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While I own most of the 3D hardware types already, I still enjoy secret shopping at the top retail outlets whenever I get the chance. Having done so again recently, I'm really getting a firm grasp of what our industry's leading sales challenges are - and they are serious.
Sony Bravia 3D HDTV Shot in 3D!
NOTE: All of the article pictures are doubled because they were taken with a stereoscopic 3D camera. These pictures are from another Best Buy retail shopping trip in Wilmington, Delaware.
Our journey begins at the local Sony Experience store. They had a Bravia 3D HDTV on display showing sports programming. There was a huddle of people around it - no sales staff, just patrons. The huddle left, and there were just two people remaining. As I walked up to the stand, I heard the woman on the left telling her husband "I don't get it", and her husband said "I wouldn't spend my money on this!"...and they walked off in a huff.
Meanwhile, the person on the right was enjoying his 3D experience. After picking up the deserted glasses, I immediately understood what happened. THE GLASSES WEREN'T ON! The patron didn't know about the tiny activation button on the side of the glasses. When I brought it up with the sales person at the counter, he explained that this happens all the time.
This problem is minor. John Merritt, Board of Directors member of The S-3D Gaming Alliance, told me he did some secret shopping of his own. When he asked to check out the Samsung and Panasonic 3D HDTV demos at multiple electronics stores, he was denied because he was told that someone had broken the 3D glasses. Broken glasses!
Samsung 3D HDTV at Best Buy, Wilmington, DE
This past weekend, we also went to the local Best Buy. Samsung had a great display idea where the TV is only in 2D, and can be easily switched to 3D just by pressing a button on the display's counter. Most of the content looked good...and then something happened. Portions of the video had reversed polarity between the left and right views! Problems at other retail stores had different brands of TVs showing images in side by side mode MINUS the 3D (like the pictures in this article).
The biggest problem of all, and I can't stress this enough, is there is way too much sports content being shown, and not nearly enough video game content. While sports are important, consumers rank this third after 3D video games and 3D Blu-Ray movies. There needs to be a dramatic paradigm shift around content priorities and display licensing agreements because this is a serious disconnect from what customers are asking for.
Years ago, I worked in retail for a technology store, and my responsibilities included making sure the displays always looked nice, that customers were taken care of, and most importantly, that patrons understood the features of the products and how they can benefit from them. While I appreciate that there are only a small number of available sales people at any given time, there are ways to circumvent these challenges.
The first step is to make sure consumers recognize a problem when they see one. I kid you not that customers don't know what 3D is supposed to look like until they see it for themselves. There should be a fat sign next to every 3D HDTV that says "Are you not seeing this in 3D? Does this look strange somehow? Please ask a representative to assist you."
Panasonic 3D HDTV With Glasses
I don't know how or why the glasses are so scarce. These things are usually built to last. Instead of just leaving them out for people to roughly grab and grope, I think patrons should ask for them. Imagine the positive customer experience of hearing the sales representative talking about the television, while simultaneously spraying the glasses clean for a personalized tour.
Premium products need to be sold with premium customer attention, and I just haven't seen enough of this. Not one sales person offered to give me a tour of a 3D HDTV. I'm not talking about the occasional rep who asks "do you need help?", I'm talking about the one who says "have you tried that TV out in 3D? I can get you glasses if you need them". It would have been nice had someone asked me what I think while I was trying the glasses out on my own. This is very basic stuff.
So the next time you read an article about how challenging it is to come up with the best 3D experience and that it's holding back sales, or someone is selling a report about how people hate 3D glasses, or that there isn't enough content to sell 3D televisions...please take it with a grain of salt. The biggest problems right now are very rudimentary and are all happening at the retail level in droves.
I think it would be great if readers could share their positive and negative 3D retail experiences below. Is what I'm sharing unique? Did I just walk in to these stores on an off day? Good and bad, I want to hear your stories.
Last but not least, GDC Online's 3D Summit is coming up, and I am looking forward to revealing the preliminary results from the 2010 U-Decide Initiative as part of my presentation. If you haven't completed a survey yet, do so now because polls close on October 1st, and over fifty prizes will be drawn once the study is finished. You might even win a Panasonic 3D HDTV like the one pictured above!
Good luck, and thanks for reading.
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your statement " Premium products need to be sold with premium customer attention " says it all. The people who can be swayed or interested into buying a 3D television will be paying a substantial amount and it's in the retailers best interest to make sure anyone showing interest in the products receives that premium customer service. Not to mention 3D is somewhat experimental in this phase and much of the technology driving it is not understood by the genera public. To be honest this discussion is kind of embarrassing , this is basic and I mean BASIC customer service necessity. Why the need for extra attention to customers for newer technologies needs to be discussed I have no idea.
