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3D: Coming to a screen near you

Posted on 15 May 2009 at 16:04

In fact, it was Cameron who co-developed the complex camera system for his 2003 Ghosts of the Abyss documentary, and this technology is now licensed out to film a good chunk of the 3D content being produced today. The Pace/Cameron Fusion 3D comprises a pair of digital HD cameras customised to fit closely together to mimic the positioning of the human eyes. As the subject moves towards or away from the camera, the two lenses automatically angle themselves closer together or further apart, just as our eyes do, so when the two captured images are overlaid on the screen our eyes needn't compensate for errors in convergence.

The current generation of 2K DLP projectors, such as those being fitted by Odeon, can display high-definition 3D at the cinema standard 24fps, and on the whole the result is a vastly more relaxing experience than the old anaglyphic method. However, anyone who sat through Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D will agree with Cameron when he insists 3D used purely as a gimmick won't ultimately drive adoption.

"First and foremost the film must be a good movie," he told Variety. "The 3D should always be thought of as a turbocharger, an enhancer, to a work whose raison d'être is vested in its story, its characters, its style."

The 3D living room

By the time Cameron's vision of a Hollywood working in 3D comes to fruition, the cinema chains could find themselves under more pressure than ever before. Currently, 3D is viewed as safe from the curse of piracy, and has the novelty of its unique big-screen experience to attract consumers. But 3D technology won't take long to follow the swathes of HDTVs and Blu-ray players taking over living rooms in 2009.

In fact, it's already here. At January's CES show Samsung, Sony, LG and Panasonic all showed off their latest 3D televisions. Some used polarised glasses to produce the effect, others the active-shutter technology favoured by Nvidia, and they drew some of the largest crowds at the event. Early prices are in the thousands, which mirrors the entrance of HDTVs; we've already seen how quickly prices fall once content becomes widespread.

The greater difficulty lies in getting 3D content to the TV screen. Panasonic has demonstrated Full-HD 3D video running off standard Blu-ray discs, and all parties are in agreement that consumers won't shell out for a new format so soon after the last, unnecessary HD war. One halfway-house solution already tested is 3D sports nights at cinemas: in January, the US TV channel Fox Sports broadcast a 3D American football game to 80 cinemas across the country, and the feedback from fans was overwhelmingly positive. "The live broadcast to... movie theatres across the nation is the latest example of how we can deliver our programming to audiences in new and exciting ways," said Jerry Steinberg, senior vice president of field operations and engineering for Fox Sports. "3D technology holds unlimited potential for the future of both sports broadcasting and live event production."

But Sky has more ambitious plans for Britain. In December, it demonstrated its high-definition 3D content on a polarised Hyundai 3D TV, played back from the hard disk of an unmodified Sky+HD box. At the close of 2008 there were 779,000 of these in UK homes, and given that 188,000 of those were sold in the final quarter alone, that number will now almost certainly top a million.

Predictably, Sky is already calling its Sky+HD infrastructure "3D ready", but no firm timescale for a launch yet exists. "For now it's a learning curve," explained Brian Lenz, BSkyB's head of product design and innovation, adding that Sky has since experimented by filming channels as diverse as Sky News and Sky Arts in 3D. "We've already discovered, for example, that filming sport in 3D requires fewer cameras. With 2D you'd have to cut quickly to give a sense of depth, but with 3D the depth is already there, and every cut just means the eyes have to work to reprocess what they're seeing. Instead, we use much longer shots and let the eye pick out different things."