3D TV coming at last

As you look at a drama or TV show on your flat screen TV with all the characters and background flat, no image depth, imagine how lifelike the images could look using 3D TV. The technology is nearly all in place. Just as sound went from mono to stereo in the 1950’s, TV in glorious 3D would revolutionise movie and TV output.

What’s needed? Firstly the image capture requires a set of stereo lenses, like stereo microphones work for sound. So TV cameras would have two lenses fitted close together, like eyes. The timecoded digital data would be used by a computer in the monitor to separate image and depth.

On the TV monitor infinity would be set to what ever the depth of the 3D TV image is required. On a home set this could be, say, 20 cm. All depth information photographed by the lenses (computed by the difference in image between the two lenses) would be scaled to fit whatever the depth is.

Now the difficult bit, the TV monitor would need to use a next generation plasma screen where images can be displayed using not just 2D width and height, but with depth too. This is where the technology currently falls short, but I would lay money those clever Japanese at Sony or Tokyo University are already working on this.

3D TV would be amazing, the current digital 2D display, no matter how clever the design of the TV set, is flat and misses out a vital third dimension. It’s going to come, no doubt about it.

This article published by www.conspiracyreview.com ©2008.