Update: Mobile3DTV @ NEM Summit

Mobile3DTV participated successfully in this year's NEM Summit in Saint Malo, France. After we had presented our first DVB-H stereo video streaming system last year, we informed about our user studies this year.

We demonstrated our current work on optimizing the mobile 3DTV system through different user studies along the production chain. The visitors at our booth were able to experience real test scenarios. They watched the original test items of our coding study or were able to get information about different transmission artifacts.

Additionally,we informed about our view on user-centered quality evaluation and introduced our Open Profiling of Quality method.


A short coverage of us can be found in ICT Results' report. Thanks to all who visited our booth. Thanks for your interest and your fruitful feedback and discussions. CU next year at NEM Summit in Nantes.
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Quality of Experience (QoE) - Current standardization activities

The assessment of the Quality of Experience (QoE) has become more important in audiovisual quality assessment and MOBILE3DTV has started to evaluate user experience for mobile 3D television and video. Within standardization bodies the topic of Quality of Experience has been included into standardization activities. The goal of ETSI HF STF 354 (Specialist Task Force 354 within the Human Factors Group of ETSI) is to provide requirement guidelines for real-time multimedia services aiming at providing a good QoE. Goal is to provide objective and subjective measures of user experience for given communication situations, service prescriptions and levels of QoS [1]. The guidelines as the expression of measure are available in ETSI EG 202 534 [2] and ETSI TR 102 535 [3].

Within the International Telecommunication Union ITU standardization activities towards QoE are targeted in ITU-T SG12, the lead study group on quality of service and quality of experience within the ITU. Goal of ITU-T SG12 to be able to a) measure quality parameters in next generation networks and b) measure their impact on QoE. The challenge of providing good QoE for new multimedia systems is study item of question Q13/12 “QoE, QoS and performance requirements and assessment methods for multimedia including IPTV”. Main study items are the relation of end-user requirements to system parameters and to identify simple and efficient analysis techniques to measure and monitor QoE. All results will be included into the development of new recommendations.

References:

1. Brooks, P., Hestnes, B., Heiestad, S., Aaby, C. (2006). “Communicating Quality of Experience data for the development of multimedia services”. Proceedings of the 20th International Symposium on Human Factors in Telecommunication, Sophia Antipolis, France, March 21-23 2006, (available from http://www.hft.org/HFT06/HFT_06_programme.htm).
2. ETSI EG 202 534: "Human Factors (HF): Guidelines for real-time person-to-person communication services". ETSI Guide, 2007
   
3. ETSI TR 102 535: "Human Factors (HF): Guidelines for real-time person-to-person communication services; future requirements". ETSI Technical Report, 2007
   

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Mobile3DTV project invited to give two workshop talks

Researchers from the Project Mobile3DTV are invited to give some talks at 3D-related workshops:

• Dominik Strohmeier from Ilmenau University of Technology will give a talk at the 6th Salzburger Medientag 2009 on 18. September 2009. His talk "Mobile3DTV - Meet the Users" will cover the aspects of user needs and requirements of Mobile3DTV and their relevance for the user-centered development process of Mobile3DTV. All presentations at the Medientag will be given in German.
  

• Update: Satu Jumisko-Pyykkö from Tampere University of Technology will give a talk at 3D Media Workshop in Berlin organized by Heinrich-Hertz-Institut, Berlin, in joint collaboration with national and international research projects. The talk "User-centered quality of experience of Mobile3DTV" will target the new approaches of our research to form a holistic framework for QoE assessment. The workshop takes place from 15.-16. October 2009.
  

Feel free to meet us at one of the workshops.
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Nokia releases the source code of its MVC implementation

Nokia announced source code of their MVC codec based on their previous H.264/AVC baseline codec. Since it is baseline profile, only IPPP encoding structure can be used.

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Nokia announced today open availability of its MVC source code implementing H.264/MPEG-4 MVC, a leading multi-view video coding standard created jointly by the Telecommunication Standardization Sector of ITU and the Moving Picture Experts Group, MPEG of ISO/IEC. The source code is fully optimized for different uses in mobile devices and includes a player for the Maemo environment, making it easy for developers to take full advantage of the source code in an open, expandable ecosystem.