While that's certainly a factor for the average consumer with no exposure to 3D, I really don't think we need to take into account the Best Buy sales experience when considering reports from and to the more technically interested that actually care about 3D at this point. Suggestions that there is not enough content to sell televisions or that the experience is undesirable due to glasses or what have you can be valid even if there are other problems down the road blocking widespread 3D viability. I'll grant you that it would certainly impact any broad "would you buy a 3D television" surveys focused at that group, but the rest (and anything not targeted specifically at the average consumer), not so much.
The writeup would have been a lot stronger without that paragraph, honestly - it seems, at best, tangentially related, and makes the article feel more like an agenda piece than anything else.
Plus, it would put up a significant barrier to the casual viewer. I'm not going to ask for a pair of goggles, have the salesperson hang around while I look at it and try to feign more than mild interest in what is still essentially an expensive gimmick, and then hand them back the goggles and thank them for their time. They're not getting a sale from me anytime soon (although the seed of interest might be planted), but now they've got me standing there and slightly indebted to them for their time and showing interest in an expensive item, and they can start in on the hard sell... No, I'm not interested in that.
A better solution is like what I saw at The Best Buy I was at yesterday, that had a 3D TV set up with a pair of glasses mounted on a fairly heavy-duty stand in front of it.
This new batch of TV's coming out removes some of the headaches, but adds others. The one that really baffles me is the 3d-tv's that aren't coming bundled with glasses. They should all come with two-pairs of glasses. Then we have the whole where do we get content question. As a pc gamer, I knew where my content was coming from, 3dvision is compatible with 100 of games right now. As an early adapter of one of these latest sets, I'd be limited to a handful of movies/ps3 games. Not likely.
It induces the killing rage the way the industry is butchering this reintroduction of stereoscopic 3d because the experience of the tech is nothing short of incredible. They've had to work real hard to screw it up this badly. So I guess I'll just be over here enjoying the unparalleled immersion of Codemasters Dirt 2 while I still can.
Thanks for your feedback. The only point I was trying to underscore is that the biggest challenges facing 3D HDTV sales are right before our eyes, and happen the moment you walk into a retail store. I don't make money by expressing this opinion, it doesn't make 3D manufacturers look any better or worse - I just think it's a serious issue that needs to be acknowledged and somehow rectified. I see no devious agenda behind this.
I didn't want to make generalizations, which is why I was specific in my remarks. The glasses debate has been covered to death, but that Best Buy experience falsely reinforces the anti-glasses position when you see a huddle of people leaving thinking that they are supposed to see doubled images in 3D because the glasses don't work. Who cares about the supposedly best 3D experience if the televisions aren't even being shown in 3D or have their polarity reversed? Not enough content? Nobody was asking about what content is available when they couldn't even try the TV.
In my opinion, the 3D industry has been so focused on phase two or the inevitable point when everyone has a 3D HDTV. Yes, this is critical, 100%. I'm just saying we need to spend even more attention on phase one, the point that customers walk in the door looking for their first 3D experience.
Josh:
Different customers like to be treated differently, and you make some valid points. Maybe it's enough to make sure the displays are in working order and people can request a personal tour and refreshed glasses? Would a sign be enough?
I liked the Samsung display, by the way. The glasses were within reach, I just pressed a button to get into 3D mode, and it worked. Just some of the content had the polarity reversed. QA! QA! QA!
Jacob:
3D gaming is very different on console than it is on PC. It's interesting that you mention 100 games compatible with Nvidia rather than the promoted 400+ games. This tells me you know how to get the most out of your 3D system with the convergence controls, etc. You wouldn't believe how many people just play with the dial on the infrared thingy and think they are getting all that is to be offered.
Regards,
Neil
But I just wanted to point out... like HD before it, 3D looks most impressive with Sports content. Even to this day I don't think anything looks as nice as a sports broadcast in HD... and on my 3D tour, it was the same experience. The gaming looked nice as well, but the Sports were what stood out the best.
So in that regard, I do understand why so many sports are shown. I do agree though that they need to show content people actually care about, and I know many could care less about sports.
I've personally found that the best footage for 3D are the bespoke nature shots: close ups of flowers, wildlife and such, filmed specifically to maximise the poignancy of the depth. Sports works for the most part, but in John Lewis the 3D screens become lost in a sea of green; because EVERY TV is playing the footie. If you want it to stand out, having the same thing as every ordinary screen is not the way to catch a passerby's eye, especially if it looks like a doubled mess before you get the glasses on.
But yes, I did forget about Nature stuff. That always shows really well, perhaps even better then sports. I'd have to get a good comparison.