Life in 3D Broadcasters
Life in 3D Broadcasters See Advantages of 3D Tile Format Bandwidth efficiency and 3D education on HD sets among the new format’s advantages “The 3D Tile Format is a system that permits retro-compatibility with the best picture quality.” The 8 th European Digital TV Forum in Lucca this summer saw deliberations revolving around the hot topic of 3D TV, and the innovative 3D Tile Format from Sisvel Technology was at the forefront of discussions. SISVEL founder Roberto Dini was a speaker on the 3D Experience panel, alongside executives from major broadcasters including the BBC, RAI, Mediaset and Telecom Italia. The advantages of the 3D Tile Format, especially in bandwidth efficiency, make it the ideal 3D broadcasting system for Digital Terrestrial Television. At the forum, the regional Tuscany TV network Città Digitali announced the launch of 3D TV transmissions using Sisvel Technology’s 3D Tile Format. “We can reach our regular 2D viewers on the same channel and educate them about 3D content while they are watching in 2D. The 3D Tile Format is also easy to implement and utilize,” said Ludovico Poschi Meuron, Managing Director at Lucca City Television. The panel was unanimous that backwards compatibility for 3D-TV formats is an important issue. “The 3D Tile Format is a system that permits retro-compatibility with the best picture quality. It is also more bandwidth efficient,” Dini said. Sisvel Technology is focusing its 3D Tile Format adoption strategy on broadcasters and TV set manufacturers, and Dini claims he is confident that they will see the advantages of the 3D Tile Format: “In addition to focusing on the production of set top boxes, All about 3D Tile Format Sisvel Technology CEO, Dr Paolo D’Amato, previously an electrical engineer from the leading Italian media group RAI, tells us a little more about the company’s 3D Tile Format… Our solution belongs to the category of “frame compatible systems”, since it is based on a composite frame, containing the two pictures for the left and the right eye. The 3D signal is identical to an HDTV signal, and therefore it can travel along with the entire existing TV distribution infrastructure and does not require special equipment. Another standard is MVC (Multi- View Coding), which attempts to exploit the redundancy between the two images. The idea seems good in theory, but in practice, for various reasons, the gain in terms of bitrate is very small, and the possibility of using the existing HDTV infrastructure is lost. The 3D Tile Format, based on a 1080p signal, results in two 720p “HD-Ready” images, and does not suffer from the imbalance between horizontal and vertical resolutions as one finds with the so-called “top and bottom” or “side by side” 3D broadcasting methods. Both the 3D picture, and the 2D-compatible picture with the Tile Format have a significantly better quality in comparison to these techniques. From left to right: Carmelo Catalano, Utah Scientific; Roberto Dini, Sisvel; Cristiano Benzi, HD Forum Italia; Marco Pellegrinato, Mediaset we are negotiating with major TV manufacturers to incorporate the decoding technology in their TV sets. We also focus largely on broadcasters adopting the technology, as the history of TV technology shows that it is most often the broadcasters that initially establish technological developments.” According to project leader, Giovanni Ballocca, Sisvel Technology’s 3D Tile Format is attracting a lot of interest among broadcasters: “The key benefits of 3D tiling are quality and backward compatibility. Another factor that can’t be ignored is the fact that due to the way the Tile Format works – that is to say with the left “whole” image and the right split into three – there remains a blank space in the bottom right hand corner of the broadcast image,” he says. “This unused space can be used to send metadata or other signals to the end user, and this has generated a lot of interest from broadcasters. This could include such things as a depth map, 3D frame packing format 2D decoded image useful to p r o p e r l y allocate locally g e n e r a t e d g r a p h i c s (menus, EPG) or sub-titles in the 3D space. When graphics are generated at the receiving end, proper location in space is essential for viewer comfort, and in the future, users will be able to manually control the picture depth.” The 3D Tile Format is already in use at Quarta Rete TV in the Piedmont region of Italy and at Città Digitali in the Tuscany region, as part of its DVB-T broadcast service. The 3D Tile Format is also used on an Astra satellite channel and it is being considered by a number of other Broadcasters around the world. Hall 2.2 Stand 119 Read more on @ cleverdis.com www.ifa-international.org IFA International • Saturday 3 rd & Sunday 4 th September 2011 31
