BRISTOL, CONN.: Frame-compatible distribution is the 3DTV delivery method du jour, but ESPN would like to step it up.Executives at ESPN are looking into delivery discrete left/right eye HD feeds to their programming distributors, according to John Moulding over at VideoNet.
Content produced in 3D is captured in those discrete left/right eye views, and often sent back to a broadcast operations center that way. Discrete JPEG2000-compressed views were sent from stadiums to the International Broadcast Centre during the summer’s 2010 FIFA World Cup soccer games. ESPN is likewise doing contribution in discrete views, Moulding said.
However, the material encoded into an MPEG-2 HD SDI frame-compatible output for delivery to cable and satellite operators. Frame-compatible delivery is preferred because it works with infrastructures equipped for HD without further transcoding. ESPN’s senior director of technology, Jon Pannaman, told Moulding that the network wants to deliver discrete left/right eye views as soon as it becomes “practical.” That way, the distributors can decide if they want to transmit frame-compatible side-by-side views, or a more advance format.
Moulding’s full post is at VideoNet.
