The 3D train has left the station. And as a result, standards bodies, consortiums, associations and all other industry bodies are working feverishly to lay the tracks in front of this fast moving train. At CES, the 3D @ Home Consortium held a member and industry meeting to provide updates from a number of key industry players. This included activities in the 3D @ Home Consortium, SMPTE, DVB, HDMI and the Blu-ray Disc Association. Below are a few of the highlights from the speakers and their dialog at this meeting. Full details will be published tomorrow in Insight Media’s special CES 3D Report.

Chris Chinnock
Senior Analyst and Editor
for Insight Media

Consortium Overview
Rick Dean, Chairman of 3D @ Home Consortium opened the meeting by providing a high-level overview of the consortium members (39 spread across Creation & Mastering; Distribution and Transmission; Display Systems; Proprietary Image Processing; Components, IC Equipment and Set Top Boxes; and Labs and Government Organizations). The mission of the 3D @ Home Consortium is to speed the adoption of 3D to the home and as such, it seeks to identify areas of challenge and address those head on.

Organizationally, 3D @ Home Consortium is a not-for-profit entity with a board of directors. Management and other services are provided by Flextech Alliance and Insight Media, who also serve on the Board as non-voting members. There are currently four steering teams focused at various areas of the 3D market.

Steering Team 1 - Quality 3D Content
ST1 recently posted documents created by an A list of world-class stereographers (Jim Cameron, Rob Engle, Ray Hannisian, Bernard Mendiburu, Andrew Oliver and Ray Zone) on the 3D @ Home website. This document describes their top 10 recommendations for creating quality 3D. Shapiro also described new projects the committee is considering, including evaluation of 3D content and recommendations for the carriage of metadata in the distribution channel.

Steering Team 2 - 3D Transmission, Distribution and Storage
One of the major accomplishments of this group was the release of a document describing the requirements for an uncompressed interface for 3D content distribution within the home. This document was requested by and delivered to the CEA as part of their standardization efforts. ST2 is now working on creating a series of white papers to help inform the industry about various aspects of 3D transmission and distribution. Other projects with MPEG and DVB, CableLabs and SCTE are in development.

Steering Team 3 - Promotion and Education
For CES, ST3 produced a Guide to 3D at CES brochure. This was updated following the opening press releases and was posted on-line for journalists and media to use in navigating all the 3D activity at CES. Previously, ST3 has issued press releases promoting some of the work product of the consortium and negotiated exhibition deals with a number of large and small 3D events in 2010. Currently, the team is working on a new initiative called the Consumer Choice Campaign, which will be the group’s first action to help educate consumers about 3D.

Steering Team 4 - 3D Displays
ST4 has released a 3D family tree poster that was developed via consensus with consortium and industry companies and will become part of the new 3D display test procedure documentation being issued by the International Committee on Display Metrology (ICDM). This poster is also available on Amazon.com and was also bundled with an issue of the SMPTE Journal last Fall. ST4 has also supported a request from CEA to develop a database of active and passive 3D glasses. This was delivered to CEA to support their efforts around standardization in this area, and additional work requests have now been received from CEA that require ST4 activity. This committee has also been active in writing white papers that are posted on the public part of the website. Expect more soon.

SMPTE 3D Standards Update
SMPTE representative, Pete Lude, described how a 3D task force issued requirements for a 3D Home Master last April. Now, the next phases will focus on refining the requirements into technical standards. In particular, the group is focusing on file formats, electrical interfaces, depth representation ad compression. Work got underway in November 2009 with the effort being chaired by Ted Szpulski of ESPN. There are over 100 participants and two face-to-face meetings have already occurred. There are four sub-groups: Image content; graphics overlay; metadata; and subtitles/captions.

DVB on 3D
Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) started a task force to look at 3D in November 2008. Its first report took a broad view of 3D looking at the future in 5 to 10 years. Current activity is more focused on the roll out of 3D commercial requirements now. It held its first meeting on January 27 in Geneva, Switzerland. Activity seems to be focusing on similar areas as SMPTE such as transport issues, metadata, 2d/3D signaling, codecs and subtitles/captions. The work effort is organized into two sub-groups. DVB-CM-3DTV will look at the commercialization issues while DVB-TM-3DTV will be a technical module looking more at standards requirements.

3D Over HMDI
Steve Venuti, the President of HDMI Licensing, reviewed the key features of the new HDMI interface, including support for 3D signaling. To be fully HDMI 1.4 compliant, display devices are required to support two mandatory 3D formats: 720p/60 per eye and 1080p/24 per eye (plus 50Hz versions). Source devices must support at least one of these mandatory formats. There are a number of additional optional formats that can be supported and these are listed in Appendix H of the proprietary specification.

Since the 3D market is moving quickly, HDMI said it would add the over/under (top/bottom) configuration to its list of optional formats. In addition, it will allow providers of set top boxes and other devices to not support the mandatory 3D formats. This will allow delivery of 3D content in a frame compatible over/under or side-by-side format, but vendors can’t call their solution "3D over HDMI compliant." However, since cable and other pipeline operators need to use existing set top boxes to deliver 3D in 2010, this was a compromise action that allowed them to offer 3D to their customers.

Devices with HDMI 1.3 connectors that allow firmware upgrades can be configured to support 3D signaling.

3D on Blu-ray
Dolby’s Guido Voltolina, represented the Blu-ray Disc Association, and told attendees that the spec has been finalized and that a 3D disc will play in any existing Blu-ray player. If it is connected to a 2DTV, the content will playback in 2D. If connected to a 3DTV, a logo will identify this 3D compatibility and the player will output in a format that the TV can accept for display of the 3D content. Voltolina said the first 3D capable Blu-ray players should be in the market this spring. The BDA has decided it will not support so-called frame compatible formats such as side-by-side or over/under.

Other Announcements
During the discussion period, SES announced that they now have 3 satellite transponders and 20 H.264 encoders that it is making available to the industry to use, test and optimize 3D broadcasts. These satellites have US coverage, so this is a good opportunity for some players in the industry. This was scheduled to be available now.

In addition, CableLabs announced that they had begun a new program to open up their labs to industry, at no charge, to do 3D component interoperability and compatibility testing. This is also a great way for manufacturers like set top box makers to check compatibility with all types of AV receivers and 3DTVs to be sure there are no connection issues.