At last year's TCM Film Festival, I had the incredible opportunity to participate in a panel discussion with Douglas Trumbull, the special effects designer for
2001, A Space Odyssey. [
Douglas Trumbull - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]. The original panel was allocated one hour and Trumbull ended up talking for more than 2 hours. After the panel finally broke, more than 20 of us had the unique opportunity to go one-on-one with him for another 20 minutes.
While the bulk of the discussion was about his special effects work on 2001, and how his ground-breaking techniques, coupled with some of the techniques originally used by Mêlées and the Lumière Brothers, beginning in 1883, with Edison following a few years later - including multiple double and triple looping of the negatives in the camera, masking parts of the film plane/gate, etc; he did talk about his work in the extremely high-resolution, 3D film projects, including IMAX 3D, which he has developed for theme parks and corporate events. Because of his long years of work, and film speeds of up to 120 frames per second, those installations produce unnerving realism on the screen - to the point of not having the audience being able to discern between the actors and props on a stage and the rear-projection behind them.
As part of that work, one of the issues which became extremely clear to him was the fact that both HD and 3D will require much more than 24 frames per second to make them work properly:
- HD, because of the blur effect caused when something moves at an extremely high rate of speed in front of the camera. If there are only 24 frames of data in a second, and the television is attempting to refresh at a rate of 60 or 120 frames per second, it can either blank the frames between the actual data or fill with data from a previous frame - it cannot anticipate.
- 3D, because the ocular center of the eyes - the distance between the center of the eyes, is only 2.5 inches on average.
- 3D cameras capture the 3D data because they use two lenses and bring together two data streams of "sight" - just like the eyes.
- The problem lies in the fact that if an object moves more than 2.5 inches while being filmed [captured] in 3D, at the rate of 24 frames per second, the second lens [eye] never sees the object travel in front of the lens and the capability to capture that 3D effect is lost forever.
- In order to properly capture and store 3D for future playback, Trumbull stated that the capture of 3D imaging data, either on film, or electronically, needs to be done at a much higher frame per second rate. These rates begin to become efficient when you approach 60 frames per second and max out at the rate of 120 frames per second, which, according to Trumbull, is also the optimum frame capture/reproduction rate for digital projectors.
Trumbull has an exceptional background in digital film technology, including holding the patent for 3D IMAX. More information can be found on Trumbull's website:
Special Venues | Douglas Trumbull - Immersive Media and Visual Effects
So, in response to your question, "3D TV, Do You Care?," I see multiple issues blocking its adoption on a large enough scale to be either fully effective or fully profitable:
- I do not believe the technology will be available at a price reasonably low enough for the producers to produce a truly real product that is not just a gimmick;
- I do not believe the technology will be available at a low enough price for the consumers to enjoy true 3D realism in their homes as true 3D will require an extremely controlled viewing environment.
- I do not believe that either the satellite or cable companies are, or will be, willing to make the proper investment into their delivery systems to deliver the bandwidth for end-users to properly view TRUE 3D.
This is backed up by the fact that delivery companies like Comcast are now beginning to limit bandwidth to subscribers and Dish Network delivers only HD LITE - even in their 1080i formats.
For the full experience, true HD, at the level of Blu-Ray content delivery requires up to 54 Mbps to deliver full content and experience.
That will soon be raised to 288 megabytes, to wit: "
According to the Blu-ray Disc specification, 1x speed is defined as 36Mbps. However, as BD-ROM movies will require a 54Mbps data transfer rate the minimum speed we're expecting to see is 2x (72Mbps). Blu-ray also has the potential for much higher speeds, as a result of the larger numerical aperture (NA) adopted by Blu-ray Disc. The large NA value effectively means that Blu-ray will require less recording power and lower disc rotation speed than DVD and HD-DVD to achieve the same data transfer rate. While the media itself limited the recording speed in the past, the only limiting factor for Blu-ray is the capacity of the hardware. If we assume a maximum disc rotation speed of 10,000 RPM, then 12x at the outer diameter should be possible (about 400Mbps). This is why the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) already has plans to raise the speed to 8x (288Mbps) or more in the future." Source:
Blu-ray.com - Blu-ray FAQ
SUMMARY: At this time, there is no possible way that either Dish Network or Direct TV will be able to provide enough satellite bandwidth to honor the new 288Mbps Blu-ray specifications when it is released. Both Comcast and AT&T - even after fully upgrading their delivery networks to fiber optic to the set-top box, will be hard-pressed to allocate that kind of deliver speed as well.
3D will be a niche item with some 3D elements being delivered to sporting enthusiasts - at the expense of sub-channels and content for non-sports interested viewers by those stations delivering such content.
TRUE 3D will be an experience deliverable only via the new 288Mbps Blu-ray format and will require either a new generation of theatre [ala IMAX 3D - which Trumbull holds the patent to], or dedicated home theatre rooms affordable to only the very wealthy, die-hard television and home theatre fans - with content being delivered via fiber optic or dedicated satellite sources.
