SMPTE prepares for 3-D to the home
May 18, 2009 12:21 PM, By Michael Grotticelli
"What's become clear is that it's important to have a standard way of producing 3-D content so that everyone around the world can set up an infrastructure to handle it," she said. "If we don't have a standard established, we would end up with proprietary solutions based on different assumptions. This would cause the market to become fragmented, which would in turn result in a more protracted and difficult rollout of a 3-D service."
However, the infrastructure for getting 3-D into the home is still a long way from being a mature and reliable system. Most content providers (e.g., cable, satellite, telco and terrestrial) are currently working with a 1.5Gb/s pipeline that is inadequate for 3-D unless a lot of compression is applied.
"I think the broadcast channels have some unique challenges in terms of both their bandwidth and methods of distribution, which have been developed over many years to handle 2-D viewing," Aylsworth said. "Those distribution platforms might lag a bit in terms of transmitting 3-D, but the use of optical media is very promising right now and industry-wide adoption is just around the corner."
She said that after movie theaters, subscription-based TV providers, including the Internet, would probably be the next adopters of 3-D. For free, over-the-air broadcasting, the challenge is ensuring that anybody who's receiving that 3-D signal but doesn't have a 3-D-capable set will still be able to watch it in 2-D.
"Terrestrial broadcast is a bit more challenging because that infrastructure is the oldest and there's a bit more legacy infrastructure to deal with, but 3-D to the home is still viable for over-the-air broadcasters in the future," Aylsworth said. "The ATSC, DVB and others in Japan are all starting to work on ways to distribute it on their existing channels. So, there's hope for a practical solution."
However, do people really want 3-D in their homes? Aylsworth said studies have shown that consumers are interested in 3-D and, for economic reasons, the industry will support that desire.
The Consumer Electronics Association and the University of Southern California's Entertainment Technology Center recently released a study using stereoscopic color anaglyphs (moving or still pictures in contrasting colors that appear three-dimensional when superimposed) to get a feel for how well consumers will like 3-D in their home, and the response was very positive.
Aylsworth said any new 3-D-to-the-home standard should be resolved in about a year, which is typical for most SMPTE initiatives. SMPTE is actually working on a series of standards related to 3-D, including defining the image parameters as well as ancillary metadata, such as subtitles and closed captions.
"I think we'll see stereographic 3-D in the home, akin to what you now see in the theater, by 2012," she predicted, adding that those telecasts will most likely be sporting events that require special polarized glasses to see the 3-D effects.
Time — and a number of market forces — will tell whether she's right.
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