MVC is the newest addition to highly successful and widely deployed H.264/AVC family of video codecs serving multi-view and 3D video usage. It provides superior network robustness and compression performance for delivering 3D video by e.g. taking advantage of the inter-view dependencies of the different visual channels. In addition, its backwards compatibility with H.264/AVC codecs makes it widely interoperable in environments having both 2D and 3D capable devices.

Nokia acknowledges finalization of the MVC specification and is proud to contribute to the MVC community with this software release. "We are all very excited about this technology and the way it adds a whole new dimension to visual communication and entertainment. We hope this donation helps the developer community to take advantage of the full potential of the MVC technology and stimulates the creation of innovative applications and services", says Jyri Huopaniemi, Director of Nokia Research Center Tampere laboratory.

The software is available for download at: http://research.nokia.com/research/mobile3D. The implementation has also been showcased at Nokia World 2008 using a modified Nokia N800 device with an integrated auto-stereoscopic display for natural real-time 3D video playback.
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Mobile3DTV featured on on ICT Results - "A third dimension for mobile phones"

We are happy to announce that Mobile3DTV was featured on ICT Results. We would like to thank the ICT Results team for helping us to promote our project on the web. Here is an excerpt from the article; link to the full text is at the end.

Simulating the third dimension is something of a Holy Grail for cinema and television. The key advantage of 3-D film over the conventional two dimensions is the illusion of depth and the sense of ‘body’ the viewer experiences – as if the action is leaping out of the screen rather than occurring within it.
“The mobile market has always been much more dynamic and receptive to new technologies than the television market, as the whole idea of mobility is based on dynamism,” explains Atanas Gotchev, the scientific coordinator of the EU-funded Mobile3DTV project.
The story of 3-D television for mobile phones has been one punctuated by stops and starts. As early as 2003, Sharp launched a 3-D mobile phone in Japan and Korea’s SK Telecom launched a 3-D phone – from Samsung – in 2007, and Japan’s Hitachi just launched one in 2009. But the big challenges have been the paucity of content and coming up with a profitable business model. Apple’s iPhone also supports three-dimensional television, but can currently only be viewed with special glasses.
Mobile3DTV is developing the core elements of the next generation of three-dimensional television for mobile devices. “One major challenge is choosing the optimal format for representing 3-D video for mobile delivery,” Gotchev points out. The format should be adopted ideally by all industrial players to avoid a ‘formats war’, he suggests. For that reason, the project decided to build its system around the EU standard known as Digital Video Broadcasting – Handheld (DVB-H).
“Another challenge is to ensure a comfortable and enjoyable 3-D viewing experience," adds Gotchev. Mobile3DTV is employing so-called auto-stereoscopic displays, which produce 3-D images that do not require those awkward glasses to view them – which is good news for people who want to be incognito about their mobile viewing.
“Auto-stereoscopic displays use additional optical elements aligned on the surface of an LCD, to ensure that the observer sees different images with each eye,” explains Gotchev. “As mobile devices are normally watched by a single observer, two independent views are sufficient for satisfactory 3-D perception.”
“We have access to probably the most advanced 3-D portable display – one delivered by the Japanese giant NEC LCD,” says Gotchev.
Mobile3DTV is funded under the ICT strand of the EU’s Framework Programme for research.

Full text is available here:
http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults/index.cfm?section=news&tpl=article&BrowsingType=Features&ID=90580

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New section in our website makes it to span accross borders

We have added a new section to mobile3dtv.eu called "User studies". It discusses the subjective tests on stereo-video quality performed part of Workpackage 4. In order to evaluate the user experience while watching stereoscopic video, new assessment methods have been developed jointly in IMT in Germany and IHTE in Finland.
In a similar way, our website is now shared between different countries. While most of it is hosted in Tampere University of Technology in Finland, the new section resides in TU-Ilmenau in Germany. Since all sections share common navigation bar and have the same outlook, our visitors can seamlessly navigate through our website while roaming between different European servers.
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Mobile 3DTV on Youtube

We have prepared a couple of short movies about our project. The movies are available on our youtube channel, and also at http://mobile3dtv.eu/publicity, our publicity webpage. Currently there are two movies available, with more to come soon. We hope you like them!
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Project meeting in Saariselkä

Third Mobile3DTV project meeting was held in Saariselkä, in the Finnish Lapland, from 4th to 6th of April.

