3DTV is of interest because it impacts cinema 3D, so it's always prudent to have a look-see at what's going in the the TV broadcast world.
Reported last week by Deborah McAdams, our friend at TVTechnology, at this year's Hollywood Post Alliance's (HPA)Tech Retreat (the broadcast industry's annual tech lovefest) there was a whole lot of discussion about a whole lot of things but there was (conspicuously) not one mention, let alone discussion, on 3DTV !
What is the HPA? Glad you asked. With its very benign moniker the HPA is composed of the elite in media. Each year the HPA holds a (by invitation only) pow-wow called the Tech Retreat, which provides a forum where all manner of issues impacting the media industries (film, TV, radio, print etc.) are discussed and information shared.
At this year's Retreat, when queried about 3DTV, Jim DeFilippis, Fox's head tech honcho, summed it up, stating, "We don't have enough bandwidth". And that is the crux of the 3DTV issue. In short, today's 3DTVs use a frame-compatible format - meaning that dual images are displayed side-by-side and viewed through active shutter glasses. If broadcasters were to transmit content in frame-compatible 3D, everyone with a non-3DTV would see dual on-screen images. So, to accommodate, the 2D and 3D video feeds are squeezed and transmitted together, but the result is a substancial loss of quality in both the 2D and 3D images.
The other way to transmit 3DTV (which is more bandwidth efficient) is to utilize what is termed, service-compatible formatting. This format supports 3D through the addition of data to the 2D signal - termed "2D Plus Delta". With 2D+Delta, every viewer gets the left eye view. The right eye view gets electronically subtracted from the left eye view to create a different signal or delta, which is encoded and transmitted.
Europe currently uses the 2D+Delta format; however, U.S. broadcasters are stimied as the National Broadcast Plan (the recently approved master plan for use of the broadcast spectrum) calls for freeing up 40% of the TV spectrum for wireless broadband - which places 3DTV transmission, for most broadcasters, on the back burner.
What a shame. So, for the foreseeable future, 3D will only be available at cinemas. I hope the U.S. cinema industry takes full advantage of this unexpected opportunity for however long it lasts.
Best and Happy Movie Going
Jim Lavorato
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