Sign up for our Newsletters |   Email the Editor    Email a Friend    Print this Page 

If you're going to compete in the 3D TV market, associating yourself with Avatar can't hurt.

Richard LaBerge and Montreal-based Sensio Technologies Inc. can claim that worthy accomplishment after providing the 3D encoding for Ubisoft's Avatar video game.

Gamers on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PCs can enjoy the stereoscopic content of Avatar, which built the most successful box-office movie in history on the foundation of an immersive 3D experience. 

The spectacular 3D effects also won the film three Academy Awards – visual effects, art direction, and cinematography – at Sunday's Hollywood gala. Director James Cameron waited for years before realizing his vision, insisting on technology that would make an alien world inhabited by blue natives and flying beasts believable.

Related Story

What you should know about 3D TV

Now Cameron will be waiting again, according to LaBerge, chief marketing officer at Sensio. For now, Cameron will be releasing the DVD and Blu-Ray versions of Avatar in 2D only, waiting until 3D TV sets have a greater foothold in the market to release a 3D version of the film.

“They're not going to release it in red and blue, that's for sure,” LaBerge says, referring to an old-school method of achieving a low-grade 3D effects via conventional TV. “They'll be waiting until 2011 for the release.”

Cameron isn't the only one to express skepticism over the adoption of 3D TV sets in the market. A report released by Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc. earlier this month predicts 3D TV will remain a niche market because of the expensive home entertainment system upgrades required, and the inconvenience of wearing 3D glasses. That has some Canadian firms betting that 3D content will be more successful on other screens – both large and small.

Imax Corp., which is co-headquartered in Mississauga, Ont. and New York, has more 3D films than 2D films coming to its (really) big screen in 2010. Toronto-based Spatial View Inc. is betting iPhone users will want 3D content, and is releasing a case and version of the App Store that sells exclusively 3D content.

But Sensio is betting consumers will adorn 3D glasses, and has a distribution technology that can solve some of the hardware upgrade pain.

3D couch surfing experience

“We take the left and right eye and combine them into one single stream that takes the same bandwidth as a 2D stream,” LaBerge explains. “By combining two images into one frame, you'd usually lose half the resolution. But our technology is able to provide digitally lossless compression.”

Sensio's encoding technology solves half of the technology problem. Right now, if you wanted to watch a 3D Blu-Ray, you'd need a compatible Blu-Ray player, new HDMI v1.4 cables, a 3D-capable TV, and also an upgrade to any A/V receiver you use. But Sensio's technology works with a legacy Blu-Ray player, so you just need to upgrade your TV set.

That solves one problem put forward by analyst Fernando Elizalde in Gartner's March 2 report on 3D TV.

“The added value proposition of 3D seems at the moment is not nearly enough to persuade the millions of consumers who upgraded to high-definition TVs in the last three years to start upgrading again soon,” Elizalde writes. “3D TV will likely garner a core of early enthusiastic users but remain a niche product for the next five years.”

Sensio is so confident enough 3D TV will take off that it's trying to position itself as the standard adopted by the industry. That means that if any video were to be encoded in 3D, it would use Sensio's patented process.

Its distribution technology is the only one that's been tested with live sports broadcasts so far, LaBerge says. It was used by ESPN to broadcast an event to theatres last September. The encoding format is also compatible with DVDs, which still out-sell Blu-Rays at a ratio of 10 to one.

“I think 3D will be more widespread than it is today, because the technology will evolve to make adoption easier,” he says. “If it stays as it is today, then no, it will stay as a niche product.”

Related Articles
10 most terrible moments in tech 3D TV hamstrung by aesthetic, technical and med... FIFA World Cup – Use tech to tune out the vexin...

Share