好莱坞制片商呼吁制定3DTV的接口标准，HDMI当仁不让

好莱坞一家制片商的高级执行官表示，工业界需要开发一种新的数字接口技术来为立体3D内容在电视上播放铺平道路。派拉蒙(Paramount)的首席技术官Alan Bell在数字好莱坞大会上接受EE Times采访时表示：“要让3DTV得以实现，需要同时传输左右通道和新增的数据通道的视频，这个接口的定义对工业界来说是第一优先级的，并且是通向未来的桥梁。”

如今的高分辨率多媒体接口(HDMI)应该是这个链接的一个很好的方案，Bell表示，尽管他还不清楚需要多少额外的工作。定义HDMI接口的Silicon Image公司并没有立即对此做出评论。

Bell称，没有这个接口的话，产业在近期可能要接受一个没有更好的针对未来的技术的方案了。媒体公司希望尽快看到一个3DTV的标准，这样可以将他们在立体影院里面的3D内容尽快地扩展到电视市场，然而3DTV技术目前来说还是不成熟的。

Bell说：“考虑远期的潜力和近期的利益都是十分重要的。”

其他要考虑的因素

另一位不愿透露姓名的好莱坞制片商高级技术官说：“我所担心的是会有许多针对3DTV的短期的技术出现，而这些技术你并不想长期采用。”

“现在关注标准已经不算早了，但(3DTV)技术还处在幼年阶段。”他补充道。

Bell说：“这将会有一场标准之战。”Bell曾经是IBM的光存储工程师，并助力定义了DVD标准。

然而，他也提到与DVD和蓝光格式的情况不同，还没有大的公司声称强力支持某种3DTV技术。目前有一些小公司具备产生立体3D图像的技术，他们中的一些比如RealD Cinema，已经在影院中采用自己的技术。

Bell说，“短时间内，聚焦于某一种特点的技术也许才是对的。”

一些行业协会，包括活动图像专家组、电视工程师协会和蓝光光盘协会都在努力看他们能不能起草3DTV的标准。

“蓝光有可能成为首个传播3DTV的平台，因为其本身就可以携带3D信息，”Bell表示，“一些技术让3DTV看起来像一个单数据流的视频，所以需要蓝光做的额外工作不多。”

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Studio exec calls for 3DTV interface

The industry needs to develop a new digital interface for televisions to pave the way for stereoscopic 3-D content, said a senior executive at a Hollywood studio.

"To make 3DTV future proof, there needs to be a digital interface capable of carrying left and right eye images and an additional data channel," said Alan Bell, chief technology officer of Paramount Studios. "It should be the industry's first priority to create such an interface to act as a bridge to the future," he added in an interview with EE Times at the Digital Hollywood conference here.

Today's High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) interconnect could be a good starting point for such a link, said Bell, although he said he was not aware of any specific work on the concept. Silicon Image, the company that licenses the technology for HDMI, was not immediately available for comment.

Without such an interface, the industry could adopt a 3DTV technology in the short term that has no upgrade path to better technologies that may emerge in the future, said Bell. Studios want to see a standard for 3DTV soon to expand the market for the stereo 3-D content they are creating for theaters, however the technology for 3DTV is still immature, he noted.

"It's important to think about both the long term potential and the short term opportunity," Bell said.

Others echoed his concern.

"What I worry about is there are a lot of short term technology fixes [for 3DTV] that may not be what you want to live with in the long term," said a top technology executive with another Hollywood studio who asked not to be named.

"It's not too early to talk about what the standards might be, but the [3DTV] technology is still in its infancy," he added.

"We could have a format war," said Bell, a former optical storage researcher at IBM who helped define the DVD standard.

However, he noted that unlike the situation with DVD and Blu-ray format wars, few large corporations have deep stakes in any particular 3DTV technology yet. Currently a handful of mainly small companies have technology for producing stereo 3-D images, some of them such as RealD Cinema (Beverly Hills), currently in use in theaters.

"In the short term, it would be good if we could converge on a single spec," Bell said.

A number of groups including the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and the Blu-ray Disc Association are exploring whether they want to draft 3DTV standards.

"Blu-ray is likely to be the first medium to deliver 3DTV because it is self contained," said Bell "Some of the technologies today make 3-D look like a single stream of video, so Blu-ray would need to do very little work," he added.