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CES 2012: Sensio Builds 3DGO! Streaming Service

LAS VEGAS – Sensio
Technologies promoted at International CES its 3D Hi-Fi 3D technology and
related streaming service called 3DGO! that will soon deliver near Blu-ray 3D
quality streaming content to TV screens.

Nicholas Routhier,
Sensio president and CEO, said his company set out to develop a system for
Internet delivered 3D video content after seeing a dearth of programming coming
from traditional distribution outlets.

“We negotiated
with manufacturers in order to bring that content to the market,” he said,
adding that Sensio and TCL recently signed a letter of intent to integrate Sensio’s
Hi-Fi 3D technology in TCL 3DTVs, while Vizio 3DTVs already support Sensio
Hi-Fi 3D technology.

Sensio is also
having discussions with both manufacturers to implement its forthcoming 3DGO!

To ensure the
highest possible image quality, Sensio developed a format called Hi-Fi 3D that
is based on a unique frame-compatible stereoscopic signal processing technology
used for commercializing live 3D events in cinemas, high-profile console games
and DVD movies.

The process
eliminates the resolution, sharpness and fidelity loss associated with typical
side-by-side techniques, Routhier said.

 “We are moving away from a product that is
good enough, and delivering something that will truly add value to consumers,”
Routhier said.

The 3DGO! service
is scheduled to launch in spring 2012, and Sensio will be announcing titles and
supporting studios, content producers and additional product manufacturers in
the coming months.

Sensio said the
service will likely launch offering a lot of live 3D events, such as concerts.

Sensio’s goal,
Routhier said, is to have 60 titles at launch and around 100 by the end of the
year. Content will be offered using a transactional on-demand model without a
subscription fee.

Routhier said
Sensio will begin some direct marketing promotional support behind the 3DGO!
brand and service, but the strategy is to let the manufacturer partners
showcase and promote the service as a part of their total 3D product offering.

“We will be
working a lot with the bloggers and social media in a guerilla marketing
effort,” Routhier said. “Sensio is not a multimillion dollar company with super
deep pockets. We feel that word of mouth will be very significant and that we
will basically be the only on-demand 3D service out there.”

Routhier said 3DGO!
will benefit from the fact that many of the largest chip manufacturers have
integrated supporting technology into new 3D processing chips.

“At this stage,
almost all of the 3DTVs out there have Sensio Hi-Fi 3D decoding built in,” he
said. “So we feel that by the end of this year there will be a lot of 3DTV
manufacturers supporting us.”

In addition to
smart TVs, Sensio is targeting 3D monitors and 3D laptops in the short term.
The company expects the service will eventually find its way to 3D tablets as
they become more widely available.

But Routhier said
Sensio does not expect 3DGO! to have much of presence on handheld smartphones
and small devices that lack sufficient screen size to present a compelling 3D
effect.

“Despite what some
people are saying, 3DTVs are selling right now, but people have not been using
for them for 3D viewing,” Routhier said. “We need to increase that usage of
3D.”

In another area of
its business, Sensio has developed passive 3D glasses from various 3D TV
products in the market, but Routhier said 3DGO! is glasses and platform
agnostic. It was designed to work on all 3D TV approaches including passive-
and active-glasses systems and even glasses-free auto stereoscopic products.

However, Routhier
said he does not expect glasses-free TVs to become much of a factor for at
least five years.

“We don’t want to
choose sides, but from our approach we believe that passive-glasses 3D has the
edge over active,” Routhier said.

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