World’s First 3-D Broadcast Nationwide for all TVs in Full Color
The Rachael Ray Show, along with 3-D Vision are taking a major step forward in the exploding 3-D TV market. On October 29, “Rach’s Halloween Bash in 3-D” will be broadcast to millions of viewers with 3-D Vision’s revolutionary new 3-D process called “FullColor 3D”.
The Rachael Ray show is the first to use this revolutionary 3-D process in a commercial TV broadcast (sponsored in part by Sarah Lee). The show will be viewable in full-color and in 3-D on all existing TV sets, 2-D and 3-D, thanks to a new type of 3-D glasses which will be given away to over 2.4 million viewers in the October 25 issue of TV Guide Magazine.
Previous 3-D broadcasts shown on regular TV sets over the past 50 years used red and blue (or red and cyan) glasses referred to as “anaglyph” glasses. Although they provided 3-D, full color viewing was not possible with these glasses. In addition, due to an inherent brightness imbalance between the left and right eye filters used in the glasses, prolonged viewing created discomfort, eyestrain, and even headaches, imposing shorter 3-D segments.
Recently, a new 3-D process called “ColorCode”, used during a Super Bowl halftime show broadcast, produced an even greater brightness imbalance between viewers’ eyes.
The new “FullColor 3D” process, however, uses glasses that eliminate these problems by providing full-color images in 3-D, utilizing patent-pending balanced brightness and color filters, that can be worn during an entire 3-D show without discomfort. 3-D Vision is now making this new process available for use with all TV broadcasts. The same glasses also provide full-color 3-D viewing of all printed images for the first time ever, as demonstrated in the same upcoming October 25 issue of TV Guide Magazine.
Another revolutionary aspect of the new 3-D process used for “Rach’s Halloween Bash in 3-D” is the way the 3-D was made, allowing completion in a short time at a reasonable cost. Normally, 3-D shows can either be shot directly in 3-D using special expensive 3-D camera rigs operated by specialists with expertise in 3-D stereography, or they can be shot in conventional 2-D video and then converted to 3-D using a complex and expensive computer-assisted process that requires scores of graphic artists working simultaneously to convert the video to 3-D, frame by frame. Such conversion of a single full-length movie, for instance, can take several months and cost from $5-15 million just for the 3-D conversion alone. In contrast, using 3-D Vision’s revolutionary patented “Auto-3-D” conversion process, the Rachael Ray 3-D episode took only 2 weeks to convert, utilizing only 3 computer operators, and was done at a fraction of the cost of conventional 3-D conversion.
Another advantage of this new “Auto-3-D” conversion process is that it can produce a more natural-looking 3-D experience than the conventional conversion methods, which often produce images that look like a series of flat cardboard-like planes. This occurs because, in the conventional 3-D conversion processes, the graphic artists assign depth values to various parts of the image based on their own guesses about depth within the frame. The “Auto-3-D” process, on the other hand, uses actual 3-D information present in 2-D video frames and automatically displays scene components at different depths based on the depth information in the original frames.
3-D Vision developed these revolutionary patented and patent-pending technologies over the last 5 years based on its research on how the human brain works and creates the experience of 3-D, as well as on optics and TV technology principles.
Source: 3-D Vision
