By Paul Gray – Director, European TV Research
I was at a Panasonic Europe press event recently, which included a 3D TV demonstration. The setup used a very large double frame rate display, which then was synchronized with LCD shutter glasses to offer discrete left and right images using interleaved views, which the brain subsequently re-assembles into depth perception.
I also recalled a recent discussion about 3D cinema, which is showing steady growth (some would argue an explosion, as seen in Figure 1) and how many digital cinema screens were being commissioned. Digital cinema has a lot to offer Hollywood-not least being the ability to adjust dynamically what is being screened at which cinema-so no longer should there be empty screens for an unpopular movie and not enough screens for a sold-out surprise hit. The cinema could add extra showings and re-configure its schedule at very little notice, without the constraints of creating extra celluloid prints.
Figure 1: 3D Movie Releases in Recent Years (2009 includes movies scheduled for release.)
Source: 3dmovieslist.blogspot.com
At the end of the demonstration I removed my glasses, just to experience how the superimposed views looked. At this point I remembered a conversation at our HD conference last year that most movie piracy was still by low-tech means, specifically by hand-held video recording at cinema showings.
The image was so unwatchable that I wondered if actually this was the underlying reason for 3D movies: a kind of Macrovision copy protection for cinemas. If this is one of the main motivations, then the 3D trend will accelerate sharply and 3D content can be expected to proliferate quickly.
