Issue No. 42 - May 2012
The Executive
ICT
The Future of
Three-Dimensional
Television Systems
Brian W. Micallef
With the recent advancements in Three-Dimensional
Television (3DTV) technology, one can experience the depth
sensation of the presented media and achieve a much more
realistic scene representation.
A
s 3DTV technology starts
being increasingly deployed
in the consumer market,
fundamental research on a further
enhanced immersive representation
is targeting the feeling of actually
“being present there”. The next
service to provide such immersivity is
free-viewpoint TV, which allows free
navigation within a 3D scene and
the choice of the viewing position.
To support this service, a new 3D
Video (3DV) format together with
advanced 3D image reconstruction
techniques have been internationally
standardised. These allow the
reconstruction of the captured
scene from any arbitrary viewing
angle within a limited range, usually
30 degrees of freedom, on the
horizontal plane. Therefore, these
can provide the stereoscopic video
required for the viewer’s left and
right eye for 3D depth perception,
and its viewing direction can be
changed smoothly and interactively
by the user. This allows the user to
look around objects, and also allows
the user to control the video’s 3D
depth effect.
This feature is expected to be a new
enhanced interactivity option for the
near future 3D movies. However, the
enormous amount of data that needs
to be transmitted and its compression
complexity are still a challenging task.
The University of Malta is actively
participating in researching the
optimal 3DV compression techniques
that are still being researched. Our
University has developed techniques
to substantially reduce the amount
of the computations required by
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required. Auto-stereoscopic 3DTV
displays that are able to display up
to nine different viewing directions,
to give a 120 degrees of freedom
in the horizontal direction, without
the need of special 3D glasses, are
already available. Nevertheless,
due to the limited 3DV content
availability, they are not very popular
and still very expensive. However,
when this technology becomes
available, these displays are expected
to replace the standard stereoscopic
If its implementation is successful, 3DTV sets.
it will bring an epochal change in
multimedia communications, since A fact worth mentioning is that
such features can be important not Japan’s FIFA World Cup 2022
only for an immersive experience, unsuccessful bid promised freebut sometimes for the proper viewpoint TV service, showing
understanding of the presented media that such technology is close to
The research
itself. This has many applications, being available on the international
work disclosed in
most importantly in education, markets. Finally, the last step towards
this publication is
entertainment, surveillance and art, a full immersive service will be the
partially funded
thus it would consequently imply hologram TV, which will allow the 3D
by the Strategic
that there will be a significant impact perception of a scene in a complete Educational Pathways
360 degrees of freedom on both the
on their respective markets.
Scholarship
vertical and horizontal planes. This
Scheme (Malta).
However, the major market impact would require an extreme amount
The scholarship is
would most likely be in home of data that necessitates a whole part-financed by the
entertainment. This would mean new paradigm for its compression,
European Union –
that the whole TV infrastructure has transmission and display.
European Social Fund.
to be changed to allow the capturing,
transmission and representation
of this 3D media. For capturing,
Brian W. Micallef is a post-graduate
a number of synchronised high
research student in the Department
definition cameras are required, thus
of Communications and Computer
the whole recording chain including
Engineering at the University of
capturing, enhancement and editing
Malta. He is currently pursuing his
equipment have to be updated. Its
Ph.D. degree under the supervision
large data transmission implies that
of Dr Ing. Carl James Debono and
it would more likely be implemented
co-supervision of Dr Ing. Reuben
on the Internet, cable or satellite
Farrugia. His research interests include
infrastructures and thus, new devices 3D video compression, resilient multimedia transmission,
that support such transmission are multimedia networking and image processing.
the current 3DV compression
techniques, such that they can be
compressed in about one tenth of
the original time. Other techniques
have also been developed to further
compress, by about 15%, the data
required to transmit such videos.
These techniques are obtained with
minimum degradation of the video
quality and make the realization of
the 3DV systems more feasible, useful
and practicable for commercial use.
The Executive 39