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Broadcast Engineering on 3-D
by Michael Grotticelli November 22nd, 2010
 ESPN continues to seek ways to produce live events in 3-D “with an absolute minimum of additional cost” over standard 2-D production. The production and broadcasting of live 3-D content at ESPN remains on shaky ground. Despite a new internal survey showing that ESPN’s fans prefer its 3-D programming over 2-D HD fare, the network has still not decided how or if to proceed beyond the 94 live events, which it will carry through mid-2011, it has committed to produce in 3-D.
Regardless, the network said it would continue to do research into new production techniques and viewer/advertiser metrics to develop a viable business model. Operating at the cutting edge of technology has always been important to ESPN’s image (and attraction) among viewers. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 3D set sales, holiday season, LG Electronics, Panasonic Corp., Samsung Electronics, Sony Corp.
Related Topics: Acquisition, Application, Broadcast, News |
by Michael Grotticelli November 22nd, 2010
 With consumers remaining reluctant to spend on 3-D TV sets, manufacturers are hoping for greater demand in corporate purchases. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, but the sale of 3-D TV sets in the United States has hit bottom as the holiday shopping season opens. There are several reasons for this, including a lack of content and consumers’ general aversion to the required (and expensive) active-shutter glasses.
The four largest TV set manufacturers are bracing for a dismal Christmas holiday selling period. Business is down as much as 25 percent this year for all of them, especially 3-D set sales.
Sony, Panasonic, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics have all made dire predictions for the season. With the U.S. unemployment rate high and consumers remaining reluctant to spend, manufacturers are hoping for greater demand in corporate purchases. It had been hoped that more expensive 3-D sets and brighter LED screen TV would keep prices from being cut, but U.S. consumers apparently aren’t biting. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 3D set sales, holiday season, LG Electronics, Panasonic Corp., Samsung Electronics, Sony Corp.
Related Topics: Application, Broadcast, Products |
by Michael Grotticelli November 22nd, 2010
 Figure 1. The 3-D image in Figure 2 shows how captioning can be disconcerting for the viewer, compared to the 2-D captioned image in Figure 1. As more content is being produced in 3-D, the need for captioning, now mandated by the U.S. government, has been brought to the forefront. While all of the vendors in this category are aware of the need to do it, very few customers have asked for it, which holds back development.
“We certainly have the capability to produce captions in 3-D space, but we’re not investing a lot in R&D until there is customer demand and a standard specification for how to do it,” said José M. Salgado, president and CEO of Los Angeles-based SoftNI, a veteran captioning and subtitling software provider. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 3D, CEA, closed captions, Computer Prompting & Captioning, FCC, industry standards, SoftNi, subtitles
Related Topics: Acquisition, Application, Broadcast, Infrastructure, News |
by Michael Grotticelli November 9th, 2010
 James Cameron said no one is willing to spend the two or three or four months on the post-production process necessary to do conversions right. The high-quality conversion of 2-D movies to 3-D is slow, painstaking, hands-on work that costs at least $15 million per film to do “reasonably well” and much more to do perfectly, said director James Cameron, who is in the middle of converting his “Titanic” feature film to 3-D.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, Cameron said the field of enhancing existing 2-D movies with 3-D elements is emerging, and that the handful of special effects companies that do such work “have been low-balling their bids … to get a foothold in the market.” Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 3D, conversion, Director, feature films, James Cameron, Post Production, signal processing
Related Topics: Application, Film, News, Post Production |
by Michael Grotticelli November 9th, 2010
 The new study was conducted by ESPN during more than 1000 testing sessions (about 200 lab hours). It appears that sports fans liked watching ESPN’s coverage of the World Cup tournament this summer in 3-D TV more than 2-D HDTV. The results of a new study conducted by the sports network encompassing more than 1000 testing sessions (approximately 2700 lab hours) found that subjects showed “a higher level of viewer enjoyment” and “a stronger sense of presence” with the 3-D telecasts. Quantifying that even further, ESPN said fans’ enjoyment increased from 65 percent to 70 percent in 3-D, while “presence” went from 42 percent to 69 percent. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 3D, Disney Media and Ad Lab, ESPN, Internet-Connected TV, market study, viewing habits, Web, World Cup
Related Topics: Application, Broadcast, News |
by Michael Grotticelli November 8th, 2010
 While most marketing efforts have focused on 3-D TV, Internet TV has progressed quietly but steadily. Nearly a year ago, at the CES trade show in Las Vegas, the “next big thing” was said to be 3-D TV. Now, new research shows that another technology has usurped 3-D’s thunder in “a quiet revolution” that is stealing sales from the nascent technology.
