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Digital TV Europe

April 2010

Technology focus > 3DTV

Sky delivered the world’s first live 3D broadcast of a sport event in January.

appetite for 3D immensely. Avatar has had the biggest impact on film goers, taking over US$2.5bn (€1.8bn) at the box office to-date, and highlighting consumer willingness to pay a premium to see the latest 3D technolo- gy in action. More recently, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland took record opening tak- ings for a 3D movie in North America with US$116.3m in its first weekend. But will the appetite translate to the small screen? UK pay-TV operator BSkyB certainly thinks so.

Sky 3D

cinema. If you exclude the limited forays into anaglyphic technology, that is. You may know this better as the service that requires you to sport retro cardboard glasses with blue and red lenses to view a generally underwhelm- ing 3D picture. Stereographic 3D technology, however, is the current darling of Hollywood and has boosted consumer awareness of and

3D video has, until recently,

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been confined to the

Having broadcast the world’s first live 3D sports event earlier this year (see sidebar), it will become the first broadcaster to deliver a dedicated 3D channel later this year. Sky 3D will launch on a free basis to Sky’s top tier customers who also subscribe to its HD channel pack, meaning that it can reward premium customers or provide an entice- ment to others to upgrade, says Brian Lenz, Sky’s director of product design and TV prod- uct development. As the channel develops and scales over time, Sky will “keep its options open about other potential revenue streams.” As for content, Lenz admits that the initial lack of programming means the operator will focus on “quality over quantity” but it still plans to deliver live sports, movies and “at least one other appointment to view programme from entertainment, arts, docu- mentaries and the like.” And looking for- ward, “as 3D starts to gain momentum inter- nationally, and as other UK broadcasters hopefully come on board, we expect the chan- nel to scale over time,” he says. Whilst Sky was the first broadcaster to announce a 3D channel launch, others have followed – amongst them Canal Plus has plans to launch a service by the end of the year, Sky Deutschland recently broadcast a Bundesliga football match in 3D, and ESPN, Discovery and DirecTV in the US also have plans to launch services this year.

Technology choices

One of the most significant aspects of Sky’s announcement was that existing Sky Plus

HD set-tops could, and would, be used to deliver 3D. Customers will still have to fork out for a 3D TV set but the decision means Sky will be able to lay claim to launching the world’s first commercial 3D channel. “Sky is launching a 3D service now as we’re seeing the coming together of a number of different threads which makes it possible from a con- tent, technical and commercial perspective,” says Lenz. “From the technical perspective, we’ve seen the emergence of affordable, high- quality 3DTVs for image playback, along with specialist 3D camera rigs for image capture. And thanks to our ability to utilise our HD broadcast infrastructure, right up to and including our current generation Sky Plus HD box, the barriers to introduction have sig- nificantly reduced.”

While Sky and others will be seen as pio- neers of 3D TV, the road to mass-market delivery will be long, not least because stan- dards seem to be a way off being finalised and technology choices remain unclear. One of the most forward looking organisations, the ITU, recently outlined a roadmap for the future implementation of 3D TV. Study Group 6 of the ITU’s Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) proposes three successive generations or profiles for the development of stereoscopic 3D. The first, dubbed “plano- stereoscopic TV”, calls for two views to be delivered to TVs, with viewers wearing glass- es akin to those used to watch 3D cinema at the moment. Viewers will be able to see depth in the picture, although the view will remain the same when they move their heads, unlike in real life.

The second generation (“multiview pro-

file”), says the ITU, will provide for multiple views, meaning that head movement will change the view in a way that more closely mimics real life. Finally, the third generation (“object wave profile”) will feature systems that record the amplitude, frequency, and phase of light waves, to reproduce almost completely human beings’ natural viewing environment, according to the ITU. The report envisages that these kinds of advanced systems are some 15-20 years away. For now, broadcasters seriously consider- ing 3D are firmly focusing their attentions on stereoscopic technologies. Yet even within this technology choice there are a number of sub-technologies being explored. “The situa- tion has been diverse for some years in the sense that there are quite a lot of organisa- Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56
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