Vision - November/December 2008 - (Page 42)

CEAnewsline technology & standards 3D TV Coming to Your Living Room By Brian Markwalter Stereoscopic, or more familiarly 3D, video captures Hollywood again. By most accounts there are 13 stereoscopic motion pictures in various stages of planning, filming or release. Why the sudden interest in 3D? Movie studios and theater owners need to fill seats. Adding realism is one way to attract ticket buyers, and 3D capability does that, just like Panavision and surround sound improved the experience in past years. Arguably, previous attempts at 3D movies were not meant to improve the realism as much as to deliver a gimmick for viewers. There is a technological basis for claiming that 3D movies today are more than just a gimmick. Hollywood has invested a great deal of money in developing digital cinema so that movies can be delivered to theaters as digital files instead of film and then shown with digital projection. Digital cinema allows for much greater control, which is necessary to trick your eyes into seeing depth where there is none in reality. The problem, until recently, has been funding the transformation of thousands of theaters—a sort of DTV transition for the movie distribution and projection business. Theater owners were not in a financial position to make the investment that in many ways benefits the studios in distribution cost savings. Recent reports state that a collection of studios and theater chains have reached an agreement on funding the conversion to digital cinema. Similar forces are at work in the living room for your television. In fact, one motivation is exactly the same—greater realism. High-definition is the norm now in the U.S. That leads researchers and developers down just a few paths to find the next substantial improvement. One is higher resolution and better sound, like the Ultra HD system NHK in Japan is developing and demonstrating as a long-range project. Another is to add depth. But 3D TV for the home is not just research. It is shipping today from several manufacturers. These 3D capable TVs need content. Movie studios need to leverage the investment in 3D filming and production through the same outlets available for regular movies today: theatrical release, pay-per-view, DVD and so on. The pull is in the same direction, resulting in a great deal of work around the world to bring quality 3D to the home. Various methods show stereoscopic video. What underpins them all is the requirement to deliver a different image to each eye, simulating as closely as possible what your eyes experience in the natural world. The technique that is probably most familiar is the use of passive glasses to filter the image going to each eye. Both left and right eye images are shown, and glasses that are either polarized a certain way or use color filters that allow just the image intended for the correct eye to pass. The other glasses-on approach uses active glasses that are shuttered on and off electronically to block the undesired image from getting to the wrong eye. In this case, the left and right images are displayed sequentially, and the glass lenses have to be timed to the display, a feat usually accomplished by an IR signal from the TV to the glasses. By some estimates, nearly two million 3D-capable rear projection sets using DLP™ technology and electronically shuttered glasses already are in consumer hands. The autostereoscopic display technique does not require the user to wear glasses. Imagine a TV that can beam the desired left eye image to your left eye and the right eye image to your right eye, like two carefully aimed projectors pointing at you. That is how autostereoscopic projection works. A TV can be fitted with a special lens that projPhoto Blue/Jupiter Images ects narrow, vertical images in left eye, right eye, left eye, right eye “columns”. Of course, the TV does not know where the viewer is, so the viewer must sit in a particular spot so that the left image hits the left eye and the right image hits the right eye. As the viewer moves to the right or left, the 3D effect will disappear or become distorted until the eyes realign with the proper left/right image slice. The drawback for consumer TV viewing is obvious, requiring a fixed head position to enjoy 3D content. However, there are good commercial applications, such as 3D signage in public areas that show depth as people pass by. In this case, glasses are not an option and nobody is being asked to keep their head still for an entire movie. The holy grail of 3D is autostereoscopic display that projects images precisely to the viewers’ eyes even when their heads move. We are quite a ways from that utopia, but the commercial world, from studios to TV manufacturers, are working hard to bring 3D to your living room. The subject of 3D TV is a bit—ahem—polarizing. Ask someone close to the TV business what they think of 3D TV and the answer will likely either be “that will never sell” or “it’s the next big thing.” Sounds a bit like HDTV in the early ’90s, doesn’t it? • 42 November/December 2008 www.ce.org http://www.ce.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Vision - November/December 2008

Vision - November/December 2008 Contents Shapiro's Spectrum In this Issue The Economist C4 Trends Going Global Visionary CES Unveiled Eco-Intelligence Is Vital in a Sustainable Global Market XGP— A Game Changer Enhancing the Tech Experience High-Definition Decade Public-Private Partnerships CEA Newsline Tech Speak Tech Policy Eye on Business Market Insider Just the Stats

Vision - November/December 2008

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