A need for standards remains on the minds of many 3D stakeholders, and that message was restated at an HPA Tech Retreat panel on  stereoscopic 3D, moderated by Warner Bros.’ Wendy Aylsworth.

During the session:

–HDDC’s Peter Wilson discussed 3-D acquisition and the work of BBC Research (www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/virtual/).

–In-Three CEO David Seigle discussed hybrid/multimode 3D creation, including the In-Three Dimensionalization process.

–TDVision’s Ethan Schur included his company’s work toward development of a 3D encoding process, with features including 2D/3D compatibility.

–Steve Banaszek addressed 3D exhibition, with Sony’s development of a single projector/dual lens system using Sony’s soon to be released 3D adaptor and 4K pojector.

–Pia Maffei discussed Alioscopy’s technology for autostereoscopic display.

Where will 3D in the home come from? Said Wilson: “SMPTE needs to urgently nail down the master, after that I think it is going to be the traditional consumer standards bodies.”

Schur emphasized the importance of creating a distribution format, noting that SMPTE is working on the mastering standard and the CE industry is exploring the consumer side. “There is a lot of confusion; that’s the biggest problem for the 3D industry,” he said.

Noting that UK broadcaster Sky recently demonstrated that its set top box could deliver 3D to the home, Wilson said the industry needs to start getting the sets out to the market. He added: “We need 3D-ready (consumer electronics), but there has to be an education program for retailers as well as for us.”

Norm Hurst of Sarnoff introduced a test pattern for digital video that caught the attention of HPA Tech Retreat attendees.

“We live in a multiformat world,” Hurst said. “We have a mess on our hands, and we need a tool to verify our workflows and signal chain.”

He added that the tool had to be quick and easy to utilize, and must be usable at any point in the path. The new test pattern—two years in development—was designed so that it would remain useful through conversions.

The test pattern includes the ability to measure frequency response, compression, skin tone, motion, bit depth, pluge, twisted bars, lipsync, color space, color sub sampling, gamma and motion.

A group of eight HPA Tech Retreat participants—from sectors including equipment manufacturers (i.e. displays) and postproduction–explored 3D in the home during a breakfast roundtable discussion on Friday.

The discussion began with participants naming what they believe are the minimum requirements to watching 3D at home. They included high quality and backward compatible.

On anaglyph, one said: “I can’t stand it, and wouldn’t watch it if I could.”

Dolby’s Guido Voltolina pointed out that as most content is 2D, for at least the next five years 3D may be a “special occasion.” Some questioned how consumers would justify the cost of the consumer equipment for such occasions; most agreed the content would be the key driver.

Many in the group believe gaming could be an enabler for 3D in the home, but some pointed out that the 3D game market so far has been very limited.

The group identified challenges, including production as well as  production and post equipment costs.

Discussion included which sports lend themselves to 3D. Some suggested the X-Games could be a great event for 3D coverage, while some questioned 3D coverage of hockey.

On 3D commercials: Will advertisers pay more for 3D? Will viewers remember the product or the commercial?

SMPTE director of standards and engineering, Peter Symes, wrapped HPA’s Thursday afternoon program with a look at the work of the SMPTE/EBU Task Force on Synchronization and Timing.

Work includes development of what Symes calls a Time Related Label, or TRL. He explained: ”Time code has done a remarkably good job, but it is still a crude system.” He added that the team would like the TRL to includes features such as support for multiple camera rates and the ability to handle over and undercrank. He added that the label needs to interoperate with the legacy world, but should not be constrained by it.

He urged participation on the Task Force.

JVC showed a prototype 46-inch 3D HDTV and 32-inch 3D HDTV, in the HPA Demo Room. Features include 2D/3D real-time conversion.

JVC at HPA

Also on the 3D front, Sony reconfirmed that it plans to release its 3D adaptor for its 4K digital cinema projector in March.

Panasonic offered a technology demonstration of wireless metadata entry for the P2 cameras. Users could add information such as takes numbers during production, using a laptop or mobile device such as an iPhone.

