September 28, 2005

Set-top boxes turn 3D TV into reality

By Neil Prior, The West Australian

Three-dimensional technology group Dynamic Digital Depth and its major Japanese backer, Arisawa Manufacturing Co, are planning to launch late this month what they hope will be breakthrough technology to take 3D televisions into lounges around the world.

Dynamic Digital has used technology it developed to convert conventional images into 3D images as the basis for a set-top box that allows optional conversion of two-dimensional television signals into 3D.

The technology is already used in high-end Sharp laptops for design and medical purposes.

Arisawa, a maker of wholesale components for consumer electronics groups, is arguably the world's biggest supplier of lenses for rear projection televisions and plans to make a push ito LCD television, initially with a 3D film that can be fitted at the time of manufacture to the television screens.

The big job will be to convince influential Asian electrons groups to buy and install the 3D film that is necessary for television viewers to be able to see the effects created instantly by Dynamic Digital's software.

The groups are hoping for quick acceptance in the Japanese market which has already had a test of 3D imagery through high-end mobile telephones marketed by the Japanese mobile phone company NTT DoCoMo.

The mobile phones have included stylised images, the notoriously annoying Jamster Frog that appears to sit in front of the phone, while the high-end laptops have greater depth of field within the screen and create the visual illusion that material is sitting in front of the screen.

Outside of high-end medical and scientific applications, the 3D market has bee characterised by the occasional production of mainstream movies as well as niche cinemas such as IMAX that have struggled because of a lack of films to interest anyone outside visual effects diehards.

But cinema companies in the US are looking at making massive investments in new 3D projection systems developed by electronics groups, including Texas Instruments, to counter the loss of customers to DVD-based, big-screen, home theatre systems. Among the 3D movies under production at the moment are Disney's Chicken Little, Fox's Japanese-inspired Battle Angel, Sony's Monster House and Tom Hanks' Magnificent Desolation, a planned movie about traveling to the Moon.

Dynamic Digital has its research and development operations at Technology Park in Bentley and a corporate headquarters in Santa Monica, California, to keep its management near the Hollywood film industry which could ultimately decide whether 3D gains mass appeal. The company is listed on London's Alternative Investment Market.

Dynamic Digital managing director Chris Yewdall, who is based in Santa Monica, California, said these movies could help spur consume interest in 3D technology for home systems.

But he said his group had worked for several years on overcoming the lack of content problem of the 3D market by creating the software that allowed for the projection of 3D images on to flat screens by the digital processing of two-dimensional DVDs.

Dynamic Digital's content director, Nic Beames, said the group had to look beyond just developing 3D software to be successful. "You have to do it on three fronts -- you have to do the technology, you have to do the display, and you have to have the content, " Mr. Beames said.

The group's contract with Sharp's laptop division was extended in March to include the real-time conversion technology. The display on the Sharp laptop looks like a normal high-end display until the 3D program kicks in, then a series of thin vertical lines appear across the screen that create 3D images for most users once their brain has adjusted to the pattern.

A shortfall of the technology is that the user has to sit in the right position to see the 3D images on the screen otherwise the the vertical lines become noticeable and ghosting appears.

Mr. Yewdall said viewers sitting around a 3D television would need to wear polarising glasses to see the 3D images on a television fitted with the set-top box and made with the Arisawa screen film. He said this would probably not be an obstacle to people buying the units because they could watch the television in standard mode for ordinary programming with the screen looking no different to a standard LCD. "Users could turn on the 3D for particular shows such as football or movies", he said.

He expected companies such as Sharp and Arisawa to ultimately come up with the screen technology to take away the need for glasses. Arisawa already claims to have achieved significant results in creating what it describes as a 3D electronic LCD panel display. The Japanese group said it was striving to develop innovative products in the 3D area given the new thinking about the nature of light.