Report no.

-01 A report on

3D technology and applications in television

table of contents

PAGE NO. Acknowledgements Preface 1.Introduction 2. Technical Aspects of 3D television 2.1 Content Generation 2.1.1 Stereoscopic Dual Camera Approach 2.1.2 Depth Cameras 2.1.3 2D to 3D Video Conversion Approach 2.1.4 Multiview Video camera Approach 2.2 Coding And Transmission 2.2.1 General Methods 2.2.2 Depth Based Coding 2.2.3 Multiview Video Coding 2.2.4 Multiview Video plus Depth Coding 2.3 Display 2.3.1 Binocular With Glasses 2.3.1.1 Anaglyph 2.3.1.2 Polarisation Tech. 2.3.1.3 Alternate Frame Sequencing 2.3.1.4 Spectrum Filtered-Dolby 3D 2.3.2 Auto-stereoscopic Displays 2.3.2.1 Parallax Barrier 2.3.2.2 Lenticular Systems 3.Global Reception 4.Health Effects And Criticism 1 2 3 3 5 7 8 9 10 11 11 11 11 12 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 20 24

List of Illustrations

FIGURES . 1.FIGURE 1 2.FIGURE 2 3.FIGURE 3 4.FIGURE 4 5.FIGURE 5 6.FIGURE 6 7.FIGURE 7 8.FIGURE 8 9.FIGURE 9 10.FIGURE 10

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TABLE 1

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Abstract
This report deals with the general aspects of the working of a 3D television.it includes the making of 3D,its conversion from 2D,the popularity in the present world and the criticism it has faced.it also explores the various scopes for development of 3D and its presumed dominance in film-making and mass media.

Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or published in any form or by any means,or stored in a database or retrieval system without prior permission in writing of the publisher

1. INTRODUCTION:

Television is one of the most popular distance-communication media that basically captures, transmits and displays moving images with or without an associated sound. In the very early stages of its development, television employed a combination of optical, mechanical and electronic technologies to capture, transmit and display a visual image. But, by the late 1920s, those employing only optical and electronic technologies were being explored and that was the primitive model for all the modern television systems. The inability of transmitting direct light signals over large distances, and the then recently developed telephone paved the way for the development of the method of scanning. And the television was also called telephonoscope. This idea of scanning, on further research led to the concept of rasterisation, which is presently the key part of capturing a visual image and its subsequent transmission. But, in initial days, only stationary images could be processed in this way until the Nipkow disk demonstration of John Logie Baird in 1926 marked the beginning of display of moving images on television. From then, the television has undergone many evolutionary changes, in rather a short period of time. Taking into account only the technical details of the development of television, the major milestones involved are SDTV(Standard Definition Television),EDTV( Enhanced Definition Television),and very recently, the HDTV(High Definition Television). The latest in the hierarchy is

the 3D TV(Three dimensional Television) which is the topic being discussed in this report. A 3DTV is a combination of the features of a 3D motion picture and a HDTV. Though the pioneers of television and 3D motion picture have been doing their research in these fields for approximately the same period of time, it is only in the early 21st century that a 3DTV could actually be developed. In this report we present the basic characteristics of a 3D film and how it was adopted in the research of television to make a 3DTV. The discussion includes the details of various technical details only of 3d film, and their association with the general concepts of television.

2. TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF 3D TELEVISION :

A 3-D television system works with the combination of features of a 3-D motion picture and general television broadcasting. Broadly, a television broadcasting process consists of three major stages, content generation, coding and transmission and display. In the case of a 3-D television, the content generation and display aspects are very much influenced by the concepts of 3-D motion picture while the transmission aspect is essentially very much similar to that of general HD television.

2.1.CONTENT GENERATION:

Currently there does not exist any industry-wide accepted mastering standard regarding the format of 3D content. The industry fragmentation and lack of standardization in this particular aspect of production has hold back the development of 3D technologies. Standardization is one of the key components needed for the successful development and employment of 3D. In general, there are four types of 3D content generation as shown in Figure 1.1: i) the stereoscopic dual-camera approach, which results in two separate views (left and right), ii) the 3D depth-range camera approach, which generates a 2D image plus a depth map, iii) the 2D-to-3D video conversion approach, which converts existing 2D video material into stereoscopic 3D by estimating a depth map from the 2D video sequence and subsequently rendering the left and right sequences, and iv) the multi view video camera approach. The following subsections present an overview of the different schemes for 3D content generation.