Talon Data Systems highlighted its NetFlight WAN transfer system. Emphasizing reliability and speed, the company told HPA attendees that NetFlight could, for example, send a 122GB file from Los Angeles to Paris over a 10 Gigabit connection in seven minutes, or the same size file from L.A. to Paris over a 1 Gigabit connection in 17 minutes.

At HPA, Anthony Magliocco of AboveNet introduced private network Jabnet, currently available in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and London. Abovenet aims to offer its network in 15 cities by the end of 2009.

Features include: Pay as you go, ability to connect to services and other networks, private, high speed.

–About 20 companies connected, including ILM, Sony Pictures Imageworks and Dreamworks Animation.

–Apps might include review and approval, collaboration, remote rendering and secure screenings.

Another exhibit that certainly grabbed the attention of passersby in the HPA demo room was that of young company RabbitHoles.

The Canadian company showed its RabbitHoles 3D Motion Holograms. The company said that as many as 1280 frames of digital video or CGI can be embedded into the film surface, housing motion up to 10 seconds long. No special glasses are needed to see the depth or movement as you walk by the image surface.

The makers recommend the patented technology for image makers and marketers (www.rabbitholes.com).

Philips—with a new tool designed to address the problem of subtitling for stereoscopic 3D movies–was a notable stop in the HPA Tech Retreat demo room.

The company is previewing a new subtitling tool that automatically calculates depth of 3D content for positioning of subtitles and other graphical and text overlay requirements, in an effort make the movie more comfortable to watch.

The demo—which used footage from Disney’s “Meet the Robinsons”–began with subtitles at a fixed depth. It then showed the same segment of the film with subtitles that were positioned using its new software system. Philips is starting to roll out the new capability.

At HPA, the company also exhibited its 56-inch autostereoscopic display.

 Thursday’s program at the HPA Tech Retreat began with a Washington update from Jim Burger of Washington law firm Dow Lohnes Naturally, the DTV transition was a key topic. As we know, the Feb. 17 deadline was moved to June 12.

Burger reported that 69 million still receive over the air analog TV in the US, and that according to Nielsen, 6.5 million are not ready for DTV.

Burger addressed the problem of the DTV converter box coupon program, which currently has 3 million on a waiting list because the funding ran out (although not everyone who ordered coupons have used them). Burger reported that the federal government committed an additional $65 million to the program in the stimulus bill.

Content identification was up next. A highlight was a case study about the Beijing Olympics, presented by Sheau Ng of NBC Universal. He said:

–Real time fingerprinting technologies were used for the Beijing Olympics. As part of the workflow, each feed was kept in a remote database. This went hand in hand with manual work before the content reached the Internet.

–Olympics broadcast coverage continues to grow. The Sydney games produced 422 hours of content; Athens, 1219 hours; and Beijing, 1371 hours (with an additional 2200 hours of live streaming on NBCOlympics.com, there were an estimated 3600 hours in total).

–16 output formats

–Bandwidth: 80 feeds in and over 100 feeds out, used 1620 Mbps.

–Results: 3500 live Internet streams, 10 million hours watched on the web, 7 million mobile views.

–33% increase in cable viewership, 7 in 10 American watched the Beijing Olympics on TV. It’s hard to say if new media boosted old media, or the other way around.

–23,000 fingerprints generated; 99% of content was distributed legally.

–Lessons learned: Fingerprint technology is sound; expect to see more big sports events using similar content protection; illegal digital content distribution can be kept under control; socio-political aspects are key in successful use of the technology.

–Conclusion: Even with free, widespread, legal access to content on TV, VOD, Internet and mobile platforms, content identification still requires research and work.

The HPA Tech Retreat’s Thursday program began with breakfast roundtable discussions. One of the most crowded sessions—where there is clearly a lot of interest both in and beyond Hollywood–offered a look at the Digital Video Package initiative, chaired by Disney’s Annie Chang.

Chang provided an overview of the effort of Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony and Warner Bros., working under the ETC@ USC umbrella, to create recommendations for an industry standard for master digital files, which would be used to send entertainment content to broadcasters, Internet sites and mobile service providers. The DVP would be used in B2B settings between content providers and content distributors.

Chang reported that the goal is to complete the recommendations by year’s end, and to submit them to SMPTE for standardization.