LOS ANGELES – Cable operators may be able to offer 3DTV pictures to viewers in a "frame compatible" mode right now. But much remains to be done to improve the viewing quality and experience of that stereoscopic video image beamed to the home so that its appealing to consumers.
That appears to be the consensus view of industry experts. Speaking on a panel here at the Cable Show last week, four such experts described cable’s current approach as delivering frame-compatible 3DTV signals, which don’t require great changes to the industry’s current video-delivery infrastructure. Under this method, the left- and right-eye images are provided either in a side-by-side format or are stacked top to bottom.
In the next phase, the experts said, service providers will deliver full-resolution 3DTV via two separate channels of information, making use of either a frame-compatible signal with an additional channel of information, or a single-image signal with an additional channel of 3D data. But both methods will require new video-delivery equipment and digital set-tops, making them a pricey proposition for cable operators.
"The end game is, of course, to deliver full resolution [3D]," said David Broberg, vice-president of consumer video technology at CableLabs. He estimated that cable digital set-top boxes equipped with the extra processing power to handle 1080i HD resolution in 3D mode are probably still another two years away.
Kevin Murray, a systems architect with NDS Group, said such other enhancements as the ability to deliver on-screen graphics (including closed captions) in 3D and direct the TV set to switch between 2D and 3D modes may not be technically necessary. But he argued that they would significantly improve the consumer’s viewing experience. “You don’t need to do anything to an HD set-top to get 3D video on a 3D display,” he said. “But the experience you get isn’t as seamless, isn’t as clean."
Murray also said trick modes, such as fast forward, can be problematic in 3D and need to be considered separately. He noted that it can be “very disconcerting” to watch a 3D video of somebody throwing a baseball at you in fast-forward mode.
Walt Husak, director of image technologies for Dolby Laboratories, pointed out that it’s not clear how popular 3D content will prove to be. In addition, he said, it’s not clear whether programmers will pay the higher production costs to deliver 3D content in the near term. "How many hours will people spend viewing 3DTV, five to six hours per day?" he said. "Or will it be a couple hours per week? We’ll have to wait and see."
Moreover, it appears that glasses-free 3D-TV displays, the Holy Grail for most TV set manufacturers, retailers, and suppliers, are still many years away.
Mark Schubin, an independent TV technology consultant and a Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers fellow, described a demo by Japan’s NHK showing an "absolutely great" 3D parallax-barrier display, which requires no glasses. But, even with an 8K camera (an ultra-HD camera), he said, "the quality was less than YouTube" because the technology shows images from multiple viewpoints. To produce a high-quality video, he estimated that a parallax-barrier display would need 100 times the information currently transmitted for 3DTV.
Broberg said glasses-free 3D displays in hand-held devices may hold more promise for single viewers. "It’s not something you can share but it can provide a fairly good, high-quality personal 3D view," he said.
Despite these problems, some industry experts still have high hopes for the format. Panel moderator Tony Werner, executive vice president and CTO of Comcast, noted that Comcast carried the first U.S. national 3D broadcast of The Masters last month. “I thought it was going to be a little ho-hum," he said. But, at the viewing events that Comcast held, "we were almost having to rip the glasses away from people."
Alan Breznick is a Toronto-based senior analyst at Heavy Reading, part of the Light Reading Communications Network. He also helped cover the 2010 Cable Show for Cartt.ca.
