France Kicks Off 3D HD Soccer

France Telecom is to test 3D HD production of French premier league soccer for a slated 2009 launch, writes Adrian Pennington.

France Telecom recently won the rights to select French Professional Football League matches paying EUR203m for a four year deal beginning 2008-09 to 2012.

The service is destined for its Orange broadband TV customers and, according to Orange Head of 3D Services, Philippe Delbary: "We will broadcast matches in high definition from next season but we'll simultaneously trial 3D coverage. It may take six months or a year to learn how and where to place cameras and how to produce a good 3D HD football match. As soon as possible we'll propose this to our customers.

"3D HD adoption needs to be synchronised with the supply onto the market of consumer displays but we think it could become mass market by 2011," he added. "By 2010-11 there will be a number of 3D feature films already released and available on demand with possibly other 3D content too."

France Telecom production subsidiary Studio 37 is producing a slate of 2D features and one 3D stereo feature. "We will produce our own 3D content," said Delbary.

The telco has been researching 3D production, display and compression techniques for twenty years. Orange's service will be distributed in MPEG-4 over bandwidths of 20Mbps or less, even though its FTTH rollout across France can handle 100Mbps.

"The 3D signal will be adapted to meet the bandwidth needs of full HD," commented Delbary.

Of the two types of consumer displays coming to market Delbary believes those requiring glasses will be the first to take off.

"Autostereoscopic devices (such as Philips' Wow) which do not require glasses will take 10-15 years to come to mass market. This is mainly due to production techniques which require that up to nine cameras acquire pictures per scene."

Source: TVB Europe