2.1.1. STEREOSCOPIC DUAL CAMERA APPROACH: In stereoscopic videos, the function of the retinas in the visual system is mimicked by the lenses of two identical synchronized cameras, which record the left-eye and the right-eye views from two slightly different perspectives (see Figure 1.3). Then, when the viewer watches stereo videos, the recorded right and left view images are projected on the viewers eyes and the brain reconstructs the third dimension by combining the received visual information.

The configuration of the cameras can be parallel (with axial offset of the imaging sensor) or toed-in (where the cameras are angled in). However, to eliminate keystone distortion and depth plane curvature, the parallel camera configuration is preferred.

Figure 1- A stereoscopic camera setup

The production of stereoscopic dual-camera video is highly demanding. Two cameras should be configured so that the contrast, brightness, colour, and sharpness of captured images are the same or within a very tight tolerance to prevent eyestrain and headache for the viewer. In addition, the cameras need to be properly calibrated so that the disparity introduced to the viewer is similar to the one he/she receives from the actual scene. This consensus should be satisfied even when visual effects such as zoom-in or zoom-out occur. This is very challenging in the case of 3D. For example, an increased zoom-in may break the 3D effect in the sense that viewers become unable to fuse the right and left view images.

2.1.2. DEPTH CAMERAS: The operation of the camera is based on generating a light wall moving along the field of view, see Figure 2. As the light wall hits the objects, it is reflected towards the camera carrying an imprint of objects. The imprint contains all the information required for the construction of the depth map. The 3D information can now be extracted from the reflected deformed wall by deploying a fast image shutter in front of the CCD chip and blocking the incoming light as shown in Figure 2c. This type of camera belongs to a broader group of sensors known as scanner-less LIDAR (laser radar without mechanical scanner). The collected light at each of the pixels is related to depth, but also to the reflectivity of objects. Hence, a normalization step is performed per pixel by simply dividing the front portion pixel intensity by the corresponding portion of the total intensity.

Figure 2- Operation of a depth camera The technological challenge of the depth camera is twofold: Fast switching of the illumination source to form the light wall, and fast gating of the reflected

image entering the camera. In the current depth camera, a cluster of IR laser diodes and corresponding optics is used to generate homogeneous illumination. The diodes are switched on and off with rise/fall times shorter than 1 nanosecond. None of the existing fast drivers and switchers was suitable for our extreme application. Hence, super fast driver electronics had to be designed to comply with the fast response, small space and low cost, and yet maintain high efficiency. The detection of the reflected pulse has to be synchronous with the switched illuminator. For this, a special fast driver has been designed that has rise/fall times shorter than 1 nanosecond. The current camera uses a fast optical switch on the basis of a so-called gated intensifier. This device is pixelized and contributes a small amount of noise, which limit the depth resolution and accuracy respectively.

Figure 3- 3D depth range camera

2.1.3. 2D TO 3D VIDEO CONVERSION APPROACH: It is widely accepted that the success of the 3D technology and its market penetration will directly depend on the availability of 3D content. It is probably not realistic (in the introduction phase of 3D TV) to assume that the need for 3D content can be satisfied only with new-recorded materials. One alternative solution is the conversion of existing 2D popular movies and documentaries into 3D format to be watched on 3D screens. Successful implementation of such an approach will also create a new market opportunity for content owners and providers to resell their existing products. It is because of these reasons that 2D to 3D conversion has recently received a lot of attention by the research and industry communities. Converting 2D content to 3D video streams is possible if the depth information is estimated from the original 2D video sequence. Having the depth information along with the 2D video, 3D video content can be created. Conversion of existing 2D video materials to 3D is a very challenging task. Depth map estimation techniques try to use monocular depth cues and imitate the human visual system when estimating the distance between objects. The difficulty of this task is the absence of the binocular parallax information, which is the most dominant cue for depth description. Depth map estimation techniques generally fall into one of the following categories: manual, semi automatic and automatic. For the manual methods, an operator would manually draw the outlines of objects that are associated with an artistically chosen depth

value. As expected, these methods are extremely time consuming and expensive. For this reason, semi-automatic and automatic techniques are preferred for depth map estimation.

