Italy gets second 3D TV channel
June 14, 2011
From Branislav Pekic in Rome
Città Digitali has become Italy’s second TV channel to broadcast in 3D on the occasion of the European Digital Television Forum being held in Lucca.
The project is backed by Lucca-based channel City Television, Sisvel Technology, CSP – Innovation in ICT (a research organization of the Piedmont Region) and SIM2 Multimedia (an Italian company active in the field of video projection, business applications and digital cinema).
Città Digitali is currently broadcasting part of its programming free-to-air in 3D, offering content related to art, architecture, cultural heritage, environment, leisure and regional food and wine.
Thanks to the innovative technology of encoding stereoscopic images, called 3D Tile Format, and backward compatibility of the images in 2D, Città Digitali will reach both viewers equipped with 2D full HD TV sets, as well as those with 3D TV sets, without having to double the bandwidth necessary for transmission.
The 3D Tile Format, allows the integration of two frames of 720 lines in a single frame with 1,080 lines. The left and right reconstructed images retain their original resolution, avoiding an imbalance of vertical or horizontal resolution. In this way the quality of the transmission of HD 3D content compared to current solutions (Side-by-Side or Top-Bottom) is significantly improved.
The project in Italy’s Tuscany region follows a similar one in Piedmont, dating back to December 2010.