ways to get people viewing, and paying more, "immersive TV" is only going to be the start.
The BBC, too, is offering HD and 3D sports – Wimbledon was its trial run for the latter, and the Olympics will be the big test – so there is growing excitement among the broadcasters at the potential of these technologies to get people sitting in front of a TV.
For the TV manufacturers, currently seeing a dip in profits as HD sets become commonplace and therefore cheaper, the need to find something new to get people to buy yet another screen is becoming urgent. Samsung and Logitech have tried "smart TV" which uses Google's services to connect to the internet, but they have faced viewer indifference; hardly anyone wants to watch YouTube on a TV set. (Logitech actually saw more returns of its internet TV box than confirmed sales in the past three months.)
But 3D TV has not set the world on fire so far. Even Hollywood is not seeing much benefit, after the explosion of interest in Avatar at the start of 2010; since then, audiences have started drifting back to 2D films, which are cheaper and do not require pricey glasses. Certainly one problem with most 3D TV systems is that you need special, expensive glasses – which are difficult to obtain if you suddenly have 10 mates coming round to watch the final.
In fact the only thing that seems to work in getting more people to watch sports is better coverage, with larger screens showing more detail from the venue. Whether the Premier League's vision quite matches that remains to be seen.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/aug/02/premier-league-immersive-vision-audience
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