Posts Tagged ‘3d media’

Researchers at the Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) are developing the new MVC (Multiview Video Coding) video compression standard, which would allow compressed 3D video to be transmitted over the Internet or satellite without interruption, the institute said this week.

The institute, based in Berlin, will showcase streaming of 3D movies based on the standard over the Internet and satellite at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC), which will be held in Amsterdam Sept. 10-14. The research is being done by the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, which is a part of HHI.

3D movies and broadcast content are being created for new devices like 3D TVs and Blu-ray 3D players, but an efficient way to transmit them over broadband networks is missing, the institute said.

The content requires considerably more bandwidth than regular video feeds, and observers have said that a large percentage of homes do not have capacity to play streaming 3D movies. MVC could potentially resolve quality-of-service and buffering issues by squeezing 3D movies into compact files that can be transmitted over existing broadband networks.

The trick is to load files quickly so 3D video can be viewed without interruption, and the standard packs two separate images — each for the left and right eyes — needed to provide the stereoscopic 3D effect. The MVC standard helps reduce the bit rate significantly, which helps transmit the movies faster.

The latest 3D TVs and Blu-ray 3D players will be able to decode the separate images from MVC-coded movies to display the 3D effect.

“The first view corresponds to the signal that the existing television can receive and we would hide the second view in the same stream so that only the new receivers can use it,” said Thomas Schierl, a scientist at the HHI, in a statement.

The MVC file format is a 3D add-on to the existing H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video compression standard.

“What H.264/AVC is for HD movies, Multiview Video Coding (MVC) is for 3D movies,” the institute said.

Movie services like Netflix are already delivering movies in HD format, but do not yet offer 3D streaming. Samsung has said it will start streaming 3D movie trailers from content providers later this year, but not full 3D movies.

TOKYO — A Japanese research team said Thursday it had developed the world’s first 3D television system that allows users to touch, pinch or poke images floating in front of them.

“It is the first time that you can feel images in the air,” said Norio Nakamura, senior scientist with the research team at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.

“You can have the sense of touch like poking a rubber ball or stretching a sticky rice cake” when manipulating images, he told AFP by telephone.

The technology changes the shape of three-dimensional images in response to “touches”, aided by cameras that monitor how the fingers move, Nakamura said.

It is not known when the technology will be put to practical use but its creators see it being used to simulate surgical operations and in video game software allowing players to experience the sensation of holding weapons or sports equipment.

It could even use scanned images to supplement existing realities, said Nakamura.

“This technology could create a virtual museum where visitors, including vision-impaired people, can put their hands on valuable sculptures that are usually untouchable,” Nakamura said.

Intel’s upcoming next-generation laptop chips will have a dozen new features to improve graphics performance and will be able to play Blu-ray 3D movies, the company said on Thursday.

Laptops with processors based on the Sandy Bridge architecture will play Blu-ray 3D movies while preserving battery life, said Nick Knupffer, an Intel spokesman. Users won’t need to buy a separate graphics processor to specifically view 3D content.

Sandy Bridge chips are due to go into production later this year, Knupffer said. Company officials have said that PCs with the new chips could hit store shelves in the first half of next year.

The company is expected to shed more light on Sandy Bridge’s graphics performance at the upcoming Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Sept. 13-15.

Intel’s graphics improvements come from higher levels of integration and the addition of specialized accelerators to decode video, analysts said.

Intel for the first time will integrate the CPU and graphics processor on a single chip, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64. The current generation of chips based on the Westmere architecture have the CPU and graphics core on one piece of silicon, but as separate units.

The higher levels of integration will also help Intel cram in more transistors to improve graphics performance, Brookwood said. The Sandy Bridge CPUs and GPUs will be made using the 32-nanometer process, while with current chips, the CPU and GPU are made using the 32-nm process and the 45-nm process, respectively.

Graphics performance typically doubles from one chip generation to the next, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research.

Intel’s current laptop chips are capable of 1080p video, and improvements in Sandy Bridge chips could bring a noticeable graphics improvement to PCs, McCarron said.

Intel’s chips go into more than 80 percent of the world’s computers and the company is widely recognized for its CPU design, but lags behind Advanced Micro Devices in graphics. AMD later this year will release a family of chips called Fusion that integrate the CPU and GPU in a single chip. The first Fusion chip, code-named Ontario, will go into netbooks and ultraportable laptops. The next wave of Fusion chips for laptops and desktops will be released next year. AMD has already said Fusion will allow users to view Blu-ray movies and play 3D games.

However, Intel’s improvement in integrated graphics will not affect the discrete graphics market, McCarron said. There is a growing interest in switchable graphics, in which laptops have both integrated and discrete graphics, McCarron said. That allows users to switch between them depending on the application they’re using.

More laptops are shipping with both graphics processors — up to 45 percent of the laptops worldwide in the second quarter, McCarron said.

