SIDE-BY-SIDE FOREVER

Lately there has been a lot of interest in two formats for stereoscopic multiplexing:  The above-and-below, resurrected by Technicolor for theatrical projection using film, and the side-by-side for multiplexing left and right images for television.  Here’s some background from a personal perspective. 

OVER-AND-UNDER AND OUT

In the early 1980s, when I founded StereoGraphics Corporation, the first bit of revenue income we had came from a venture with Chris Condon of StereoVision International.  Chris was a pioneer in the projection of stereoscopic movies using a single 35mm projector.  He founded the company Century Precision Optics, which is now a part of Schneider; but he moved on from there, sold it, and created StereoVision International because he had a big hit with the ‘70s movie The Stewardesses.  The success of that film set him to work on perfecting a single film approach to stereoscopic projection and photographic techniques.  He settled on the above-and-below (also called over and under or over/under) format based on two two-perforation high subframes with the Scope 2.4:1 aspect ratio occupying the area of the academy aperture. 

The Truth about 3D TV, Part 7

Questions:

Can stereoscopic TV gain a foothold in the midst of a world-wide economic catastrophe?  

3DTV: Chris Ward Responds

The following is a response to my series of pieces on 3D TV (I hate to call them blogs.  It’s an ugly word.) Chris is a distinguished stereographer and entrepreneur and the founder of Lightspeed Design.  They produce industrial videos and the Depth Q stereoscopic projector.  I’ll comment on his remarks in a later posting. 

The Truth about 3D TV, Part 6

About multiplexing formats:  I don’t think anybody’s going to dominate in a business sense because there are going to be too many different kinds of format.  It isn’t going to be like Fraunhofer dominating JPEG or MPEG technology.  It’s going to be something different.  It will be interesting in that there won’t be one dominant format, because every delivery system will require its own format.  The SMPTE, in conjunction with the Entertainment Technology Center, has had a series of meetings that I think have now exhausted themselves, to essentially set up an agenda for an SMPTE working group to provide recommendations for the studios or content producers.  

The Truth about 3D TV, Part 5

The alternative liquid crystal display technique, using passive rather than active eyewear, is one championed by Arisawa.  They make a so-called “Xpol” material that is in fact a sheet of micro-retarder overlaid on an LC screen so that alternate lines of retardation line up with rows of pixels.  Because liquid crystal displays depend on polarization for image formation, the polarized light that emerges from the display is phase-shifted by the micro-retarder as noted in alternate lines.  It’s an interlace-type display, so we get alternate lines of left- and right-handed circularly polarized light that can be analyzed with circular polarizing glasses similar, or possibly identical, to those used in the stereoscopic cinema. 

The Truth about 3D TV, Part 4

If a stereoscopic television set has a low manufacturing delta – in other words, if it costs very little more to make a stereoscopic TV – that’s a best case.  People can buy stereo-ready TVs today, and as stereo signals come online they’ll be able to watch them.  But is that what is going to happen? 

The Truth about 3D TV, Part 3

Stereoscopic television must exist within the broadcast and other delivery systems infrastructures.  Stereoscopic TV developers can’t reinvent the wheel.  There are pipelines that transmit the signal to your home and they must remain in place without change.  They can be terrestrial, they can be disc-based, they can be from the Internet, they can be from cable, or whatever – even on means for getting a signal to a handheld device.  If the world is going to have stereoscopic television, and it’s going to be commercially successful, it’s going to have to fit within the bandwidth of those pipelines and it’s going to have to have similar characteristics to the 2-D (planar) signal, or all bets are off in terms of having a commercial product.

The Truth about 3D TV, Part 2

We ought to consider the stakeholders in this new universe of stereoscopic TV.  Stakeholders has become a cliché term, and in this case it’s meaningless if it doesn’t include the public.  I refuse to call us “consumers” – an utterly revolting and demeaning term that reduces human beings to a maw chomping on products turned out by the capitalist mill.

The Truth about 3D TV, Part 1

Stereoscopic television has been thrust to the forefront because of the success of the stereoscopic cinema.  It’s interesting to consider the technology and business factors that might add up to success for stereoscopic television.  But what exactly do I mean by “success”?  I mean broad acceptance by the public, so that many people are watching 3-D TV at home – let’s say a 50% penetration of people who watch television.