More than 40 million Internet-connected TV sets will be shipped worldwide in 2010, with the number growing to 118 million by 2014, according to market research firm DisplaySearch. 3-D TV sales, on the other hand, will equal only 3.2 million sets sold worldwide this year. That means 3-D TV sales will end the year with only 2 percent of all flat-panel TV shipments. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 3D, CES Show, DisplaySearch, Internet-Connected TV, market study, Web
Related Topics: Application, Broadcast, Products |
by Michael Grotticelli November 8th, 2010
 All of Miranda’s Kaleido multiviewers can now provide stereoscopic 3-D monitoring, while the company’s Densité 3DX-3901 signal-processing card performs all of the necessary conversion to go from full stereoscopic to frame compatible, as well as providing camera alignment adjustments. In this time of broadcaster uncertainty, manufacturers of 3-D production and distribution equipment have been challenged to figure out how to sell their next-generation products to a customer base that doesn’t necessarily want it. At least not right now.
What many manufacturers, such as Miranda Technologies in Montreal, have done is tailor their message to those most interested in launching new 3-D channels by next year. Theoretically, the rest will follow at some point. It’s enough to cause headaches among sales personnel far worse than what some 3-D content elicits.
The first goal of manufacturers is to educate the market about what needs to be done to existing infrastructure to make 3-D broadcasting a reality. Whereas new production tools are required to create the content, legacy servers and automation systems can still be used to distribute it. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Michel Proulx, Miranda Technologies, OmniBus
Related Topics: Acquisition, Application, Broadcast, Film, Infrastructure, News, Products |
by Michael Grotticelli November 4th, 2010
 CBS Sports produced some of the U.S. Open tournament in 3-D, but won’t do much more unless the telecast is paid for by a sponsor. Apparently, finding one has been difficult. With slowing momentum due to a lack of a real revenue stream, some broadcast networks are shying away from producing 3-D telecasts.
While ESPN continues to announce new 3-D telecasts for its ESPN 3D channel (including the upcoming Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 1 and the BCS National Championship game on Jan. 10 sponsored by Sony), a representative of CBS Sports at a recent conference said the network wouldn’t do any more 3-D productions unless it has a sponsor to pay for it.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 3-D Production, CBS Sports, ESPN, Ken Aagaard, Pace, Sony
Related Topics: Acquisition, Application, Broadcast, News |
by Michael Grotticelli November 3rd, 2010
 NVIDIA’s 3DTV Play software overcomes incompatibility issues and allows gamers to play some 500 games in 3-D on their TVs. Heretofore a lot of consumers with 3-D TV sets are using them for computer games. Recognizing this, NVIDIA, a pioneer in computer graphics technology, has unveiled 3DTV Play software, which allows gamers with an NVIDIA-powered, 3-D-enabled computer to stream 3-D content to a 3-D TV set.
Currently, the format of 3-D on computers and TV sets is slightly different, making them incompatible. If a home viewer has a 3-D movie on a PC and tries to stream it to a 3-D TV, it won’t work. However, any compatible NVIDIA GeForce GPU-powered system running the 3DTV Play software can be connected to an HDMI 1.4 3-D HDTV, the company said, allowing users to view 3-D photos and videos on a larger 3-D TV screen. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 3-D technology, 3DTV Play, computer graphic, Nvidia, software
Related Topics: Application, News, Products |
by Michael Grotticelli October 26th, 2010
 STAN gives camera operators, stereographers and production staff the ability to figure out the correct stereo parameters and camera settings for any given scene. To support the increase in 3-D production for movies and TV, equipment vendors and research organizations are working to solve the mystery of stereographic video image capture.
The Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI), based in Berlin, has developed a hardware/software system called the Stereoscopic Analyzer (STAN) that helps camera operators in the field and directors on-set figure out the depth of subjects in a scene and how they relate to each other. This includes far and near objects as well as the convergence plane and the depth of focus. Getting these parameters right avoids jarring images that get in the way of a pleasing viewing experience. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 3-D, cameras, convergence, Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, KUK Film Production, production, STAN, Stereoscopic Analyzer, stereoscopic production
Related Topics: Acquisition, Broadcast, Film, Infrastructure, Products |
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Michael Grotticelli is writer and editor of Broadcast Engineering’s “Beyond the Headlines” and “Sports Technology Update” e-newsletters. Each week, he provides a fresh perspective on the latest in 3-D technologies and innovations as well as report on real-world applications of 3-D in the broadcast, professional video and film industries.
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