MESSAGE
| DATE | 2008-10-07 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Real 3d Screens are coming
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By Mike Steere
For CNN
LONDON, England (CNN) -- Picture this: you're sat down for the Football
World Cup final, or a long-awaited sequel to the "Sex and the City"
movie and you're watching all the action unfold in 3-D on your coffee
table.
The future of television? This image is an impression of what 3D
holographic television may look like.
The future of television? This image is an impression of what 3D
holographic television may look like.
It sounds a lot like a wacky dream, but don't be surprised if within our
lifetime you find yourself discarding your plasma and LCD sets in
exchange for a holographic 3-D television that can put Cristiano Ronaldo
in your living room or bring you face-to-face with life-sized versions
of your gaming heroes.
The reason for renewed optimism in three-dimensional technology is a
breakthrough in rewritable and erasable holographic systems made earlier
this year by researchers at the University of Arizona.
Dr Nasser Peyghambarian, chair of photonics and lasers at the
university's Optical Sciences department, told CNN that scientists have
broken a barrier by making the first updatable three-dimensional
displays with memory.
"This is a prerequisite for any type of moving holographic technology.
The way it works presently is not suitable for 3-D images," he said.
The researchers produced displays that can be erased and rewritten in a
matter of minutes.
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To create television sets the images would need to be changing multiple
times each second -- but Peyghambarian is very optimistic this can
happen.
He said the University of Arizona team, which is now ten-strong, has
been working on advancing hologram technology since 1990 -- so this is a
major step forward. He believes that much of the difficulty in creating
a holographic set has now been overcome.
"It took us a while to make that first breakthrough, but as soon as you
have the first element of it working the rest often comes more rapidly,"
he said. "What we are doing now is trying to make the model better. What
we showed is just one color, what we are doing now is trying to use
three colors. The original display was four inches by four inches and
now we're going for something at least as big as a computer screen."
There are no more great barriers to overcome now, he said.
The breakthrough has made some long-time researchers of the technology
believe that it could now come to fruition.
Tung H. Jeong, a retired physics professor at Lake Forest College
outside Chicago who had studied holography since the 1960s told NJ.com;
"When we start talking about erasable and rewritable holograms, we are
moving toward the possibility of holographic TV ... It has now been
shown that physically, it's possible."
And what might these holographic televisions look like?
According to Peyghambarian, they could be constructed as a screen on the
wall (like flat panel displays) that shows 3-D images, with all the
image writing lasers behind the wall; or it could be like a horizontal
panel on a table with holographic writing apparatus underneath.
So, if this project is realized, you really could have a football match
on your coffee table, or horror-movie villains jumping out of your wall.
Peyghambarian is also optimistic that the technology could reach the
market within five to ten years. Peyghambarian is also optimistic that
the technology could reach the market within five to ten years. He said
progress towards a final product should be made much more quickly now
that a rewriting method had been found.
However, it is fair to say not everyone is as positive about this
prospect as Peyghambarian.
Justin Lawrence, a lecturer in Electronic Engineering at Bangor
University in Wales, told CNN that small steps are being made on
technology like 3-D holograms, but, he can't see it being ready for the
market in the next ten years.
"It's one thing to demonstrate something in a lab but it's another thing
to be able to produce it cheaply and efficiently enough to distribute it
to the mass market," Lawrence said.
Yet, there are reasons to be optimistic that more resources will be
channeled into developing this technology more quickly.
The Japanese Government is pushing huge financial and technical weight
into the development of three-dimensional, virtual-reality television,
and the country's Communications Ministry is aiming at having such
technology available by 2020.
Peyghambarian said there are no major sponsors of the technology at
present, but as the breakthroughs continued, he hopes that will change.
Even if no major electronics company commit themselves, there is hope
that backers could come from outside of the consumer electronics
industry, he said.
"It could have some other applications. In training it's useful to show
people three-dimensional displays. Also it would be good to show things
in 3-D for defense command and control and for surgery," he said.
--
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