DTG unveils 3DTV findings

Much interesting stuff in the DTG's report on 3DTV. Basically, the organisation just bombarded its members with questions and collated the replies, but as always with these things, it's who you get the replies from that matters. Thus the DTG survey carries a fair bit of weight.

Quite a lot of different data to wade though, but a couple of salient points below.

Though prototype technologies exist, most (81%) agree that current systems are too immature for a successful market launch. 3DTV could, however, become a mass entertainment medium in the UK within three to five years (56% stating a timeframe), and the UK could lead the world (70%).

Most members (85%) have allocated some level of R&D budget, with most of them (64%) describing it as "very limited funding".

The business case is far from being established (only 14% agreed it had), largely due to the difficulty of forecasting consumer acceptance of an emerging technology and its potential take-up (54%), and uncertainties over the business model.

TVBEurope - DTG unveils 3DTV findings

Hollywood actors agree pay deal

"The main US actors' union has agreed a deal with the major Hollywood studios after a year of acrimonious pay talks which almost led to strike action.

Members of the Screen Actors Guild voted to back a two-year deal covering films and prime-time TV shows.

The SAG said the deal raised actors' minimum pay by 3% as part of a $105m package of improvements.

But there appeared to be no significant pay increase for internet appearances - a key sticking point in the talks."

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Hollywood actors agree pay deal:

Next up - Studios, case studies and IBC

A busy week with lots going on. And that's before we get to the importance of watching as much Twenty20 cricket as humanly possible!

Broadcast: a feature on the studios sector and - somewhat inevitably - how it's faring in the Tough Economic Climate (copyright all features). Also cueing something up looking at resellers and their own problems in the TEC. Might need a new acronym for that...

Case studies: working on a load for VMI and Fineline Media Finance, for VMI themselves and Bubble & Squeak respectively, everything from shoots using P2 in Malaysia to people buying cameras so that other people can gad off and do shoots in Malaysia. In a truly serendipitous manner, even have to do one story about one company for the other...

IBC: the first of the eDaily email newsletters goes out imminently. Have set up a Twitter account (http://twitter.com/ibcdaily09) to highlight what's going on. Plenty of stuff to talk about already (speakers, deals etc) and will be able to highlight exhibitor news and even drop in the odd rumour as the show gets nearer.

In a word, phew. And I thought Gordon Brown was having a busy time of it...

3D = Definite Deployment Due

Having just talked to a load of OB companies for a forthcoming Broadcast feature looking at the sector, I'm starting to review my long-standing slight scepticism on the format. Everyone, it seems, is doing tests, they all say they can do it quite simply, and the only thing holding the production side of things back is the cameras.

I still think there is a way to go in two areas - home delivery and also the actual visual language of putting 3D broadcasts together - but am happy to concede that it's probably all now going to happen. When, of course, is another matter entirely...

A quick restorative

Just finished a piece for Broadcast on restoration of archive material, and how the square of SD archive can be circled with the HD present (so to speak). Some interesting stuff in there...out next Thursday.

The pic above shows two versions of Price & Prejudice, with the restored and rather lovely Blu-ray version on the left.

A couple of good quotes in particular from Paul Gardner, Head of Archive at Darlow Smithson says:

“A few years ago, the requirement tended to be only 30% of SD footage allowed in a documentary for the international market. Now that’s dropped to 10%, and making historical programmes with only 10% SD is very difficult.”

Gardner won the Researcher of the Year at the recent Focal International Awards 2009 for ‘The Thriller in Manila’, a sports doc about the infamous 1975 Ali vs Frazier fight in The Philippines. “That had 50 minutes of SD archive in a 100 minute programme, and you couldn’t make it under those rules today,” he says.

Next up: a feature on OB for Broadcast, various bits and pieces of a press release nature, and the start of serious preparations for this year's IBC Daily and it's various e-shots.

NAB = Need Another Brain

Well, that's NAB largely wrapped up. Just completed the last TVBe email full of news from the show and that, it seems, is that. Some good products have come out of it. AJA's Ki Pro deck was interesting, Panasonic's dedicated stereo 3D rig looked the part (and surely if 3D is going to go mainstream, it needs dedicated kit, not lashed up home-brew equipment), there were interesting onboard digital camera recorders from S.two and Convergent, and Blackmagic's UltraScope was a pretty nifty innovation as well.

All good. Nothing major or world-shattering, but good solid kit that should keep the industry ticking over while we wait for 3D to take off, super-high-massive-vision to debut, telepathic transmission to be invented (Big Brother straight to your frontal lobes! Aiee! The horror!) or whatever comes next...

In the meantime, the newsroom design piece for Broadcast comes out on Thursday. Shame the ITV newsroom pic wasn't big enough to be the lead, but it's a good piece anyway and there are some interesting points to be made in it. And it's now straight into another one for the magazine on archive restoration.

Oh, and I also had my first IBC meeting last week. Incoming!

30,186 Apples a day

30,186 is how many iPods Apple sells every day of every week, 11m of them in a year. And they have contributed rather largely to the Cupertino-based company posting impressive revenue results, especially give the global financial Götterdämmerung that's currently going on.

Profits are $1.21bn, up 15% on last year on quarterly revenues of over $8bn. As for the iPhone, it managed to shift 3.7m units round the world, generating $2.2bn while it did so.

All very impressive, and even more so when you realise that Mac sales are down 3% but that the company has actually managed to increase its profit margins over the past three years - partly due to its ability to leverage its sheer size in the Flash memory purchasing market. Writing this on one of their lovely but infernally expensive machines, I'm not surprised.