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Holographic Television and Optical Transistors

Posted by michael on from the moving-picture dept.

Radical Rad writes "This is based off an article from the American Chemical Society Journal and says that 3D TV may be less than a decade away due to an advance made at UCLA which allows portions of crystals to be brightened, darkened, and change colors in nanoseconds using electic and magnetic fields. Light passing through the crystals might then be used to project moving holographic images. The same crystalline material could also be used in optical computers and probably many other applications."

3 of 26 comments (clear)

  1. Projection, but what about camera tech? by PD · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Nice that we can forsee a way to project holographic images, but is there a corresponding idea for recording holographic images? Maybe the old fashioned stereo camera images would need to be processed into a hologram by a computer.

    --
    If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
  2. Well, it certainly by Snafoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...passes the Porn Test (as developed by some fellow Slashdotter whose handle I forget).

    Basically, the Porn Test says that unless a communications technology helps the dissemination of porn, it will fail. The applications of 3DTV to the adult entertainment industry are obvious, so the technology is bound to succeed.HDTV on the other hand (for instance) is much less useful, as most porn-watchers are too (ahem) busy to notice the higher resolution. So hold off with the $ until you see 3DTVs in Future Shop.

    "Junior! Stop trying to fondle the Wonderbra commercial!"

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    - undoware.ca
  3. It's Already Been Done... sort of by mfago · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yes, the image is a "virtual" image -- you would have to look though some sort of screen to see the image -- but it _would_ appear to "float" behind the screen.

    A hologram can be thought of as acting like a time-shifted "window" onto the scene recorded. If a true full-spectrum hologram was created the light you would see from the hologram would be "exactly" as if you were looking through a window at the subject.

    I would think this would work similarly (as stated above), except the different frames would be electronically created in real time. Electronically created colograms are nothing new, but the resolution required is staggering.

    I took my optics class at U. Michigan from one of the "fathers" of holography. He showed us some large holograms created in the former USSR that were truly amazing.

    He also told us that in the former USSR they made "true" 3D movies by recording holograms of different scenes on a several square-meter piece of film, varying the reference beam angle between frames. By then scanning the reference beam through these same angles in the "theater" the audience looking through the film "screen" would see the movie.