A 3D-TV system based on video plus depth information

This paper presents details of a system that allows for an evolutionary introduction of depth perception into the existing 2D digital TV framework. The work is part of the European Information Society Technologies (IST) project "Advanced Three-Dimensional Television System Technologies" (ATTEST), an activity, where industries, research centers and universities have joined forces to design a backwards-compatible, flexible and modular broadcast 3D-TV system. At the very heart of this new idea is a novel data representation format, which consists of monoscopic color video and associated per-pixel depth information. From these data, one or more "virtual" views of the 3D scene can be synthesized in real-time at the receiver side by means of so-called depth-image-based rendering (DIBR) techniques. After describing the basics of this new approach on 3D-TV, this paper will focus on (a) the efficient generation of high-quality "virtual" stereoscopic views and (b) the backwards-c ompatible compression and transmission of 3D imagery using state-of-the-art MPEG tools.