3D TV Technology Overview Explained

Single-view displays as opposed to 3D displays, project only one stereo pair at a time. Multi-view displays either use head-tracking to change the view depending of the viewing angle, or simultaneously project multiple independent views of a scene for multiple viewers (automultiscopic); such multiple views can be created on-the-fly using the 2D plus depth format.

Various other display techniques have been described, such as holography, volumetric display and the Pulfrich effect, that was used by Doctor Who for Dimensions in Time in 1993, by 3rd Rock From The Sun in 1997, and by the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week in 2000, among others. Real-Time 3D TV (Youtube video) is essentially a form of autostereoscopic display.

Stereoscopy is most widely accepted method for capturing and delivering 3D video. It involves capturing stereo pairs in a two-view setup, with cameras mounted side by side, and separated by the same distance as between a person’s pupils. Convincing scene depth effects can only be achieved with exactly the same viewing screen size/distance ratio as intended at the moment of capture/rendering, or the projected image will have impossible separation and convergence angles, especially for close-up objects.

Multi-view capture uses arrays of many cameras to capture a 3D scene through multiple independent video streams. Plenoptic cameras, which capture the light field of a scene, can also be used to capture multiple views with a single main lens[4]. Depending on the camera setup, the resulting views can either be displayed on multi-view displays, or passed for further image processing.

After capture, stereo or multi-view image data can be processed to extract 2D plus depth information for each view, effectively creating a device-independent representation of the original 3D scene. This data can be used to aid inter-view image compression or to generate stereoscopic pairs for multiple different view angles and screen sizes.

2D plus depth processing can be used to recreate 3D scenes even from a single view and convert legacy film and video material to a 3D look, though a convincing effect is harder to achieve and the resulting image will likely look like a cardboard miniature.

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