The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) unveiled details of a 3-D TV roadmap in a Jan. 14 report that concentrates on standards to ensure 3-D TV lives up to its potential.
    David Wood, chairman of ITU’s Working Party 6C (WP 6C), told Satellite News that the ITU can play a key role in helping usher in the adoption of 3-D TV in the same way the organization approached HDTV and digital television adoption.
    “There is no denying that the 3-D TV world is more complex. The job is more difficult than it was for HDTV, but we can only try, because this is in the interests of consumers everywhere. We believe that, so far, we have made a good start by understanding the landscape of technology, and I think the ITU is the first to do this, so it could be described as groundbreaking in this sense,” said Wood.
    The 3-D TV revolution began in earnest in early 2010 with announcements from ESPN, Discovery Communications and DirecTV, among others. Wood said the satellite industry will be the leaders in the take-up of 3-D TV, but one of the major challenges for the satellite industry is identifying the role it will have in the new market.
    “It is a fact that new channels are much easier to find on satellites than terrestrially, so it is inevitable that first into bat with 3-D TV will be satellite services,” said Wood. “They have the channels. They have the bandwidth. There are ways to compress 3-D TV of course, but the plain fact is that at the beginning life is going to be easier by satellite. So at the start at least, yes, satellites are going to provide the services.”
    The other challenge, according to Wood, may be the relationship between the packaged media 3-D TV formats and broadcast 3-D TV formats. “It would be in the public interest that they have to buy only one 3-D TV which will work with both packaged media and broadcasts. In the past, the packaged media world has simply taken the formats used for broadcasting for its own uses, even though they have quite distinct standardization path. Things are different today. Blu-ray announced their format last December autonomously and before decisions on common worldwide standards for broadcasting. We have to see how we can cope with this situation,” he said.
    In the 3-D report, the ITU set out three phases for 3-D TV. The first generation of 3-D TV should be “plano-stereoscopic television,” which calls for two views to be delivered to viewers’ TV sets. Viewers will have to wear special glasses similar to those used to watch 3-D cinema. The second generation will provide for multiple views, with head movement changing the view, for a viewing experience that more closely mimics real life. Finally, the ITU said there will be a third generation which will feature systems that record the amplitude, frequency and phase of light waves to reproduce almost completely human beings’ natural viewing environment.
    Despite the growing presence of this technology, Wood believes that consumer-ready 3-D TV systems may technically be years away. “If you think of things like MPEG, it takes around 10 years to move from phase to phase. It often turns out that way. The first generation is moving ahead. The third generation is about light waves. It is another thing to have a television service with that approach. It is very clear to me that, that is the end point for 3-D TV,” Wood said.
    Right now, the world of 3-D TV has seen the rapid develop of new systems and formats. Wood said that, at the moment, this development is healthy. “The world of 3-D and 3-D TV is a very fragmented one — lots of different organizations involved and lots of different systems on the drawing boards. … At some point we need to move from that world to one where you take the best ideas and create an environment which brings competition in a different sense — for equipment and services — the world of common standards,” he said.