2.1.4. MULTIVIEW VIDEO CAMERA APPROACH: The multiview video camera approach involves capturing the scene from multiple viewpoints with a setup of N synchronized cameras. The configuration concerns of this approach are similar to those of the stereoscopic dual-camera approach, with the exception that there are N synchronized cameras rather than two. In this case, several people can watch 3D videos from slightly different viewing angles. Ultimately, we would like to offer the viewer the opportunity to choose his/her preferred viewing angle (free viewpoint TV). To achieve this, we need to have a high camera density (large N) and the ability to accurately interpolate any possible view in-between using certain camera parameters. In general, the quality of the intermediate views increases as the number of available cameras increases. This is because more original image information becomes available as the number of cameras increases. On the other hand, the use of more cameras increases the capturing and processing expenses but improve the quality of the interpolated views (an obvious trade-off between cost and quality).

2.2. CODING AND TRANSMISSION:

Coding and transmission plays a key role by acting as a bridge between the generation and display aspects of a 3D television system. Efficient coding and the subsequent transmission become indispensable for the success of the 3D television system. Without proper transmission, the original image or video may be damaged when it reaches the display phase. Despite the presence of similarities between the general coding and the coding in the case of 3D television, the case of the latter involves many complicated features, as it involves high range electronics. So, in this section we just mention the techniques of 3D coding under three categories, after briefly outlining the general methods of transmission. 2.2.1. GENERAL METHODS: The basic requirement of a separate coding mechanism for transmission is the inability of the intended light and sound signals to travel from the place of generation to the place of utilization. Naturally, the generation stations are situated at large distances to the places of broad cast and thus this aspect of the problem of transmission is unavoidable. Therefore it becomes important for the employment of proper techniques for the purpose of making the light and sound signals without much attenuation. Television signals can be sent over the air, through an antenna or satellite dish, or through a network of cables, as with cable television. In the case of antenna for example, signals are sent from a radio broadcast tower. In a cable

transmission, signals are transmitted as electrical pulses and they travel much further distances than radio waves. Modulation is a very important term concerning transmission. It is the phenomenon of mixing the intended signal with a high frequency signal (in general) and transmitting it so that it does not get attenuated over very long distances. The wave on which the signal to be transmitted is superimposed is called the carrier wave. There are several ways of modulation. Amplitude modulation, for example, is the method in which the amplitude of the carrier wave is varied in accordance with the modulating signal. In the case of 3D coding and transmission, the signals to be transmitted are not mere light, additional factors like the depth coordinate associated with every point in the image also need to be encoded and accordingly transmitted. There are three ways with which this is done. 2.2.2. DEPTH BASED CODING: The depth-based coding targets 3D content in the form of 2D video plus depth recorded by depth-range cameras or generated by 2D to 3D video conversion techniques. 2.2.3. MULTIVIEW VIDEO CODING: The multiview video coding targets stereoscopic 3D (two views) and multiview video content.

2.2.4. MULTIVIEW VIDEO PLUS DEPTH CODING: Multiview video plus depth coding focuses on compression of multiview videos and the corresponding depth maps.

2.3. DISPLAY:
All of the present day 3D display technologies exploit the physiological aspect of our visual system by creating the illusion of depth by presenting a different image to each eye. While some of these methodologies employ the usage of separate lenses to get the 3-D perception, some others do not do so. Based on this there are mainly two major types of display for the purpose of 3-D viewing. 2.3.1. BINOCULAR WITH GLASSES: 2.3.1.1. ANAGLYPH: Anaglyph images were the earliest method of presenting theatrical 3-D motion pictures. In an anaglyph, the two images are superimposed in an additive light setting through two filters, one red and one cyan. In a subtractive light setting, the two images are printed in the same complementary colours on white paper. Glasses with coloured filters in each eye separate the appropriate images by cancelling the filter colour out and rendering the complementary colour black. Anaglyph images are used to provide a stereoscopic 3D effect, when viewed with glasses where the two lenses are different (usually chromatically opposite)

