Research group for Media, Innovation and Communication Technologies

3DTV2.0 - Preparing for the next generation of 3DTV applications

About

Stereoscopic 3D television is a reality. Television manufacturers, cable operators and production companies are betting on this technology and are launching devices and content on a large scale. Despite this enthusiasm, however, there are still myriad questions surrounding 3D content production and reception. How can we reduce the price of 3D content and improve its quality? Which format standards will prevail? How will the viewer react and adapt to this primarily technology‐ and market‐driven innovation? Which challenges and threats does 3DTV face? Are there any constraints associated with watching 3D images? Do people become tired more quickly? Do they suffer from headache? Do people mind wearing glasses to watch television? And finally, which possible additional applications can be rolled out on top of networked 3D television infrastructure and what is their perceived added value for users?

Research design

The goal of the 3DTV 2.0 project is to prepare for the next generation of stereoscopic 3DTV applications by improving capture and display technology, by building new applications such as 3D media sharing and gaming and by studying the 3D viewing/using/playing experience through lab experiments and in people’s natural environment, when available in a living lab setting.

MICT will be responsible for three research tasks:

The first package contains the identification of use cases, opportunities and potential bottlenecks of 3DTV. A longlist of ‘most likely 3DTV 2.0 opportunities’ will be assembled by means of a survey and stakeholder consultation. In addition, an applied ethnographic study concerning ten households will be deployed to measure user practices of relevant applications in 2D, and current experiences regarding 3D technology. These first research activities will lead to a set of user/social requirements and are also the first phase of the living lab approach; the contextualization phase.

In the second phase, three prototypes of stereoscopic 3D games will be iteratively tested in a lab setting. The goal of this phase is to provide game designers with feedback to improve the development process. Additional goals include the refinement of existing scientific methods for game experience measurement in terms of cost-effectiveness and the exploration of physiological measures as complements to subjective self-report measures and objective audio and video-based observation measures. Finally, the living lab approach will result in a comparative analysis between ‘classic’ 3D games and their stereoscopic counterparts. Supplementary to these lab tests, a longitudinal monitoring of households will be carried out to monitor user behavior in a real life context.

Another focus of the project, next to gaming, is the potential role of 3D in facilitating and enhancing a TV-mediated social community. MICT will conduct focus group interviews to discuss current practices of social networking, media sharing and gaming, as well as the possibilities of 3DTV applications to enhance these practices.

Finally, in third of the project, once the test users have become acquainted with 3D technology, and the demonstrators have been tested in an acceptable quality, a quantitative survey will be conducted to assess the market potential of the envisioned 3DTV 2.0 concepts. This will be done by means of the Product Specific Adoption Potential methodology and will result in a reliable estimation of adoption potential in terms of a segmentation forecast of the products potential innovators, early adopters, majority and laggards.

Publications

Bombeke, K., Van Looy, J., Szmalec, A., & Duyck, W. (2013). Leaving the third dimension: no measurable evidence for cognitive aftereffects of stereoscopic 3D movies. Journal of the Society for Information Display 21(4), 159-166. doi: 10.1002/jsid.164

Bombeke, K., Van Looy, J. (2013, 3-5 July). The development of a free stereopsis test for active shutter displays. Proceedings of the 5th international workshop on quality of multimedia experience, Klagenfurt am Wörthersee, Austria.

Duration of the project

The project runs from 01/02/2011 - 31/01/2013.


Staff involved

  • Prof. dr. Jan Van Looy
  • Lotte Vermeulen
  • Klaas Bombeke

Clusters

  • Media Production & Distribution
  • Gaming and Immersive Media Lab

Financed by

  • iMinds