NDS has established and maintained its position as a market leader by always being ahead of the curve. The TV business has changed radically over the past 20 years, and NDS has consistently anticipated the changes, providing its customers with the technologies they need to take full advantage of new business opportunities.

That was true of the transition from analogue to digital pay-TV, from linear TV to time-shifting and from SD to HD. It remains true as the TV industry approaches its next major inflexion point: the commercial introduction of three-dimensional (3D) TV in the home.

There is wide consensus in the industry regarding the importance of 3D TV. Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of Dreamworks, has called it "the single most revolutionary change since colour pictures." Brian Lenz, Head of Product Design and Innovation at Sky, has said publicly that "there is a very good chance you'll see the London Olympics in 3D."

3D adds depth to video

Put simply, 3D is the addition of depth to video, providing a realistic, three dimensional viewing experience. As depth is a function of synchronised viewing by both eyes, 3D normally involves the filming of an image by two or more cameras and the synchronised projection of that output.

3D is not new. It dates back to the beginnings of photography in the mid-19th Century and has popped up periodically over the years. But it has never become a mainstream technology – until now.

Technological developments, primarily digitisation and HD, have made the delivery of 3D video to a mass audience both viable and increasingly cost-effective. There are already over two thousand screens in the US capable of projecting 3D digital cinema and all the major studios are already producing movies in 3D format. "In 2010, we expect to see a fair amount of movement in the 3D space," said Darcy Antonellis, President of Warner Bros. Technical Operations in a recent interview.

For the movie industry to cover the additional costs of producing content in 3D – estimated at about 15% above the cost of a non-3D movie - home distribution will have to be part of the business model. A significant percentage of the studios' traditional ROI comes from broadcast TV. Without that income, 3D production will not be cost-effective.

3D TV challenges

The major challenge of 3D TV is in packaging, encoding/decoding and broadcasting high definition 3D streams for simultaneous display on a wide variety of screens – without any loss of resolution, colour or quality.

There are two formats that need to be considered. The Delivery Format is for the delivery of the video from the broadcaster to the STB, and the Presentation Format for the transfer of the content from the STB and its display on the TV.

Neither of the formats has been standardised as yet, though a number of organisations are currently defining parameters as a first step towards standardsation. These include the SMPTE, the ITU, the Consumer Electronics Association, DVB and ISO/MPEG. MVC (Multiview Video Coding) for example, is an amendment to the MPEG-4 part 10 (AVC) video compression standard that enables efficient encoding of sequences captured simultaneously from multiple cameras using a single video stream.

While the techniques of creating 3D video are well understood, there are still many challenges in delivering and presenting them on the TV screen

When it comes to presentation formats, TV manufacturers have opted for four different technologies:

• Frame interleave, using shutter glasses (which have lenses that open and close in rapid succession, exposing each eye to the appropriate frame)
• Checkerboard (or pixel interleave) also using shutter glasses;
• Line interleave, using polarised glasses;
• Autostereoscopic, which does not require glasses.

Only frame interleave, which is used by Panasonic, provides full HD (1920x1080) resolution. Samsung and Mitsubishi use checkerboard, while Hyundai, JVC and Samsung use line interleave. Philips, the only major TV vendor using an autostereoscopic display, recently shut down its 3D Display Division without explanation. It is assumed that autostereoscopic displays are too expensive for consumers at this stage.

NDS' objective is to provide advanced 3D digital video recorder (DVR) technology with support for up to full 1080P HD per eye. The goal, according to Yossi Deutsch, VP Business Development, is to show a 3D-enabled DVR at IBC 2009. Concurrently, NDS is looking into the implications of 3D for Conditional Access and DRM, EPGs, on-screen displays, subtitles and trick modes.

Until 3D DVRs and TVs are widely deployed, interim solutions are likely to be required. These could entail 3D upgrades for existing STBs and some lower resolution technologies which can work on existing legacy boxes. These are being assessed by the NDS 3D Lab at the company’s R&D centre in Jerusalem.

The lab's current activities primarily involve the identification and evaluation of 3D technologies from companies such as TDVision, Sensio, DDD and RealD. It is also in discussion with leading chip manufacturers such as Broadcom, ST Microelectronics, Intel and Horizon.

With revenue from 3D TV display sales projected to grow by 95% annually, from $140 million in 2008 to $15.8 billion in 2015, 3D TV is likely to be big business in years to come and NDS is planning to be a leader in this space.