ColorCode 3-D revolutionize Britains television schedule!

November 16th, 2009 |

The UK’s televised 3D week is set to kick off today on channel 4. And with it they will surely be seeing their audience numbers increase. The technology behind the 3D week is provided by ColorCode 3-D® (a division of Sirius 3-D), and to prepare British audiences for this week long special ColorCode 3-D glasses are being given out in mass amounts. 10 million pairs of glasses are being given away by Sainsburys supermarkets all across the country to ensure that a high proportion of Channel 4’s audience will be able to view the programming in its intended three dimensional forms.

Programming includes 3D footage from the Queen’s Coronation, to a 3-D magic show with illusionist Derren Brown. Every show can be experienced with perfect three dimensional stereoscopic depths from the comfort of your own home. With the ColorCode 3-D technology, spectators with or without the 3-D glasses will be able to watch the programming in clear regular 2-D format, where as with earlier systems viewers without glasses during a 3-D transmission would just see unwatchable colored double images. Steen Iversen, CEO of Sirius 3-D ApS explains that spectators who are not wearing the glasses “will still be able to view a coherent, watchable 2-D image with minimal artifacts”, “this is just one of the many benefits the ColorCode 3-D system has over competing technologies”.

Channel 4's 3-D week kicks off on today, Monday 16th November!

The 3-D glasses are built with two filters built into them, one is amber, and the other is blue. The amber color is for information and the blue for the depth. The advantage of the ColorCode 3-D technology is that in comparison to the old style anaglyph glasses (the old red and green ones), and the polarized sets used in 3-D cinemas today, the technology allows its content to be seen using the naked eye.

“For the Channel 4 event, we developed our technology further, implementing a special broadcast processing so that anyone watching 3D Week while wearing the glasses will get a noticeable 3-D effect – not just those on a high-quality digital connection, but also those on an analogue connection, on a lower-bandwidth SD connection, or using a digital receiver connected with an antenna cable, S-video or composite rather than HDMI”. ”…Furthermore, we have developed a live 3-D transmission system with ColorCode 3-D encoding in real-time, so that Channel 4 can incorporate live broadcasts into the 3D Week schedule.”

This is not the first time ColorCode 3-D technology has been used, it was also used for a promotional campaign in the U.S for the film, ‘Monsters vs. Aliens’ which was advertised to millions of football fans during the super bowl commercials.130 million glasses were given away for that campaign, however Channel 4’s 3D Week is equally significant as it is the first time in history that such a large collection of 3-D programming will be shown on British television!

Iverson concludes that “Once you have acquired content stereographically, using two cameras, you can make a 3-D commercial in almost any format.” “With 3D Week, we aim to demonstrate to the broadcast industry not only that spectators can have a hugely enjoyable experience regardless of their home equipment setup, but also that the 3-D content creation workflow is nothing to be afraid of – on the contrary, it is established, controllable, flexible, and ready to go, right here, right now. And you no longer have to worry about spectators getting offended by blurry double images”

If Channel 4’s innovative idea draws in its desired audience numbers then in the future many television stations may follow in 4’s footsteps and 3-D television could become a regular fixation on the schedule.

For more information about ColorCode technology visit: www.colorcode3d.com.

Source: colorcode3d.com