Sky bullish on 3DTV launch

Sky production staff are still working on perfecting the skills of live 3D and looking at how they do both production and post.

But Lenz assured delegates that Sky is still on course for an April launch in pubs, with one live Premier League football match being broadcast each week until the end of the season.

He also revealed that the residential channel would be available in the autumn offering movies, entertainment and arts as well as sport and that it will be made free for top tier Sky World subscribers.

“3D has tested better than anything we’ve done in the last 10 years in terms of consumer reaction,” he said.

“When we’re getting that sort of reaction we know we’re onto something. Creatively, there are things we continue to work on. But now is the time.”

He went on to state that Sky will major on the “appointment-to-view proposition in order to keep the experience special.”

Lenz later touched on autostereoscopic 3D - glasses-free technology - and acknowledged that the introduction of this technology would be the real tipping point for 3D TV but that it could still be between 10 and 15 years away from being a reality.

He also defended Sky’s decision to opt for a side-by-side stereo 3D approach that utilises its current infrastructure even though the resolution is lower than with alternative 3D applications such as those being backed by the Blu-Ray Disc association and SMPTE.

“We are dropping some pixels,” he said. “But how are we compensating? We shoot the left eye and the right eye in full HD and keep it that way until the very last minute when we encode into side-by-side 3D. It becomes half resolution but we’re giving more value.”