3D and the broadcaster perspective

3D technology is now in the realms of broadcaster opportunity, but there are serious implications as to which of the technologies can be rolled out or supported if you are looking at this from the point of view of commercial versus public service broadcast (PSB) opportunity.

The main difference is of course profit against coverage - commercial broadcasters are able to view 3D as a profit opportunity while public broadcasters must look at the ability of technologies to offer some 3D or 2D compatible image to the entire viewing public.

When looking at the technology offered, this splits the market somewhat. Anaglyph is obviously a strong case for PSBs since it is compatible with 2D screens. Likewise any technology encoding 2D + depth is promising since the depth portion of the compression can easily be discarded and the 2D image is then available for viewing on legacy 2D displays.

The leading proponent of this 2D + depth technology is currently Philips with WOWvx, which is autostereoscopic using lenticular lenses embedded in the screen. The result is that a foreground image is created which can be 'looked around', however this often results in a pop-up effect where a 2D image is simply in a different plane of viewing than the background image.

More interesting is 2D + depth + occlusions, a terminology from the 3D4You technology innitiative which is being led by a co-operation of companies including Philips, the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany and the BBC in the UK. The technology here is intended to alleviate the pop-up effect by creating addition pixels around the edge of foreground objects so that a glance around them appears to have depth along the side of the object. While this technology looks promising, and most importantly does not require glasses of any sort, autostereoscopic screens are the most difficult to make and the furthest from a consumer proposition. However, interest for digital signage purposes may help drive this technology forward in a commercially viable way. Major players in the market currently are Philips and LG.

The bottom line is that, as it stand, PSBs are in a bit of a tight spot, between technologies applicable to all screens like anaglyph, which tend to offer the least convincing image quality, and technologies like 2D + depth which are the furthest from market, although arguably offer the highest consumer satisfaction as and if they can be implimented well.

Cinedigm network supports live 3D transmission in the US

On the 8 January 2009, the BCS National Championship, the final of the NCAA US college football calendar (my best understanding, not being an American) was broadcast out of Florida's Orange Bowl in 3D.

The broadcaster was supported by 3ality Digital for the local production and cameras and broadcast over satellite on International Datacasting using DVB-S2 modulation to 80 Cinedigm Entertainment cinemas located across the US. The transmission was encoded using Sensio's Cinelive compression technology with decoders in each of the recieving cinemas. The production was shown in stereoscopic with passive polarised glasses.

Overall image quality was generally considered to be quite high, although there were complaints of reversed polarity (R-L) in cinemas, which required viewers to wear their lenses upside-down, although it is not clear where this error lay in the production chain.

Color Code 3D to power Dreamworks' Superbowl ad

The upcoming 2009 US Superbowl XLIII (43), broadcast on NBC, will be showcasing the first broadcast 3D avertisement when it airs on 1 February 2009. The advert, for Monsters vs. Aliens, the upcoming Dreamworks Animation film, will occupy a 30-second advertising slot estimated to be selling for around $3m (slightly higher than the $2.7m slots sold by Fox last year). The production was originally rendered on the Intel InTru 3D hardware platform, allowing full 3D rendering in real time.

The broadcast will be using 3D anaglyphic supplied by Danish specialist Color Code 3D. While anaglyph is traditionally associated with blue-red glasses, the Color Code 3D technology is based around a brown-dark blue, which has much higher colour reproduction versus the older red-blue technology which produces greyscale or washed out images.

The major benefit of anaglyph technology is that it does not requiring a specific 3D screen, unlike polarised stereoscopic images. Anaglyph images are simply a single screen shot compiled out of a left-right image using two colours to seperate the image. This means that all viewers will be able to view the 3D advert by collecting appropriate glasses. Dreamworks will be supplying a reported 150m Pepsi/SoBe sponsored glasses through local retail spots. In addition to the Superbowl trial, NBC will reportedly air an episode of comedy series Chuck in 3D on 2 February 2009.