They are on a hiding to nothing as they cancelled the media archive, and got flack, so if they continued with 3D they'd be criticized if others pulled out, or pull out now and the same.,
For the record, it's not "the media archive" that got cancelled, but an in-house system that was being developed to make the corporation "tapeless". It was (still is) a laudable aim, but what they got wrong was trying to introduce an all-embracing (acquisition, production, distribution, transmission and archive) solution and trying to do it too soon. A case of people in R&D and IT being so into the principle that they overlooked the obvious. As said in another thread ( http://www.dvforums.com/forums/bbc-has-problems-tapeless ) "often, the brightest technical minds can be very blinkered".Got so captivated by newest technology for it's own sake that they didn't ask the questions they should have done. From what I hear, then ironically a lot less tape is now involved - but it's because departments successfully introduced their own (more focussed and off the shelf) new technology whilst waiting for the Digital Media Initiative. They deserved all the flack coming for the DMI fiasco (and their head of R&D got publicly sacked), the 3D experiment is a completely different matter. Worth doing as an experiment, probably right to discontinue it now.
Ultimately neither experiment appears to have been completely successful.........................We will see if the new sky approach succeeds where the old one and the approach of the BBC appears to have failed.
I don't think it's really right to say the BBC experiment is a "failed" one. I understand it was far more a technical experiment than a marketing one, an attempt to get some first hand practical experience around the technology rather than be a direct lead in to an actual service. In which respect it's very different to the first HD broadcast trials they did - that was clearly with a full scale service in mind. (And at the time there was already a fair bit of HD production going on for co-productions anyway.) For 3D, they had to "borrow" an HD channel, and for any real service they'd either have to take the BBC 2 HD simulcast away or be given totally new spectrum space. In the future, "Standard Definition turn-off" and all DVB going H264 rather than MPEG2 MAY give the necessary spectrum, and the hope by then would be a 3D channel could be compressed into not much more bandwidth than a current 2D one, by taking advantage of left-right similarities for compression efficiency. By that time, glasses free might be a full reality and then the whole thing might be fully viable. In the meantime, expect 3D to rumble on quite happily in cinema production, and don't forget about the uses of 3D TVs for gaming. I fully expect 3D screen sales to stay the norm, even if general broadcast isn't likely to go that way anytime soon.
In the future, "Standard Definition turn-off" and all DVB going H264 rather than MPEG2 MAY give the necessary spectrum, and the hope by then would be a 3D channel could be compressed into not much more bandwidth than a current 2D one, by taking advantage of left-right similarities for compression efficiency. By that time, glasses free might be a full reality and then the whole thing might be fully viable.
Well, no sooner do I write that then - http://www.dvforums.com/forums/bbc-launch-five-new-hd-channels With all the BBC channels on HD, and apparently 50% of households "HD enabled" then who wants to take a bet on how far away "SD switchoff" may be. (Even if it's only the BBC.) No, it won't happen next year, and probably it's at least five years away, likely more - but it does mean that if glasses free 3D viewing technology does arrive around that time, it may answer the transmission issues.