The DVB Steering Board has announced the approval of the Commercial Requirements for a second DVB 3DTV delivery system. Termed “Service Compatible”, the second system is a solution required by content deliverers that enables the 2D and 3D versions of a programme to be broadcast within the same video signal, so that new 3D televisions and next-generation STBs can receive high 3D programmes, while consumers with existing 2D HDTV receivers and set-top boxes can watch a high-quality 2D version. This 2D picture will probably be either the left or right frame of the 3D “stereo pair”.
Earlier this year, in February, the DVB Steering Board has approved the specification for a first phase DVB 3DTV delivery system (Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB); Frame Compatible Plano-Stereoscopic 3DTV (DVB-3DTV) BlueBook). This system was developed for broadcasters and content deliverers needing a system that works with the already existing HDTV receivers, provided they are used together with a compatible 3D display. This approach, termed “Frame Compatible”, is now a principal system in use for DVB 3DTV delivery throughout the world when talking about 3D TV channels. However the level of quality provided by this “compatibility” solution for 3D TV channels could be further improved using a new standard and new hardware providing better image quality and higher resolution.
For convenience, this second approach is termed DVB-3DTV “Phase 2a”. The Commercial Requirements should shortly be available as a “BlueBook” on the DVB website for everyone interested in more details. The DVB Technical Module has been asked to complete the preparation of the specification for Phase 2a before the end of summer 2012. Phase 2a will provide additional opportunities for 3DTV services, complementing the first specification, which is referred to now for convenience as 3DTV Phase 1. The DVB is also taking into account the requirements of content deliverers wanting to continue the use of a Phase 1 signal, but wish to provide additional information to improve the image quality for those with “new” receivers. This may result is a Phase 2b specification in due time.
Neil Schneider from MTBS3D has pointed out something quite interesting, regarding the upcoming Hockey Night in Canada that will be broadcasted in stereo 3D too. Namely the fact that the broadcast will be in Side by Side format, but not all of the 3D HDTVs out there have the option to activate the stereoscopic 3D mode (automatically or manually) if the currently selected video input is not an HDMI one. And as you probably know HDMI output is a more recent addition to the Set-Top-Boxes, so older models will most likely be only equipped with analog Composite or Component video outputs and yo might not be able to activate the 3D mode due to that fact if your TV set only supports 3D over HDMI. You can of course choose to get a replacement unit that has an HDMI output if you have a broadcast that is going to be in 3D and want to be able to watch it, but what will happen if you figure it out at the last moment and you have no time to make things work. Another possible issue can be present even if you have a newer Set-Top-Box that does have HDMI output, but you haven’t been using that as the image quality seems the same even over the Component connection and you don’t have an HDMI cable handy. But you can much easily go out and quickly find an HDMI cable in the nearest electronics shop and thus solve the possible issue you may encounter with this.
So here comes a question and something that I want to ask owners of 3D-capable television sets to try on their devices, so that we can help other users that may be facing the issue described above as well as maybe even help 3D HDTV manufacturers to consider fixing that issue where it is present with a system software update for their products. So do try to activate the 3D mode in Side by Side or Over/Under mode manually when you switch the TV to use input from a connector other than any of the HDMI ports available – try the component, composite, SCART if you have them present and report your findings in the comments below. Please provide the brand and the model of the 3D TV you have and if you could activate manually the 3D mode or not…
After trying the Panasonic 3D HDTV (TX-P50VT20E) with the latest DDD TriDef software with no success in making the TV work with stereo 3D content from the PC, I’ve decided to switch to iZ3D. And I was not even sure if the iZ3D Driver actually does have support for working with 3D HDTVs using HDMI 1.4(a)’s frame packing through AMD’s video driver.The reason for that is due to the fact that they don’t clearly state that and the naming convention of their stereo 3D outputs in the driver is not helping for that at all. But after some discussion about it here and going through the iZ3D forums I saw people confirming that the driver has the support and should work, so back again to the testing…
Unfortunately after a few hours spent in making sure everything is right – reinstalling video drivers with the latest Catalyst 10.10c, the latest iZ3D Driver 1.12 build 4016, trying with different cables and cable adapters there was still not luck in making things work the way the should. The closest thing was kind of making them act as they should, but not exactly as you can see in the video above. I’ve managed to get the same results as with the TriDef Ignition software – the picture is there, you can see some depth of the objects on screen when wearing the glasses, but there is annoying flicker and artifacts all over the screen making it totally unusable in this state.
As you can see from the video the driver shows “ATI Presenter”, which means that it is using the Quad buffer support which in turn should mean that the sync should be perfect and everything should be working just fine, however it is not. Note in the video that even before activating the stereo 3D mode the on-screen image is having the same strange behavior, just no 3D, and after activating the 3D mode the FPS counter still shows 120 fps in the game which is kind of strange… shouldn’t it be 24 or maybe 48, after all this is in the 1080p/24Hz? After switching to 720p resolution from the game to ensure support for 60/120 fps the strange behavior of what is being displayed on the screen is still not gone – the artifacts and flashing are still there. So still no luck with the AMD HD3D technology in terms of support for my Panasonic 3D HDTV, and the problem is that I’ve only seen a lot of complaints from other people trying to make their 3D HDTVs work too. But since both iZ3D and DDD have the same issue I’m starting to think that they are not at fault here (although they can improve in a few areas too), but the actual problem lies withing AMD’s Catalyst driver that probably needs an urgent update or yet another hotfix to resolve the issue.