colours, such as red and cyan. Images are made up of two colour layers, superimposed, but offset with respect to each other to produce a depth effect. Usually the main subject is in the centre, while the foreground and background are shifted laterally in opposite directions. The picture contains two differently filtered coloured images, one for each eye. When viewed through the "colour coded" "anaglyph glasses", they reveal an integrated stereoscopic image. The visual cortex of the brain fuses this into perception of a three dimensional scene or composition.

Figure 4- Anaglyph glasses 2.3.1.2. POLARIZATION TECHNIQUE:

Figure 5- An anaglyph picture

Polarization-based displays separate left and right eye images by means of polarized light. Left and right output channels (monitors or projectors) are covered by orthogonally oriented filters, using either linear or circular polarization. The polarized stereo images are projected and superimposed onto

the same screen. The observer needs to wear polarized glasses to separate the different views again. When watching with glasses, since each lens passes only the light that is polarized in its polarizing direction and blocks the light polarized in the opposite direction, each eye sees its matching image and the observer perceives depth effect. Linear polarized glasses use vertical polarization on one lens and horizontal polarization on the other (see Figure 6). The 3D effect is perceived as long as the users head is kept straight. Tilting the head will break the 3D effect and some amount of ghosting or crosstalk may occur. Circularly polarized lenses are polarized clockwise for one eye and counterclockwise for the other (see Figure 6). This method of polarization will maintain the 3D effect if the head is tilted. The polarized-based display system offers good quality stereoscopic imagery, with full color rendition at full resolution, and very little crosstalk in the stereo pairs. It is the system most commonly used in stereoscopic cinemas today. The most significant drawback of this kind of system is the loss of light output due to the use of polarizing filters (which is more evident in circular polarization).

Figure 6- Linear and circular polarizations

2.3.1.3. ALTERNATE FRAME SEQUENCING: This is the current method of choice for most 3D television companies. In this method, the media is displayed at a high frame rate, and the glasses rapidly switch between black and clear using a pair of low-latency transparent LCD screens. These are called active shutters. In this way, one eye sees nothing (for as little as a hundredth of a second or so) while the other sees its correct image, and a few microseconds later, the situation is reversed: the opposite eyes image is displayed and the LCDs have switched. The benefit is that each eye is getting the full image in its particular turn. Generally, the active shutters are made up of liquid crystal and they act in conjunction with a display screen to create the illusion of a three dimensional image. Each eye's glass contains a liquid crystal layer which has the property of becoming dark when voltage is applied, being otherwise transparent. The glasses are controlled by an infrared, radio frequency, DLP-link or a blue tooth transmitter that sends a timing signal that allows the glasses to alternately darken over one eye, and then the other, in synchronization with the refresh rate of the screen. Also, LC shutter glasses mostly eliminate "ghosting" which is a problem with other 3D display technologies such as linearly polarized glasses. Moreover, unlike red/cyan colour filter (anaglyph) 3D glasses, LC shutter glasses are colour neutral enabling 3D viewing in the full colour spectrum.

Figure 7- An LCD active shutter pair. 2.3.1.4. SPECTRUM FILTERED -DOLBY 3D: Dolby 3D uses Infitec technology which stands for interference filter technology. This system encodes left and right images by projecting each with a differently filtered spectrum of light. In this case the light is filtered differently for each view, but both the left and right spectrums appear as white light or near-white light (Figure 8). This differentiates Infitec from the anaglyph method which uses red filters for one eye and blue filters for the other. In Dolbys implementation, the light path in the projector is modified with a filter wheel to achieve spectral division of the stereoscopic images (see Figure 8). Prior to projection, some colour-balancing is applied to the image signal inside Dolbys digital cinema server. Complementary spectral division glasses are worn by audience members for decoding the images so that left eye images are seen only by the left eye, and right eye images are seen by only the right eye. To accomplish this, Dolbys

glasses employ some 50 layers of thin-film coatings to create the appropriate optical interference filters.

