“Motorola has been developing 3D technology for more than 10 years, leading the industry with innovative solutions that support the deployment of 3D TV to the home,” said John Burke, senior vice president, Motorola Mobile Devices and Home. “The development of this 3D software enhancement gives our service provider customers a straightforward solution for deploying high-quality 3D TV services today using their existing video delivery infrastructure. By focusing on the customer’s viewing experience Motorola has taken 3D TV to the next level and helped our industry to bring the experience of 3D from the theater into the living-room”

With many service providers having already announced their intent to broadcast select 3D programming, there are several challenges to overcome to deliver 3D signals to the home using currently deployed infrastructure and devices. Although frame-compatible 3D content can be passed through deployed set-tops and viewed on 3D TVs today, accessing the set-top on-screen guide and menu while watching 3D content provides an unsettling experience for the consumer. Motorola addresses these deployment challenges and maintains its leadership position in 3D TV by integrating 3D signal processing software into the set-top. Specifically, the new 3D TV-enabled set-tops provide the following functionality:

•3D format detection: The 3D TV processing software automatically detects the presence of 3D content and identifies the type of 3D format used to ensure proper delivery and display on the 3D TV. As a result, the consumer will be able to seamlessly switch between 2D and 3D channels. Additionally, the set-tops support 3D TV over both MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 and are capable of 1080p24/30 output.

•Content reformatting: Upon detection of 3D content, the set-top automatically reformats all on-screen text and graphics to match the incoming 3D format so that they can be correctly displayed by the 3D TV set. The 3D processing software supports all on-screen displays such as closed captioning, emergency alerts, application graphics and text overlays, as well as existing EPGs and applications.

3D TV is becoming a hot new viewing format and participants across the ecosystem are targeting home viewing. Momentum is building, and IDC survey data shows that consumers that have experienced 3D in the movie theaters express a greater willingness to pay for 3D-capable devices,” said Greg Ireland, IDC Consumer Markets research manager. “Motorola is successfully demonstrating its ability to support 3D TV and continues to be one of the leading providers of 3D TV solutions.”

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Fortunately, technology solutions exist which enable 3D to be delivered over an existing 2D HD broadcast infrastructure. The most common of these is known as ‘side-by-side’, where the left and right images are squeezed to half width and placed side-by-side in a standard video frame. The images are then separated in the consumer’s receiving equipment, usually in the TV.

The benefit of such a ‘2D wrapper’ system is that it requires very little upgrading of the broadcast infrastructure and, even more important, programming can be delivered via the existing installed base of set top boxes.

A number of cable, satellite and IPTV operators around the world have been conducting trials using the side-by-side technique, the most notable being in Japan over the BS11 satellite, BSkyB in Europe and Orange in France.

BS11 has been running a 2-hour loop of acquired programming that can be received by any Japanese consumer willing to pay upwards of $2,500 for a 46” LCD TV fitted with a polarizing lens. BSkyB in the UK and Orange France, meanwhile, have been producing a range of original 3D programming in different genres – soccer, boxing, tennis, opera, ballet, music videos, even a quiz
show – but these are closed trials and not currently available for public consumption. 3D broadcast services are expected to start later this year. Initially these will be from pay TV operators such as BSkyB, which has committed to a launch during 2010.

Technicolor’s UK-based broadcast playout center, has already demonstrated its ability to handle a 3D encoding and transmission chain in a number of formats to meet its clients’ needs by establishing an end-to-end 3D broadcast channel infrastructure The major US networks and European public service broadcasters are unlikely to begin any form of regular 3D services this year, possibly not until 2012. The BBC is expected to provide 3D feeds from at least some of the London Olympics sites and by then there should be a sufficient installed base of 3D TVs in many territories to justify coverage by the networks.

In markets like the US, advertising support will be critical to 3D’s success; the key question is whether advertisers will be prepared to pay a premium, something they have been reluctant to do in the case of HD.

Source: Technicolor

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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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