Two recent pioneering projects in Norway have delivered football to the home in stereoscopic 3D, by cable, satellite and online. Norwegian channel TV2 is leading the way on both games.
On 11 October Norwegian fans saw their national team beat Cyprus 3 – 1. TV2’s outside broadcast arm OB Team covered the game with five 3D cameras. T-VIPS JPEG2000 compression was used to get the signals from the Ullevaal stadium back to TV2, for transmission over satellite and cable by Canal Digital.
“The T-VIPS JPEG2000 gateway enables us to broadcast top quality 3D video content cost-effectively and provides advanced technology to sync the left and right eye pictures,” said John Inge Brattetveit, CTO of TV2.
To keep up interest in 3D, on 15 October TV2 offered the Manchester United v Liverpool game from the UK, this time converted in realtime using technology from Vizrt and SterGen High Tech. As well as being distributed over TV2’s IPTV outlets it was also available on the web.
According to Ofer Wolf, CEO of SterGen, “using smart and smooth transition of the 3D effect between different scenes, the viewing experience is kept as comfortable as possible. Our technology allows the broadcaster to create the right 3D effect to fit the different devices, as the optimal effect for a tablet or PC will differ from one suitable for large television screens.”
