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In the past century stereoscopic or 3-D presentation of movies has had numerous false dawns. Recent advances in resolution and brightness of digital projection is now giving live High Definition TV it’s opportunity at keeping the 3-D sun above the horizon.
In a collaboration with The 3DFirm and BBC Sport a live 3-D HD transmission was conducted on March the 8th to the Riverside Studios in London.
The 3DFirm, is a consortium comprising media communications firm, Can Communicate, 3-D specialist company, Inition and hire and post production house, Axis Films.
The 3DFirm had testing 3-D live with BBC Resources in the preceding six months.
The 8 March event was apparently the first live screening of an international sports event in 3-D HDTV via satellite.
Live 3-D TV has been trailed in the US and following on from the RIverside Studios live 3-D BBC test, HD pioneer Mark Cuban conducted a live 3-D transmission on March 22nd of a match between his NBA basketball team Dallas Mavericks and the Los Angeles Clippers, to one of his theatres in Dallas.
Clearly great minds are thinking alike and despite 3-D movies failing to reach orbit, live 3-D coverage of sports may just be the rocket fuel required to make the business plan work.
Riverside studios is no stranger to ambitious and innovative technology. Forty years ago the it was the location for the first transmission of colour TV. It took 25 years for widescreen to arrive another ten for HD. Now just five years later 3-D has reached a point where the technology is reliable enough to warrant a serious test. The pace of change is indeed increasing.
So on the 8 March 2008 BBC Sport used the RBS Six Nations rugby match between Scotland and England to test live 3-D HDTV to an invited audience.
To help get the studio audience into ‘match’ mood beer and steak burgers were provided.
This was enough to fill the studio and most importantly help create the right atmosphere that otherwise may have been missing.
The3DFirm and BBC Resources produced a stereoscopic (2 x HDTV) signal from a 3x camera Outside Broadcast at Murrayfield stadium in Edinburgh and delivered the signal via satellite to the Riverside studios in London.
The 3-D feed was stand alone and not cut into BBC Sport’s live host broadcast on BBC One. It was supported with BBC Radio 5’s commentary which further distanced the experience, in a positive way, from being a TV event.
David Wooster of The3DFirm commented: “Premium sporting events, where demand for tickets outstrips supply, lend themselves perfectly to live 3-D transmission”.
According to Aashish Chandarana, BBC Sport Innovations Executive, the process is very much at a test stage, with the BBC dipping their toes into the water rather than taking the plunge.
Just as well, because from a technological standpoint the current technology is only just adequate. This is no mean feat, but I’m not about to say that watching an entire game in 3-D with three or four cameras at HD resolution on a large screen is the same as being in the crowd. It isn’t. HDTV simply does not have the resolution to match the detail that a spectator can experience.
It needs help in the form of long lenses, multi-cameras and action replays, these additions will fill the gap, even if they are in 2D it is an acceptable fudge given that it is pointless trying to hook two 100x lenses into a 3D system.
A 2D multi-camera experience including close-ups with 100x zoom lenses is more compelling than a wide-shot in 3-D at HD resolution.
Perhaps this was proven when a quarter of the Riverside audience retired to the bar to watch the 2D coverage, some claiming they missed the close-ups. I tend to believe them although since the bar remained open I can’t be sure their motivation was to see the game through the end of a pint rather than Fujinon glass.
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