“Irony here is that each graphics solution — whether it’s Intel integrated or discrete — is succeeding on its merits,” McCarron said. “It’s not like you’re picking one or another.”

The sudden ramp-up in adoption of discrete graphics cards in laptops came at the start of this year, when Intel released its new Core family of processors, McCarron said. Users were perhaps unhappy with the integrated graphics performance of Core chips, which is why they bought discrete graphics cards.

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Imagine, if you will, sitting in the local coffee shop waiting for your ever so tardy girlfriend to show up before your lunch break ends. Suddenly, she is right in front of you, only not in the way you had hoped. It’s a hologram, beaming straight from your cellphone right before your eyes. Her digital representative a fully rendered three dimensional image of her informing you that she will be there in 5 minutes. No, this is not science fiction – it’s the future. And the future is eye popping.

With the demands of technology growing by the second, our everyday bandwidth needs are increasing exponentially. Cisco and Verizon are both anticipating a quadruple increase in bandwidth requirements by the year 2014! This tremendous surge in our bandwidth needs can be attributed largely in part to the burgeoning 3D television market, as well as the growing use of streaming HD video.

“There is no question in my mind that 3D is the next thing to happen in video. It’s the next logical evolution of the technology” stated John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems.While 3D video is set to pave an information highway with HOV lanes galore, there are other promising, and more interesting, advancements yet to come – namely holographic projections. In fact, Verizon is predicting that hologram images will be broadcasted into your home in as little as ten years! You know that futuristic stuff you were looking for? Yeah, it’s coming.“3D will make things more lifelike, ” states Chambers. “But I think in 10 years we’ll be seeing holograms used. Not only can this be used to enhance business communications, but imagine the implications for certain vertical businesses like medicine.”It should be noted that holography has already been used before by businesses such as Telstra and Cisco, but as a commercial product use of hologram images lacks the necessary bandwidth requirements. CIO Officer Shaygan Kheradpir is already testing the kind of high speed network needed for such heavy duty applications in his home, running a 1Gbps connection straight from his humble abode in Upper East Side Manhattan. With the introduction of holograms, there will be a need for this extremely high speed connection to be commonplace in the average American home.Aside from online 3D content and beaming holograms, the large allowance of bandwidth should spawn some other very interesting developments. We’re keeping our eyes peeled to the future.

Intel and Nokia have announced the creation of a new lab to be located in Finland to jointly explore 3D technologies for smartphone applications.

The new lab will be located at the Center for Internet Excellence at the University of Oulu according to a report by DailyFinance. The venture aims to find ways of representing smartphone user’s trends towards social networking and media consumption.

“There’s an opportunity for this joint innovation center to shape this, in terms of the synthesis of virtual and physical world and location-based services,” said Intel Labs director Martin Curley.

Intel and Nokia had formerly announced cooperation on software for improving systems in a variety of computer applications and not just smartphones. The two companies have also been collaborating on the MeeGo operating system which is expected to power future Nokia smartphone devices.

The joint venture appears to be aimed at finding interface mechanisms to exploit 3D hardware increasingly prevalent in smartphones. Many smartphones carry such hardware but user interfaces have generally remained traditionally 2D.

Marvel Studio’s current plan is to convert Thor into 3D once the film is completed, and the recent footage shown at Comic-Con was presented in this format. Captain America: The First Avenger is also set to be converted into 3D, with its effects being rendered instead of converted. Now word comes from Showbiz 411 that Joss Whedon will actually be shooting The Avengers using 3D equipment as opposed to converting the film once it has been shot.

This will be the first time Marvel Studios has actually shot a film in the popular 3D format. Whedon and the studio have hinted for some time that The Avengers would be presented in 3D. Showbiz 411 is reporting that efforts to actually shoot the film instead of converting it are a “done deal”.

The 3D news hasn’t been confirmed by Marvel Studios as of yet, and we’ll be sure to keep you posted with any further news on The Avengers as soon as we have more information.

Another upcoming project from Marvel is X-Men: First Class and just added Oliver Platt to its growing cast. Deadline has the scoop on Platt joining Matthew Vaughn’s ensemble comic book adaptation as a character known only as “The Man in Black.” Apparently this odd character is neither a mutant nor a reincarnation of the mysterious character from “Lost.” Okay, so who is he? Tons of casting news keeps coming out of the woodwork for X-Men: First Class. Just last night we heard the lovely Rose Byrne would play Professor X’s love interest Moira McTaggart; over the weekend it was also reported that Jason Flemyng would be playing Azazel, a mutant who is father to Nightcrawler (of X-Men 2). There’s probably a little bit more casting down the road, too. After all, we still don’t have anyone lined up for Cyclops yet. Stay tuned for the latest updates!

