Cable Television Laboratories (CableLabs), a non-profit R&D consortium, has announced the publication of a new specification for producers and others involved in 3DTV content. “Content Encoding Profiles 3.0 Specification (Specification (OC-SP-CEP3.0-I01-100827),” provides details of the requirements for formatting or “panelizing” 3D content into a frame-compatible format for cable television systems.
“This new CableLabs specification was developed with support from cable operators, programmers and equipment vendors and will be publicly available for any industry to use,” said Paul Liao, CableLabs president and CEO.
The new document replaces a previous video-on-demand spec, building on the 2D coding framework set forth in the earlier document. It is intended to be used as a reference for both 2D and 3D CATV formats.
“A key part of this specification includes the definitions for signaling 3D content over existing digital video infrastructure that uses either MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 (AVC/H.264) coding,” said Jim Occhiuto, Showtime Networks’ vice president of technology and engineering. “This signaling is critical for the receiver/decoder to enable automatic format detection and simplified user experiences when going between 2D and 3D programs.”
Cable Television Laboratories was founded in 1988 by members of the cable television industry. The new specification can be found at the organization’s website, under OpenCable Specifications (PDF).
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