The "Internationale Funkausstellung" or IFA for short, was held from September 4-9 in Berlin, Germany. Traditionally this show has been more about European CE product introductions that were pre-announced for the most part. The show is where major retailers and dealers order TVs and other CE gear for the coming season. This year was different as new and significant product announcements marked the event. Getting perhaps top billing was 3D. Below is a brief summary of some of the more significant 3D findings. In next month’s edition of Large Display Report, we will have full coverage of these and other products.

Norbert Hildebrand
Insight Media Analyst

IFA is claimed to be the largest consumer electronic show in the world and the statistics seem to bear this out: 1164 exhibitors presented 12,000+ new products to 228,600 visitors during the opening days. IFA also attracts a large consumer audience, but trade visitors were still pegged at 119,000 attendees. While CE sales for all of Europe were slightly negative for the year, Germany has been stable so far in 2009.

The main focus during the exhibition was on the new trends in home entertainment and TVs in particular. Arguably the hottest trend this year was the presentation of 3D TV sets by most of the manufacturers.

As was widely reported, Sony was making a public commitment to bring a complete 3D offering to the consumer including the hardware (TV sets, Blu-Ray players and game consoles) and content (movies and games). Their main message as displayed in the booth was "Sony brings 3D home in 2010". As for the underlying 3D technology they only showed LCD TV with active shutter glasses. At the last CES, Sony showed prototype LCD TVs using the x-pol technology.

Panasonic will also make 3D TV sets available in 2010 to the consumer in Europe, which will play 3D content from Blu-Ray players, again using active shutter glasses. With their strong alignment with the Avatar movie, due for release on December 19, we expect to hear more from Panasonic and their 3D plans in the near future.

Philips was pushing their 21:9 cinema format TV as the only TV that can play DVD and Blu-Ray releases without the loss of valuable display real estate. They claim that currently about 60% of all DVD and Blu-Ray disks are released in 21:9 format. While they acknowledged that 3D was a big part of IFA they only showed a prototype based on the 21:9 LCD TV, based on an x-pol solution, and stated that they are working on all technologies including auto-stereoscopic solutions and will be ready to offer products when the consumer demand is starting to be realized. They are currently offering a Net TV service that brings roughly a 100 Internet channels to the European consumer, which provides an interesting platform for 3D delivery.

LG was not so focal about the push for 3D into the home but they are ready and showed LCD TVs based on x-pol technology (passive glasses), a PDP TV (active shutter glasses) and a home projection system with passive glasses.

Samsung was not far behind showing LCD and PDP TVs with active shutter glasses. More 3D TVs were shown by JVC (x-pol) and Vestel (x-pol).

Loewe (active shutter glasses) and Toshiba (x-pol) were showing prototypes in the press area only.

Overall the 3D TV invasion was more than noticeable and the trend was also well publicized by German TV during the exhibition. As shown in the picture, they are getting used to wearing their shades in the living room.

As mentioned earlier, IFA is also a major buyers emporium. This year these buyers placed a total order volume of over 3 billion EUROs (US$ 4.5B) breaking the previous record from 2008. Is this a hopeful sign for the end of the great recession?

More detailed information about the IFA reported by Lutz Moehr will be available in our upcoming version of LDR.