Technical aspects

Video display approaches

Common 3D display technology for projecting stereoscopic image pairs to the viewer include:

  • Anaglyphic 3D (with passive red-cyan glasses)
  • Polarization 3D (with passive polarized glasses)
  • Alternate-frame sequencing (with active shutter glasses/headgear)
  • Autostereoscopic displays (without glasses/headgear – pseudo-stereoscopic)

This aspect of 3D is not relevant at the transmission level, but it may be relevant for QoE analysis.

Formats and delivery components

SMPTE 10E-40 Group “Standards for 3D Home Master” has 4 ad-hoc groups to address the most important challenges of 3D delivery:

  • Image resolution
  • Metadata

Provide information about the signal source specifying display and packaging consistent with HDMI 1.4. It supports 3D for up to 1080p resolution using many 3D techniques.

This may be relevant for control plane analysis.

  • Caption & subtitles
  • Graphics overlay

This involves not only the placement of logos, but also the creation of menus and widgets applicable to STBs.

This may be relevant for control plane analysis.

Format conversion

When content is produced on any true stereoscopic format, it can be converted to any other one.

This would be a consideration for lab testing environments using one particular feed to test for multiple formats emulating them through conversion.

Multiview Video Coding (MVC)

True stereoscopic content can be created and delivered using passive or active methods.

Passive methods deliver left-right content on alternate lines or pixels, thus requiring the same bandwidth as 2D but in doing so, quality is sacrificed for BW efficiency. In contrast, active methods Provide full frame resolution for each eye, so for these methods, MVC requires about 70% bandwidth increase over 2D.