Sky's 3D service might hit cinemas before homes

Posted by Nial Ferguson on Wed 23 Sep 2009

Sports at the cinema, and we ain't talkin' Rocky

Back when cinemas first opened their shiny doors, it wasn’t uncommon for the paying clientele to go just to see a summary of the news or recent sporting events. It now seems that things may go full circle, as Sky’s hinted that the coming years might see similar cinema broadcasts, albeit with the added bonus of 3D.

- Sky to launch a 3D service in 2010

Talking to WotSat, Brian Sullivan (Sky's customer group MD) said that the next year will see the company offering a service 'fundamentally different' to that which has gone before it. When talking about Sky’s upcoming 3D service, Sullivan conceded that the service will only be worth the effort if enough people have 3D sets in their front rooms.

"We will absolutely be launching a service in 2010 and that service will be fundamentally different from the services we offer today,” he said. “We are building our capability and we will be showing our first end-to-end sporting events soon, but I would not be surprised if the service materialises first out of the home, because it's also a question of consumers changing to the new 3D screens."

By ‘out of the home’, we can only presume he means cinema showings. What this means is we could all be nipping off to see the next Mayweather fight at our local picture houses.

For those who’ve just switched to a Sky HD box, though, fear not: you won’t need to upgrade again to benefit from the 3D service:

"Our HD box we over-specced to an unbelievable degree because we do not want to go through another box replacement cycle,” said Sullivan. "At some point HD is going to be the minimum acceptable standard and 3D's going to be the cream on top of that."

Link: Sky (Via TechRadar, WotSat)