Televisions

The UK’s main satellite broadcaster, BSkyB, caused a stir at the end of January with the country’s – and, it says, the world’s – first live 3D sports broadcast.

Broadcasting via eight 3D-camera setups from the Arsenal vs. Manchester United Premier League game, Sky made the footage available for viewing (live!) in nine pubs around the UK and Ireland on TV sets supplied by Korean manufacturer LG Electronics. Sky plans to begin broadcasting weekly in 3D from April this year.

Welho began its 3D test transmissions in December 2009.

But it’s not just the UK that’s seeing huge leaps in the availability of next-generation TV content.

Up north in Finland, broadcaster Welho began 3D test transmissions in December last year. Back on the English Channel, viewers in Belgium will soon be enjoying a 3D music channel from long-running broadcaster Alfacam, reports Display Monitor. The magazine also notes that Alfacam was the first company to launch HDTV broadcasts in Europe. Over the border in Germany, the market has recently seen the launch of a new wave of HD channels, coinciding with the rebranding of German broadcaster Premiere as Sky Deutschland.

Servus TV plans to begin 3D broadcasts soon.

Let’s head south now, to the region covered by a relative newcomer – Servus TV. Here, viewers in towns and cities along the river Danube will soon be able to enjoy regular 3D broadcasts using traditional ‘coloured glasses’ technology.

Finally, we follow the Danube downstream to Hungary, where Antenna Hungaría has seen a 91 percent increase in sales of HD set-top boxes in the last month.

In other words, it’s all go in the world of European broadcasting – and broadcasters have much ground to cover in order to keep up with the latest display technology: HDTVs are now becoming increasingly standard, and even 3D TVs are expected to hit the market by the middle of this year.

Itching to see Sky’s new 3D broadcasts for yourself?

LG announced today that it will be supplying 3D TVs (nine 47-inch LD920s) to the pubs showing Sky’s first live 3D broadcast this Sunday. The Korean manufacturer ended its announcement by saying that it will name the nine pubs, presumably in advance of Sunday’s game between Arsenal and Manchester United. Sky has so far refused to announce the names of the pubs involved for fear of causing overcrowding.

It might therefore be worth keeping an eye on LG’s website in the run-up to the match. And of course, we’ll bring you any information that surfaces between now and Sunday on the Televisions.com blog.

Sky will demonstrate its 3D broadcasts at a handful of UK pubs this Sunday.

Perhaps the biggest news for UK viewers today is Sky’s launch of a dedicated 3D channel this April – Europe’s first, the company claims. The technology will even be demonstrated this Sunday, January 31^st, in selected pubs in London, Manchester, Cardiff, and Edinburgh (and Dublin). But Sky is not announcing the names of the pubs involved for fear of overcrowding – this is probably sensible, but if you just have to be there, you’d better tune into the grapevine over the next couple of days.

But that’s not all Sky announced today. The broadcaster’s interim results for the second half of 2009 – which show welcome growth, by the way – also indicate plans to phase out older non-HD Sky set-top boxes. This accompanies figures showing that over 2m UK households now subscribe to Sky+HD – a massive 1.3m of which signed up within the last year alone.

Sky’s growing popularity comes as no surprise. After all, research has shown that over half of UK households now have an HDTV, but that the vast majority fail to use them to watch HD content. This situation is sure to change over time – and with Sky offering by far the widest selection of HD content (37 channels and counting), it certainly represents an attractive package. In fact, Sky has now said that all new customers from January 28, 2010, will receive a Sky+HD box – and that they’ll receive this free if they subscribe to the HD channel pack for an additional 10 GBP per month.

A REPORT on Reuters’s US site claims that two upcoming Harry Potter films will be converted into 3D ahead of their release in late 2010 and summer 2011. This follows a similar report on Televisions.com that  “Clash of the Titans”, a remake of the 1981 Laurence Olivier classic, is expected to undergo 3D conversion for its release in March 2010. A 3D rerelease of “Toy Story 2″ is also currently showing in British cinemas, but only for a limited time period of two weeks.

But conversion to 3D is surely no substitute for being filmed in 3D in the first place – and news about such projects is spread a lot more thinly. “Ghostbusters 3″, for example, is expected to be filmed in 3D, but that won’t hit cinemas until 2012.

