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80% Of Consumers Prefer Passive 3D Viewing: Study

80% Of Consumers Prefer Passive 3D Viewing: Study

Days after a Federal Court judge ruled on the proposed banning of LG passive 3D TV marketing following a bitter fight with Samsung over passive 3D TV technology Vs Samsung’s active shutter technology, LG has released a research study that claims consumers prefer passive 3D glasses over active shutter glasses. 

The Korean Company who won their Federal Court case, claims that a recent LG consumer study revealed that 80 percent of consumers prefer their 3DTV experience wearing passive glasses over more established, and more expensive, active-shutter 3DTV glasses.

The study that was conducted during the recent Federal Court trial in Australia by market research firm Morpace, measured the results of consumers when they viewed an LG Cinema 3D HD LCD TV against active-shutter-glasses based LCD TVs from Sony and Samsung.

Sony did not return requests for comment.

Samsung executives in Australia said “We believe active [shutter technology] is the best solution for consumers, as it’s the only 3D in-home solution to provide FullHD and with our particular execution you have wider viewing angles than passive at 178 degrees both horizontally and vertically.”

Last year in Australia Samsung captured 50% of the 3D TV marketing. Now LG Australia is looking to capture a larger share of this market with aggressive TV marketing for their Cinema 3D TV’s. Next week during the NSW Vs QLD State of Origin game LG Australia is expected to air a new version of their controversial TV commercials despite Samsung seeking leave to get the TV commercials banned. 

According to GFK data the sell-through numbers for 3D TV’s show that over 75 percent of industry 3DTV sales were for active-shutter models.

The brands and models used in the research study were selected by LG. No plasma sets or other passive-glasses TV brands were measured.

LG said the study was designed to measure “consumer preferences between 3D technology which uses active-flicker [LG’s term for active-shutter] glasses that sync with an emitter on the TV and passive technology that uses polarised glasses similar to those used in movie theatres.”

LG continues to market 3D plasma TVs using active-shutter glasses, but decided after International CES to drop plans to introduce a range of active-shutter-based 3D LCD TVs to focus exclusively on its new Film Pattern Retarded passive-glasses technology.

LG said the survey “measured real-time feedback from consumers and shows that LG’s Cinema 3D passive technology is preferred by consumers across all measured categories, including overall 3D experience, 3D picture quality, 3D effect and 3D glasses.”

“We developed LG Cinema 3D to solve the problems consumers were experiencing with active 3D and to provide the best 3D experience in the home” Tim Barnes Senior Marketing Manager, Home Entertainment said recently.

More than three quarters of the respondents preferred LG Cinema 3D for the immersive 3D experience (78 percent), 3D effect (77 percent), overall picture quality (77 percent) and 3D glasses (78 percent), the Morpace study said.

In the live controlled test, respondents saw a total of four 3DTVs that displayed the same content and were asked to rate their experience with each.

The TVs, questionnaire and glasses were all meticulously de-branded to ensure that brand perceptions had no impact on consumer preference.

Full survey results and methodology are available at www.lg.com/cinema3d-research.

LG Electronics manufactures most of the passive-glasses based 3D LCD panels used by both itself and competitive brands. It opted to omit other passive 3DTV brands because the study was designed to gauge passive vs. active-shutter based technologies said Company executives.

“Consumers had very strong reactions to the two types of 3D HDTV technology available on the market,” stated Duncan Lawrence, Morpace president. “Our research shows the overwhelming preference for passive technology and LG Cinema 3D in every category measured, and our data suggests that LG’s technology has the potential to become the leading 3D format.”

LG said in its system, individual left- and right-eye images are combined in viewers’ brains to produce 3D pictures appearing to have FullHD 1080p resolution, although critics claim the technology halves the resolution to each eye. In contrast, some proponents of active-shutter TV technology said their systems present full 1080p images.