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.