It appears that sports fans liked watching ESPN's coverage of the World Cup tournament this summer in 3-D more than 2-D HDTV. The results of a new study conducted by the sports network's Research + Analytics division encompassing more than 1000 testing sessions (approx. 2700 lab hours) found that subjects showed "a higher level of viewer enjoyment" and "a stronger sense of presence" with the 3-D telecasts.
Quantifying that even further, ESPN said fans' enjoyment increased from 65 percent to 70 percent in 3-D while "presence" went from 42 percent to 69 percent.
The results come in light of some public comments made by ESPN's senior director of technology, Jonathan Pannaman, about the future of the network's EPSN3D channel due to a lack of revenue being generated to offset the cost of live 3-D sports production.
Duane Varan, a veteran of iTV applied research and professor of New Media at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, supervised the research, which was conducted in June during ESPN's coverage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup at the Disney Media and Ad Lab in Austin, TX. The Ad Lab — which was developed to better understand the emotional drivers of audience behavior and physiological reactions to advertising — used 3-D TV sets from five different manufacturers in its testing.
The network said the research used an experimental design approach and more than 700 measures that included the use of perception analyzers, eye gaze and electrodermal activity. The study focused on a variety of topics, such as overall viewing enjoyment, fatigue and novelty effects, technology differences, production issues and advertising impact.
For sponsors, the study showed that viewer engagement was high when viewing 3-D ads, according to Artie Bulgrin, senior vice president of ESPN Research + Analytics. In fact, ad liking went from 67 percent to 84 percent.
After showing viewers the same ads in 2-D and 3-D, most picked the 3-D versions across a series of ad performance metrics "generally maintaining a higher level of arousal than the 2-D counterpart." Testing participants also showed better recall of the ad in 3-D (cued recall went from 68 percent to 83 percent).
Interestingly, the study found that when given a choice between a passive (cheap glasses) and active (expensive shutter glasses) viewing system, there were no major differences, although participants said the passive glasses were more comfortable and less distracting that the bulkier active systems.
As for depth perception, the study found that there were no adverse effects on depth perception (stereopsis). It said that viewers were able to adjust to 3-D over time under normal use.