The Avengers comes to theaters May 4th, 2012 and starsRobert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Samuel L. Jackson, Don Cheadle, Clark Gregg, Tom Hiddleston. The film is directed by Joss Whedon.

Panasonic has just announced that the VIERA full HD 3D plasma TV range will be expanded with the introduction of the Panasonic VIERA GT25 Series. This 42″ piece of consumer electronics will target those who want stereoscopic 3D viewing in their living rooms, where the TC-P42G25 is going for a relatively affordable $1699.95, while its larger sibling, the 50″ TC-P50GT25 is $400 more expensive. Expect to see both models hit the market later this month, and to make things more expensive for those who want to branch out to 3D viewing will be disappointed to know that they have to fork out more dough to purchase Active Shutter 3D Eyewear as those are sold separately. [Press Release]

Most of you know now that Cameron’s Avatar has crowned the filmmaker once again with the Worlds highest grossing movie of all time earning a whopping 3 billion dollars at te box office. While this position has contributed greatly to the traction 3D cinema currently spellbinding entertainment consumers, there is on glaring drawback in Mr. Cameron’s opinion, companies jumping on the 3D bandwagon and putting out horrible conversions.

Movies like Clash of the Titans andThe Last Airbender were shot in traditional 2D and converted into 3D after seeing Avatar’s success.

“I think it’s horrible and absolutely the wrong way to go,” Cameron said before the re-release of Avatar in 3D with added footage.

“I think it’s a quick, knee-jerk reaction to seeing the gold rush happen and the studios just wanted to jump in on it and that’s the only way they could do it. It’s the studio making the decision and then handing it over to some company to process it through a sausage grinder and come up with some kind of faux 3D, or a 2 1/2D mess,” he added.

The interesting footnote is he plans on re-releasing 1997’s Titanic in a 3D redux. Cameron fully admits that the conversion will be a “2.9D”, but goes on to add, “We won’t succeed. It will wind up being 2.9D, but it will still be .9 better than the 2D we released before. These other slapdash conversions, where they are not spending the time and money and not involving the filmmaker, are like 2.2D,” The Herald Sun quoted the 55-year-old filmmaker as saying.

It seems there is a drive to be the world’s first porn movie shot in 3D. Chinese director Christopher Sun has a 3.5 million erotic epic on his hands, Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy, being shot in Hong Kong and slated for release next Year. There is also a film titled Kama Sutra, Produced by Mark Dorcel (apparently the “Hugh Hefner” of European porn), with Hustler, the movie is called Kama-Sutra and stars Brigitte Lahaie.

Meanwhile, Italian director Tinto Brass has announced he would produce a 3D remake of his 1979 erotic film Caligula, while Hustler plans to release a pornographic spoof of 3D science fiction film Avatar, the top-grossing movie of all time which has earned some 2.7 billion US dollars worldwide since its release.

Saori Hara, 22, one of the two female Japanese stars, said the film’s technical complexities made it tougher than her previous movies.

She said: “I have to work harder to not let the audience down. I hope people all around the world will see this movie.”

Leading man Hiro Hayana, 35, said starring in his first erotic film was daunting — but had no complaints about a scene in which he must satisfy 100 women.

He said: “I felt like the king of the world.”

Sony’s Blu-ray flashed onto the scene, beating out a format war with HD-DVD, and almost as quickly faded into potential antiquation, as critics noted a lack of compelling value proposition. The picture was better than DVD, but not dramatically better, and consumers have been diving headlong into the convenience of online streaming, a choice that sacrifices true HD, convenience over quality.

Along these lines of desolation and has been status, Blu-ray has caught an edge that seems to have momentum to catapult it back: stereoscopic 3D. In this new arrangement, 3D could very well position Blu-ray as a must have in millions of living rooms, while Blu-ray drives 3D conveniently into homes.

Critics of Blu-ray blasted the technology as over-engineered, yet those very same advanced capabilities has been the advantage in delivering 3D home video, which requires storing and moving massive amounts of data. There is no comparison between web streaming and Blu-ray in this arena, Blu-ray easily surpasses.

A single Blu-ray disc can hold an entire 3D movie at full 1080p HD resolution, and the players can pump that data to the screen with no problem. With Web streaming, the consumer doesn’t need a lot of storage space, but few broadband services have the speed to handle a dual load of 1080p video for the left and right eyes — required for 3D.

Don Eklund, Sony Pictures’ executive VP for advanced technologies estimates a player must be able to handle 50-55 megabits per second (Mbps) for 3D with full HD for both eyes. An Akamai Technologies study pegged average broadband speed in the U.S. (including consumer, corporate and mobile) at just 3.8 Mbps. AT&T’s DSL maxes out at 24 Mbps.

Blu-ray’s stakeholders tout the image quality, but in terms differentiating features for consumers, the 3D element has the upper hand in driving sales.