Immersive HDTV

grape jelly writes: "The Electronic Times has a story on a German company developing a system called Interactive Virtual View Video (IVVV). The idea is to send a number of HDTV feeds to a set-top box which will be merged to provide a headset-wearing user the ability to change his/her viewing angle or even move around within the image."

Comments

Hrmm

[NitsujTPU]

Not to smack on such products, I can see the technological merit, the gimmick, and a few other things, but how would this enhance the television viewing experience?

I can hardly imagine walking around on stage during romeo and juliet and enjoying the experience any more than I already do.

Re:Hrmm

[cruelworld]

I imagine this will be as widely used as the multiple camera angle feature available on DVD's.

I can't imagine this working out

[donglekey]

It takes too many resources. Broadcasters already don't want to convert to HDTV because they want to broadcast more channels, not higher quality. History tells us that this will not work out. It is a chicken and egg problem before there is even HDTV. An interesting technology demostration, but it just won't work for the mainstream. Hopefully they are looking for alternative avenues, maybe even next-gen (after gamecube) video games?

Pamela and Tommy?

[garcia]

They really need to start sending out the Pamela/Tommy video over HDTV so that I can immerse myself in that ;-)

virtual sex and porn

[perdida]

This will make virtual participative pornography worthwhile. The 2-d aspects of pornography limit its utility for people who want something more realistic.

Of course, this will also enable more accurate virtual depictions of terrains which are susceptible to terrorist attack, so perhaps the NSA should ban it or bug it?

Porn only real use for it

[BIGJIMSLATE]

Okay, I can see porn as the ONLY useful way to use something like this.

Who the hell wants to "interact" with "Emeril", "The West Wing", or hell, "The View". Its not practical, its not useful, and it doesn't "enhance" the viewing pleasure any more. In fact, it would probably decrese it.

But I'd love to have something like this to watch porn on. Can't wait to see something like "Afro Whores" or "Cowboy Neal Gangbang" in something like this. ;)

Re:Porn only real use for it

[Howie]

How about travel, or most things you'd find on the Discovery channel?

Moving within the scene might not be so useful (or easy to implement outside), but a fully immersive view of lions on the serengheti or the Musee D'Orsai is something I'd like. Documentary TV could be much more involving.

The porn couldn't hurt either though.

Re:I'm not first,

[glitch!]

but it sure beaks smellovision.

I believe you are refering to Odorama. This was hyped as one of the innovations of the movie Polyester. When you went into the theater, you get a scratch-n-sniff card with about a dozen numbered dots. When you see the dot in the corner of the screen, you are supposed to scratch that dot and smell...

Naturally, to keep the surprise, the dot would show on the screen a few seconds before you knew what it was supposed to be. I remember air freshener, natural gas, natural gas, model airplane glue.

By the way, I do not recommend this film.

One channel at a time...

[Wag]

This is all great and everything, but I'm afraid it will be a hard sell.

Being that most cable networks won't even carry a single HDTV channel for eating into precious bandwidth for more important broadcasting (ie: multiple ppv and home shopping channels), it's really a moot point.