Key technologies for an advanced 3D-TV system

This paper describes recent advances in a number of R&D areas that are believed to provide `key technologies' for the further development of a novel, digital, broadcast 3D-TV system. The provided results are part of the outcome of the European IST (Information Society Technologies) project ATTEST (Advanced Three-Dimensional Television System Technologies), a two-year research initiative that was finalized in March 2004. The paper covers essential parts of the envisaged 3D signal processing chain such as the real-time generation of ``virtual'' stereoscopic views from monoscopic color video and associated per-pixel depth information as well as the efficient compression and the backwards-compatible transmission of this advanced data representation format using state-of-the-art video coding standards such as MPEG-2 (color data) and MPEG-4 Visual, resp. Advanced Video Coding (depth data). Furthermore, the paper also describes the development of a new, autostereoscopic single-user 3D-TV display (Free2C). This novel, high-quality 3D device utilizes a lenticular lens raster to separate two individual perspective views, which are presented simultaneously on an underlying LC panel. To provide the user with a satisfying 3D reproduction within a sufficiently large viewing area -- still a major problem for many of the latest autostereoscopic 3D-TV displays -- the lenticular is constantly readjusted according to the viewer's actual head position, which is measured by a highly accurate, video-based tracking system. This approach allows for a variation of the viewing distance within a range of 400 mm to 1100 mm as well as for horizontal head movements within a range of about plus/minus 30°. The feasibility of the new 3D-TV concept is proved through extensive human factors evaluations of the before-described algorithms and components