I took an hour or so away from the excellent Connected TV Summit last week to stop by at the Screen Media Expo at London's Earls Court. While it’s not a consumer event I was interested to see what was claimed to be the latest in autostereo 3D from a Hungarian technology developer, iPont. iPont has recently established its UK office in Oxford, and is going to be in the news this weekend as it is supplying the technology behind the first public broadcast of an autostereo 3D football match.

Sky will be transmitting the European Champions League final in 3D, and most home- and pub-based viewers will need to wear 3D glasses. Sky’s 3D productions and broadcasts are tailored specifically to the needs of glasses-based technologies, but iPont’s technology converts the standard live Sky 3D broadcast for viewing on autostereo displays, and this will be demonstrated to an invited audience at the Walkabout pub in Covent Garden, London on Saturday evening.

iPont gave several demonstrations at Screen Media Expo, including 3D Blu-ray and football matches, though none of the latter were broadcast live. They were using autostereo displays from Tridelity and Alioscopy. As with all 3D content, the production quality of the material varied, but in general the 3D effect was impressive, at least relative to most other autostereo demonstrations I have seen. iPont claims that its current technology supports nine viewing angles, but I did not notice as strong a deterioration in viewing experience between viewing points as with some other technologies, such as Toshiba’s autostereo TVs.

iPont’s “secret sauce” is a box of software tricks which converts stereo 3D, on the fly, to multi-angle autostereo 3D. Autostereo displays rely on the availability of multiple angles in the video content which generate multiple viewing angles from the display. The (extremely) expensive way to do this is to set up multiple camera positions during content production, but this is always likely to prove cost-prohibitive. iPont’s current technology works at the consumer or viewer end, and could be included in 3DTVs themselves (iPont is in discussion with leading TV manufacturers).

Perhaps more significantly for the longer term is the prospect of including this type of conversion software into the production and transmission chain. Rather than having the set-top box or TV doing the work, the conversion would be encoded into the broadcast stream. Major US and European broadcasters are known to be interested in this approach. As the technology moves towards commercialisation it is certain that standards bodies and regulators may start to pay close attention as well.

David Mercer

Client Reading: 3D in Europe: Challenges and Opportunities

At the recent Blu-ray Academy and Mediatech conference in Hamburg, Germany I presented Strategy Analytics’ vision for the future of 3D in the home, focusing on the European market opportunity. We are clear that 3D in the home is going to happen, and more rapidly than some observers seem to think.

(I was surprised recently at the response to our recent 3D forecasts by the normally reliable CEA, whose Chief Economist Shawn DuBravac described them as “the worst forecast yet”. I worry for the CEA’s own forecasts if this overreaction reflects the quality of their analysis. Since we published our 3D analysis, several other analyst firms have come out with similar pictures, and the industry itself also seems to be in broad agreement. Time for the CEA to clarify why it’s out of line, perhaps.)

In spite of the CEA’s scepticism, we estimate that some 15% of European homes already own a digital TV set-top box which is 3D-capable, and nearly as many own a 3D-ready games console. The number of homes with 3D-ready TVs is very low, of course, but now growing quickly as 3D becomes a more common feature on plasma and LCD TVs. By 2014 more than 40% of European homes will have a 3D-ready TV, and nearly a quarter will own a 3D Blu-ray disc player.

In spite of these projections there is still a lot of work to be done to dispel some of the uncertainty surrounding 3D. Our European surveys (carried out in Q3 2010) indicated low levels of understanding of 3D issues. Only just over a half of Europeans correctly believed that 3D TVs were available to purchase: the remainder were uncertain or believed wrongly that it is not possible to buy a 3D TV. Likewise, barely half of Europeans know that you need glasses to watch a 3DTV at home. The greatest lack of knowledge surrounds the health impact of 3D TV: only 32% of Europeans believe that watching 3D TV does not cause damage to the eyes: half are unsure and 17% believe it does cause damage.

These are big communications challenges for all industry players to overcome. Nevertheless there is evidence of strong interest in 3D TV, with two thirds of Europeans interested in watching 3D movies and nearly a half interested in 3D versions of TV shows. As the base of installed 3D-ready hardware grows, the opportunity now lies with television content producers to make the most of this opportunity. If that content doesn’t materialise people may never see a need to put on the goggles.

David Mercer

Client Reading: 3D in Europe: Challenges and Opportunities