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Well, well, well. HDTV was a bit of a failure, wasn’t it? It has turned out to be too expensive, too unsupported and too variable in quality.

If you want to receive HDTV, you have to shell out a couple of hundred for a HD television and then another hundred bob for a HD receiver (FreeSat HD, Sky HD or soon Freeview HD) which is ridiculous! If you were to have all the equipment, there then becomes the problem that there are only a handful of channels that broadcast in HD, and those are the boring ones like BBC One and Sky Sports. Also, for reasons I don’t completely understand, there are 2 different standards and 4 different screen resolutions with an additional 2 interlacing options:

• 720p (1024 x 768)
• 720p (1280 x 720)
• 720p (1366 x 768)
• 1080i (1920 x 1080)
• 1080p (1920 x 1080)

WTF!? 3DTV is rumoured to be the next big thing, but I’m just wondering how successful it can be.

In November 2009, Channel 4 had a week-long broadcasting session in which they showed a number of 3-dimensional  programmes for which you needed a pair of less-than-fasionable 3D glasses. I found the glasses annoying as they distorted the colour and made my eyes sore after extended use.

Shown during the Channel 4 3D week was some recently-uncovered and never-before-seen footage of the Queens corination, which was filmed in colour 3D because at the time, it was believed that 3DTV was the next big thing, but here we are, 56 years later and no such thing as yet. It still annoyingly required the viewer to use some form of stupid glasses.

I think that 3DTV will not catch on unless there is a way that we don’t have to wear some stupid bloody glasses to watch and there becomes a way in which the screen doesn’t end at its edges. As far as I can see, there are 3 ways to make 3D or immersive TV successful:

1. Film the scene with a 360° panoramic camera (as used by Google and view the resulting footage through goggles which can use digital compasses and accelerometers to detect the direction of view and display the correctly-orientated footage. Unfortunately, this has already been done, as I found here.
2. Project a fish-eye image around the television to create content (albeit less important and not as defined) outside of the screen to ‘extend’ the screen area to the entire room. This method requires not only a TV, but a projector that has to be calibrated for each room. It also needs either multiple videos or an ultra-high definition video to get the quality on the screen up to an acceptable standard.
3. Create a TV system that responds to the position of the viewer, in which moving around the TV allows you to view areas ‘behind and beyond’ the confinements of the screen. Moving closer to the screen allows you to see more of the image, as if the screen was a window to the screen outside.

Above: Idea 2, showing the projected images around and outside the TV area.

Below: Idea 3 – The position of the viewer (A, B and C) provides different extremities of the image.

I prefer the third option because it also has potential for gaming applications, where ducking and diving your head will result in dodging around objects in the level. It would be nice if I could do this with a live stream of the view from a window as it would give a feel of realism.

As th effect only works for a single person at a time, I plan to use the webcam on my laptop for motion tracking the position of my own face, but because there is a lot of noise and acurate motion tracking becomes difficult. I shall use an IR (infrared) filter over my webcam and 2 IR LEDs attached to my face so that all my webcam sees is 2 white points of light, making the tracking process easier and more acurate.