Jack,
You asked, <Does anyone know the patent number to verify?>
When I was reading the SEC filings on this company, the question about the patents did not cross my mind. It's an excellent question so I went searching to see what I could find. The only patent listed under the company's name on the site you quoted is clearly not related to 3D broadcasting --> "Combined checkbook and information register (USD0364421)" --> but to the "original" company's business.
The company's web site --> 3d.com
makes it look like copyrighted software & trademarks were acquired as part of their acquisition of Strata, Inc. earlier this year but doesn't clear up the patent question.
I did not find the patent number but I did find an early "review" of the 3D broadcast product here -->Daily Stereoscopic 3D News
stereo3d.com
I had to scroll down quite a bit to find the parts related to 3DCom dated in March, 1999 & Jan, 1999:
March 26, 1999: IC3Dstereo3D satellite television channel on the air!
Here's what one of the first viewers has to say:
'Well, the C-band satellite 3D station is now broadcasting... sort of. The station
is now running pure analog (not even audio scrambling), and I think they
won't bother to scramble until (if ?) the number of viewers or cable companies
forces them to. Really, it's only doing more testing for 'calibration'. They are playing
one film, a '97 comedy/horror film, The Creeps, shot in 3D, repeatedly with
their infomercial. If you wait 'til the infomercial is over (it has been updated
a bit) you see the movie. The 3D is quite credible (normal glasses flicker,
expected at 30/60 Hz), but the movie isn't great, unless you like that sort of thing.
When real features are planned, they will be scheduled at www.3d.com. They
have added some very nice effects that will be before each 'feature', quite
reminiscent of some of the SciFi channel's intros, but in 3D-- very nice.
They also put in a filler for Terminator II 3D, a VR ride going in at Universal
studio (3-70mm screens at high frame rate in 3D... that ought to be worth
seeing... for 12 minutes), but that was NOT 3D, only the 'pseudo 3D' from pixel
shifting on the fields, which worked very well with this sort of action... the reason
for their choice. Now if they have reasonable programming.... I called them
again, I now know their wireless glasses are made in Canada (now who could
that be?), and they have a bunch of contracts with Realeyes. They appear to
be properly bankrolled. Pity they couldn't have gone MPEG-2 with a framerate
of say 90 Hz, but beggars can't be choosers. I bit (I really do support even
off-the-wall efforts) and popped for $399 US for a box with two pair of wireless
glasses and the pseudo 3D enhancement for normal video, and true 3D for
the real thing. They had a $179 box with real 3D (no pseudo) and wireless
glasses, and a $249 box with both pseudo and real with wired glasses (not
good glasses... they hurt) as well. That's why I can so easily give the review.'
Larry Elie
Some notes from stereo3d.com:
C-3D/Chequemate the company behind the 3D-television channel is known for it's Fake3D-TV-shutterglasses systems. They already bought a large bunch of 2D-movies for their 3D-channel. They plan to convert them to 3D, i.e. turn water into wine.
Currently they air in analogue field-sequential stereo3D-format. They can't easily switch to digital broadcast, since MPEG2 isn't compatible with field-sequential 3D. In order to use MPEG2 for stereo they would have to use above-below format or something similar, like the TriDVD-products. This would cause many problems, since the format must be converted to work on standard TV-sets. For the same reason - compatibility with standard TV-sets - they are not able to raise the refresh rate over the 60 Hz barrier which causes heavy flicker.
January 24, 1999: 3D-Television channel announced
(there was a picture of the device & the glasses also)
This news comes far too late, but I just saw this November 98 press-release from C-3D. C-3D is
the company behind the Chequemate C-3D digital 'fake-3D' TV-shutterglasses system.
They have plans for a digital satelite 3DTV- and data-channel in IP format for spring 99. They already rent a satelite channel.
Looks like they developed a set-top box for digital TV, Internet-surfing and 3D.
From the text in the press-release I can't determine what their plans are in terms of 3D-technology.
I can say that much: In order to stay compatible to current TV-sets they have to stick to the technical
specifications of television systems, which means 60 Hz (NTSC) and 50 Hz (PAL) refresh.
No digital set-top box can do something about this. You can't feed a TV set with higher refreshs,
not even over the RGB-input (Scart). Well you can squeeze your lemmon a bit and drive a modern PAL TV at 60 Hz and a
newer NTSC-TV maybe at 70 Hz. This is within tolerance.
We are chained to this specification. No magic tricks possible here.
I think a 50/60 Hz shutterglasses system isn't suitable for the mass-market.
There are 2 ways out of this dilemma
- use a PC or at least a PC-monitor connected to the set-top-box for higher refresh.
or
- use anaglyph-shutterglasses
The still unreleased anaglyph-shutter technology is supposed to eliminate flicker even at refresh
rates as low as 50 or 60 Hz. This would revolutionize the shutterglasses technology and would make
3D-TV possible. Products like the Nu-View camcorder adaptor would make real sense for the first time.
Actually the anaglyph-shutters don't eliminate flicker. They replace brightness-flicker by color-flicker.
The human visual system is far less vulnerable to color-flicker.
BTW anaglyph shutter technology provides full-color images and are very different than traditional
red-blue/red-green anaglyph glasses. They're shutterglasses afterall. |