Representatives of all workpackages of the project met to discuss the progress of the project and to agree about a roadmap of workpackage interaction in the system development process. All work was inspired by the beautiful winter landscape of northern Finland.

The most important outcome of the project meeting is a roadmap that coordinates the work between the workpackages for the rest of the project. This roadmap is a result of a productive review meeting in Brussels and the comments given by the reviewers.

Beside the hard work of the meeting, the participants enjoyed the great winter in Lapland. Especially the 1200m long sledge slope was as good alternative to relax in meeting breaks.


The project meeting was a success for the project and the outcome of the meeting in combination with the developed roadmap will direct the project towards a successful second year.
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MOBILE3DTV at GSMA Mobile World Congers 2009 in Barcelona

MOBILE3DTV demonstration was presented at GSMA Mobile World Congers on 16-19 February 2009 in Barcelona (http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/). We presented the current state of the development on the project with very spectacular demonstration. Participants in the demonstration from MMSolutions site were Nikolay Daskalov – CEO, Radoslav Ibrishimov and Gjorgji Rosikopulos.

We shared some space at the OMAP zone with Texas Instruments, which are our long term partners in many projects, and exchanged few ideas and impressions from the congress . We also met few of the partners in the MOBILE3DTV project and discussed some new concepts about the evolution of the project. During the exhibition we had the opportunity to see the “beyond tomorrow” vision of the mobile technology. We also demonstrated our achievements in the mobile image capturing technology, such as 8MP camera framework, stereo-capture module, ect.

The kit for the demonstration was developed by MMSolutions. It was based on standard TI development platform, widely spread among the mobile application developers. The content was delivered by both MMSolutions and Tampere University of Technology. The videos were specially prepared for the congress, and were of a great interest for the visitors, who saw the demonstration.

We previewed the spectators the true 3-D effect and the possibility of implementing this future technology in multimedia mobile device. Every observer shared a positive opinion for the demonstration. They confirmed that they will keep an eye on the progress of the project in Internet with interest. Based on our observations and the conversations with every spectator of the demonstration, we think that all of them will be consumers of the device in future.

In the end we would like to thank all the visitors, interested in the project, for sharing their opinion about the demonstration. We would like also to thank Atanas Gotchev and Atanas Boev for helping us with the preparation of the content and the preparation of the brochures and ad materials. Special thanks to all the other participants in the project for their help in achieving this level of the technology.

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NEC provides 3.1'' 3D TFT LCD Module for Mobile3DTV terminal prototype

NEC LCD Technologies announced that it will provide samples of its 3.1-inch-diagonal 3D polysilicon thin-film-transistor (TFT) liquid crystal display (LCD) module for the MOBILE3DTV terminal prototype. The MOBILE3DTV prototype will be on public display at the Mobile World Congress 2009 (MWC2009), the world’s largest mobile technologies-related event, in Barcelona February 16– 19.

MOBILE3DTV is one of the projects funded by the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007–2013) in the context of its Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) Cooperation theme. The three-year project began in January 2008 and aims to demonstrate the feasibility of mobile 3D TV broadcasting.

The MOBILE3DTV terminal prototype is being developed by a project consortium partner, MM Solutions AD, and shall be displayed at the Texas Instruments booth (Hall 8, Booth 8A 84), which provides the prototype’s CPU.

A sample of the 3.1-inch diagonal LCD module with wide quarter video graphics array (WQVGA) resolution and excellent 3D picture image for bare-eyes viewing will also be displayed in cooperation with NEC Electronics in the NEC booth (Hall 8, Booth 8A 125).

The MOBILE3DTV terminal prototype is being featured at MWC2009 to demonstrate real-time decoding and displaying of 3D video content. The 3D LCD module has been adopted because of its wide viewing areas and high-performance display which features high-resolution 3D images based on NEC LCD Technologies’ unique horizontal double-density pixel (HDDP) system.

Looking forward, NEC LCD Technologies will continue to promote research and development in pursuit of practical uses and mass production of 3D LCDs.
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