Figure 8- Dolby-3D

2.3.2. AUTO- STEREOSCOPIC DISPLAYS: Auto-stereoscopic displays apply optical principles such as diffraction, refraction, reflection and occlusion to direct the light from the different perspective views to the appropriate eye, allowing multiple users to watch 3D content at the same time without wearing specialized 3D glasses. This property makes them the best candidate for future consumer 3D TVs. One of the drawbacks of this system is that the resolution for each view drops as the number of views increases. The arrival of high resolution flat panel displays has made multi view applications more feasible. The other important drawback of these systems is the fact that only under a limited horizontal viewing angle the

picture will be perceived correctly. Historically, the two most dominant auto stereoscopic techniques are based on parallax barriers and lenticular arrays, and these techniques are still popular today. The following subsections elaborate on parallax barriers and lenticular lenses.

2.3.2.1. PARALLAX BARRIER: Parallax barrier displays are based on the principle of occlusion, where part of the image is hidden from one eye but visible to the other eye. As it can be observed in Figure 9, at the right viewing distance and angle, each eye can only see the appropriate view, as the other view is occluded by the barrier effect of the vertical slits. Different implementations of this principle are available, including parallax illumination displays (where the opaque barriers are placed behind the image screen) and moving slit displays (use time-sequential instead of stationary slits). The main advantage of these displays is their backward compatibility in a sense that they can be switched to a 2D display mode. It is imperative that 3D television technology should be compatible with conventional 2D television to ensure a gradual transition from one system to the other.

Figure 9- Parallax barrier display 2.3.2.2. LENTICULAR SYSTEMS: Lenticular systems are based on the principle of refraction. As it can be observed from Figure 10, instead of using a vertical grating as with parallax barrier displays, an array (or sheet) of vertically oriented cylindrical lenses is placed in front of columns of pixels, alternately representing parts of the left and right eye view. Through refraction, the light of each image point is emitted in a specific direction in the horizontal plane. In what is known as the sweet spot of a display, left and right images can be delivered to the correspondent eye to create a 3D effect. Older and less sophisticated systems required the viewer to sit at a specific distance and angle in order to properly view the image and avoid headaches and eyestrain. Current lenticular lens systems have corrected this by using a slanted lenticular sheet, allowing up to eight viewers to observe a 3D image with no ill effects.

Figure 10- Lenticular display

3. GLOBAL RECEPTION:
Television being one of the most successful mass media, the development of television was one of the most popular achievements in the technical and research history. In fact, it was highly desired at various times of history, that a new model of television may be developed. Accordingly, the monochromic (only black and white) televisions of the initial day were mutated into colour televisions, which were further transformed into High Definition Televisions and more recently, the 3D televisions. 3D viewing being the most natural experience of vision, it was always dreamt of being able to watch a daily programme with 3D effects on a television, instead of going to a 3D motion picture theatre for the purpose. Thus there was a large scale research in this particular field alone and tremendous developments have by far taken place. The reception of the public is, however a moderate one owing to the financial constraints associated with the present day 3D television. It is worthwhile to

notice that the 3D television is still in its rudimentary form and researches are being done to make it an economically feasible product, by trying to enhance various aspects, for instance, the display mechanism. The following table gives the information of 3D supporting television channels in various countries of the world.
Channel Country(s) Additional info.

HIGH TV 3D

Worldwide

Entertainment

WildEarth

Worldwide

Wildlife

n3D

United States

DirecTV only

Cinema 3D

United States

DirecTV only

3net

United States

DirecTV only

Sky 3D

United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland

Sky only

Foxtel 3D

Australia

Foxtel only

HD1

Belgium (and other European countries)

Free-to-air

Sky 3D

Germany and Austria

Sky Deutschland only

Anixe 3D

German-speaking countries

Free-to-air

3D-TV

Finland

Sport 5 3D

Israel

Sky 3D

Italy

Sky Italia only

MSG 3D

United States

Cablevision only

nShow 3D

Poland

ITI Group only

ESPN 3D

United States

Xfinity 3D

United States

Comcast only

Penthouse 3D

Europe

Canal+ 3D

France

Canal+ only

Canal+ 3D Espaa

Spain

Canal+ only

NEXT Man 3D

Poland

NEXT Lejdis 3D

Poland

NEXT Young 3D

Poland

Active 3D

India

Videocon d2h only

BS11

Japan

RedeTV!