In the meantime, we can enjoy a smattering of converted releases – George Lucas, for example, has hinted at rereleasing the “Star Wars” films in 3D. And, of course, various UK broadcasters are looking at bringing 3D content to the living room within 2010.

Online reports are today quoting a statement by South Korean manufacturer Samsung in which the company says it is entering mass production of 3D panels.

Various manufacturers are gearing up to produce 3D TVs – but will it come in time for this year's World Cup?

Numerous reports now say that Samsung is officially beginning production of LCD panels for 3D TVs, meaning it will be the first manufacturer to introduce mass-produced 3D panels. The panels, which will come in screen diagonals of 40, 46, and 55 inches, will be used both in TVs with normal fluorescent-tube backlights and in those with newer LED backlighting technology. According to a report on TradingMarkets.com, the panels will have a refresh rate of 240 hertz, which will presumably allow them to display 120-hertz signals for each of the viewer’s eyes.

This announcement follows DisplaySearch’s publication late last week of its 3D-TV market predictions up to the year 2018. The figures showed an increase from 2009’s total global sales of just 200,000 units to 1.2m units in 2010, and estimated that the industry will be worth as much as 220bn USD (136bn GBP) in 2018, just eight years after its expected arrival on the consumer scene.

We expect similar announcements from other manufacturers soon, especially if global shipments of 3D TVs are supposed to reach 1.2m units in the next 12 – oops, wait, 11 – months. Watch this space!

Humax freesat receivers, such as this Foxsat HD, will now be able to view the iPlayer beta trial.

The BBC’s iPlayer has gone from strength to strength. Some TVs, such as the iViewer from Cello Electronics, are now even available with the technology built in. But the familiar black-and-pink interface has now also weaned its way onto freesat, the free-to-air digital satellite service launched in the UK in 2008.

Freesat has began beta tests with iPlayer in autumn last year, but has now announced that owners of all Humax freesat receivers will be able to sample the service ahead of its official launch later this year. Although freesat has taken its time to catch on, it seems now to have reached an exciting pace – Panasonic, LG, and Sony now build freesat-certified receivers into their flat-panel TVs, for example. Nevertheless, Sky still eclipses freesat’s HD offerings – just BBC HD and ITV1 HD – with its massive selection of 37 HD channels, most recently extended to include MGM HD. The prospect of a wide range of free-to-air content is still a distant one, therefore, but freesat looks to have a lot of potential – and we’re keeping a close eye on developments!

For more information , check out our articles on receiving satellite TV and HD TV in the UK.

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is already over – but it’s left a big enough legacy of cutting-edge technologies to fill the dreams of gadget fans for at least the next few months.

LG bolstered the plasma market with eight new plasma models – led by the PK 950 (pictured here).

All the rage this year in the TV sector were, among others: 3D TVs, Toshiba’s CELL TVs, and a general step-up in refresh rates.

So, we’ll come right out and admit this isn’t what we’d predicted. OK, 3D topped the bill, and that’s what we said it’d do – but it was pretty hard to miss the clues there. Things we hadn’t seen coming include Toshiba’s CELL TVs, which will use the equivalent of up to an eight-core processor for video processing and other tasks. This is a big step forward, and the company’s announcement that it plans to introduce them in Europe this coming autumn is sure to give the competition plenty to worry about. The new Toshibas will also use their phenomenal processing power to handle 3D signals, and will even attempt to add depth information to normal 2D content. Very exciting news indeed!

But what other things were we looking out for? OLED, for example, is a relatively new display technology that’s taking its time about hitting the HDTV market. Sony released a tiny 11-incher, the XEL-1, last year, and we’ve seen prototypes at the odd trade fair or two. It seemed fair to expect to see the next piece of the puzzle. Sadly, however, LG presented a similarly tiny 15-inch model, and the price tag was so unbelievably high (over 2,000 USD) that the device remains the stuff of dreams for all but the best-heeled consumers.

One thing we’re glad not to have seen is the death of the plasma – but to be fair, we didn’t predict that happening just yet. LG, for example, reasserted its commitment to the display technology by announcing eight new, slimmer, and better-equipped plasma TVs. Of the big manufacturers, only Panasonic, Samsung, and LG remain in support of plasma, which many home-cinema enthusiasts still rate more highly than LCD. Pioneer’s recent departure from the plasma market had left many devoted fans unsure of the technology’s future.