For better or worse, it looks like 3-D video is going to be the next big thing in home entertainment.
A new standard for 3-D video compression called Multiview Video Coding (MVC) has been announced, and it significantly reduces the amount of data required to project 3-D images, while keeping the high-resolution quality.
Until now, the massive data rate requirement has been the main obstacle blocking 3-D video from making its way into the home theater experience. Data flows to televisions like it does to your Internet browser or your smart phone. Most satellite and Internet hookups can't handle the huge amount of data 3-D movies require. Try it and you could have problems with buffering, which would make the movie pause or stutter.
But the MVC standard, which was developed by researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications and Heinrich-Hertz-Institut in Germany, reduces the data dump by 40 percent, making it more manageable.
Thomas Schierl is one of the researchers who worked to develop the MVC standard. He says, "New TV sets will start off by only playing 3-D movies from the Blu-Ray disc...The next step to bring 3-D into living rooms will be made possible via broadcast or IPTV channels running via DSL or cable."
And just like a system Microsoft is working on, you don't need to wear 3-D glasses with a MVC system.
For those of us who haven't bought a new TV since the '90s, 3-D movies are still possible with MVC. Essentially, the third dimension would be hidden inside the same stream of data that brings the first two dimensions to your TV.
You will need a special 3-D receiver though, and maybe a bowl of popcorn.
Image: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
Tags: Movies, Television
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