Brazil

Viasat 3D

Sweden

Viasat only

Brava3D

Europe

Free-to-air

Telednya 3D

Turkey

Telednya only

Sky 3D

South Korea

SkyLife only

Sukachan 3D169

Japan

SKY PerfecTV! Only

TV Azteca 3D

Mexico

Free-to-air

Chinese 3D Test Channel

China

Made up by 6 different TV networks

Table 1 We can observe from the above table that the highest incidence of 3D supporting television channels is in USA and that there is a lot of recognition to these systems in the European countries. In countries such as India and China, there is only a single channel capable of 3D viewing. In addition it should also be noted that these channels can be watched only in the presence of the requisite hardware such as glasses, 3D compatible television system, etc.

4. HEALTH EFFECTS AND CRITICISM:

Most of the cues required to provide humans with relative depth information are already present in traditional 2D films. For example, closer objects occlude

further ones, distant objects are de-saturated and hazy relative to near ones, and the brain subconsciously "knows" the distance of many objects when the height is known (e.g. a human figure subtending only a small amount of the screen is more likely to be 2 m tall and far away than 10 cm tall and close). In fact, only two of these depth cues are not already present in 2D films: stereopsis (or parallax) and the focus of the eyeball (accommodation). 3D film-making addresses accurate presentation of stereopsis but not of accommodation, and therefore is insufficient in providing a complete 3D illusion. However, promising results from research aimed at overcoming this shortcoming were presented at the 2010 Stereoscopic Displays and Applications conference in San Jose, U.S. Motion sickness, in addition to other health concerns, are more easily induced by 3-D presentations. Film critic Roger Ebert has repeatedly criticized 3-D film as being "too dim" (due to the polarized-light technology using only half the light for each eye), sometimes distracting or even nausea-inducing, and argues that it is an expensive technology that adds nothing of value to the movie-going experience (since 2-D movies already provide a sufficient illusion of 3-D). Director Christopher Nolan has criticised the notion that traditional film does not allow depth perception, saying that 95% of our depth cues come from occlusion, resolution, colour and so forth.

CONCLUSIONS
1. This report is about the different aspects of video broadcasting in a 3D television. 2. We first outlined the general structure of a 3D video broadcast as three phases-content generation, coding and transmission and display. 3. We studied various methods involved in the 3D content generation, especially the direct 3D videography using depth cameras and the 2D to 3D conversion techniques. 4. The general information on transmission is provided and the methods in the case of 3D television were very briefly discussed. The fact that additional details like depth coordinate are to be taken into consideration and accordingly coded for and transmitted, is emphasized. 5. The methods of anaglyph, polarization, spectrum filtered glasses, active shutters, etc. are discussed in detail. Their importance in the display stage of 3D television is noticed. 6. The recognition this product has got by far, is noted. The underlying health effects and the general criticism are also observed.

Bibliography
The internet sources used are1.www.google.com 2.www.wikipedia.org 3. www.circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/id/86690/ubc_2010_fall_talebpourazad_mahsa.pdf 4.www.ehow.com 5.www.techcrunch.com

The book sources used are1.Game Physics,Morgan Kaufmann, Eberly, David H,Massachussets,2003

Index
A Amp modulation 10 Anaglyph 12 Active shutters 15 Accomodation 24 C Conversion approach 7 CCD approach 5 D Depth Camera 5 DLP Link 15 L Lenticular arrays 18 LIDAR 5 M Multiview video camera 8 Motion sickness 24 P Parallax barriers 18 Polarisation Tech 13 S Steropsis 24 Spectrum filtered 16 .

Depth map 8 Dolby 3D 16 Depth based coding G Ghosting 14 K Keystone distortion 4 11