‘Surreal’ experience in 3D

TECHNOLOGY developer Dynamic Digital Depth, also known as DDD, has expanded the scope of its five-year licence agreement with Samsung.

The South Korean electronics giant currently holds about 90 per cent market share of all 3D TVs and will continue to use DDD’s TriDef real-time 2D-to-3D conversion technology across a range of products.

Under the new arrangements, while DDD will receive a lower royalty rate per unit provided to Samsung, this will be levied on a significantly increased volume of product.

DDD was founded in Perth in 1993 and listed on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market in 2002.

The company began developing 3D software for use in mobile devices and then more widely accepted notebook applications (for Sharp and Acer) before focusing on 3D TV, which is finding growing acceptance following the uptake and popularity of 3D cinema in the mainstream market.

Two of the world’s leading display market research firms, DisplaySearch and Displaybank, forecast the worldwide 3D TV market to grow from 700,000 units and $902 million in revenues in 2008 to 196 million units and $22 billion in revenues in 2018.

DDD chief technology officer Julien Flack has been responsible for much of the innovative image analysis and research work that forms the basis of DDD’s 2D-to-3D image conversion technologies.

He described a recent trip to Korea as “a surreal experience”.

“Driving round and every billboard has got 3D TV on it and they’ve got ads on the TV and I’m just going ‘geez, I’ve been doing this for 10 years and never thought it would come to this’,” Mr Flack said.

“It’s kind of whacky isn’t it? It freaks us out that we’re in Samsung TVs; how good is that?”