• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, September 28, 2010

There's still some waiting to get a sense of how wide adoption of 3D TV eventually will be, but a leading new media academic said Tuesday that adoption rates could be helped by consumers upgrading home tech faster

Fordham professor John Carey said the rollout of 3D TVs could be faster than HD sets because people were likely to change TVs every eight years during the analog age. Now, the turonover rate has been lowered to about five, opening a path for 3D TVs to make it into homes more quickly.

"That will be somewhat of a benefit compared to HD," said Carey during an Advertising Week gathering of MPG's Collaborative Alliance.

Another potential assist could come from a closing of the price gap. In the early HD days, prices of the new sets were perhaps 10 times greater than a comparable analog set. Now, an HD set is only about double the cost of a 3D one.

"It's not as big a barrier," said Carey, a communications and media management professor.

Carey added that because sports looks good in 3D, manufacturers could benefit from finding ways to get them into sports bars and restaurants. He noted that "the core value" of a 3D picture is not with the action coming at a viewer -- say, a tennis ball -- but "the depth of feel that's on the other side of the camera."