It's not difficult to find devotees of 3-D among Hollywood movers and shakers, many of whom speak about the format with evangelical zeal thanks to the staggering success of Avatar. With a surcharge of about $3 to $5 on each movie ticket, the resulting box office spike will turn anyone into a believer.
But Sandy Climan preached the word well before it was fashionable—or profitable. A former executive at CAA and Universal Studios, he’s the founding CEO of 3ality Digital, a three-and-a-half-year-old company that creates production systems to generate 3-D content for movies, television and other electronic media. And while movie houses filled with spectacle-clad 3-D patrons have garnered most of the headlines, Climan says 3-D television is poised to stage a revolution, too.
“In January we broadcast a Manchester United-Arsenal soccer game in 3-D to pubs in the UK,” says Climan, who is also president of Entertainment Media Ventures, a company active in investment and strategic advisory services focused on digital media. “We’ve seen photos of the people at the pubs looking up at the picture, stunned at what they were seeing.”
It was when Climan walked through the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January and saw how much of the convention floor was dedicated to 3-D that he knew the market was about to explode. “It’s one thing to see 3-D at a cinema; it’s quite another to see it on a flat screen,” he says. Several manufacturers already have 3-D TVs on the market, and more brands have versions coming soon. By 2012, Climan believes there should be enough 3-D TVs in American homes to support consistent 3-D programming.
And don’t worry about having to wear those clunky glasses on your couch. “The smaller the format, the less you need glasses,” says Climan. “So with 3-D on an iPod or cell phone, you won’t need glasses. And with TV, the glasses will become more stylish and will also work as sunglasses.” Sounds like the future of television is bright indeed.
