The newest developments in the industry comes from NHK, Japan’s public television company, which presented a technology for the transmission of 3D images that promises to keep the quality of vision from the user.The product is called Hybridcast and is, as the name implies, a hybrid drive system, which combines the traditional broadcast, such as broadcasting systems over the air digital terrestrial or satellite, streaming, with the aim of bringing the viewers content in Full HD 3D without loss of detail.
The starting point of NHK is simple: with the current methods of transmission of stereoscopic images in a frame with full HD resolution (1920 × 1080) must be contained in itself two different images, one for the right eye and an all ‘ left eye, then it follows that the resolution given to the stereoscopic vision is effectively halved, as the two sequences of images using the same data stream.
The idea of NHK provides instead of creating two different data streams, each intended to contain the sequence of images are dedicated to a well-defined eye. The two streams would be transported in different ways, creating a platform for hybrid transmission, which would see such images for the right eye be transmitted via digital terrestrial, while those for the left eye would arrive via Web streaming
This would make it possible to reach each eye frames in full resolution HD, creating a stereoscopic image without loss of definition and with significant improvements in terms of quality.
The idea is obviously under investigation, but it looks very interesting and potentially valid, although its effective implementation requires several steps, as the output of hybrid handsets fit for purpose and the need to have a network connection sufficiently stable and efficient in order to avoid any delays or blocks the stream causing a “lag” of the images that come to the two eyes, which must instead be totally synchronized.
