3D Television Without 3D glasses!!!!!

   Here I’m gonna talk about 3D television, till now we were watching 3D movie with the technical aids, 3D glasses. Fraunhofer research scientists are working on this new technology which makes us possible to watch TV in 3D without technical aids such as 3D glasses. The new four-camera system will even be able to handle live transmissions.

   Frederik Zilly from the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) in Berlin said that the breakthrough for 3D television will only come, it doesn’t require glasses, wearing glasses makes us uncomfortable and tiresome.

   Zilly who is working with 12 partners in the MUSCADE project explained that this development is based on our STAN assistance system which has already proved its value in conventional stereo productions. But with four cameras calibrations is much more complicated.

   They are currently working on an efficient video encoding system for compressing the huge volume of data that arises when four cameras are used so that the content can be transmitted on the existing broadcasting infrastructure. This is a first prototype of the new system which was presented on the Fraunhofer booth at the IBC trade show. 

   Autostereoscopic displays are needed for this new technology. These are coated with special optical foils. They create two different image each-for both eyes-the basic principle for three-dimensional vision. To allow different viewing positions, when the viewer moves his head, these displays use five to ten different views of an image. 

 

   As conventional stereo productions only have two views, the captured images have to be converted before transmission. In order to reliably determine depth information, more than the usual two cameras are used.

The MUSCADE project partners use four cameras, but this makes the already complex stereo production extremely intricate and expensive.  It takes days to calibrate four cameras to each other.

   We can’t say when this project is going to complete. Let’s wait for it, it really changes day-to-day life with its 3D version.