VIDEO: Trioviz INFICOLOR – A Stop Gap Between 2D and 3D TV?

Jun 14, 2011 No Comments by Jonathan Tustain

In our continued coverage from Dimension 3 Paris, we look at the company TriOviz. Founded in 2008, they have developed a 3D processing system last year called INFICOLOR 3D – a ‘pre-treatment’ of an S3D image which becomes 3D when viewed through a special pair of compatible INFICOLOR 3D glasses.

From first impressions, the INFICOLOR 3D glasses look similar to traditional anaglyph 3D glasses but, talking from experience, viewing INFICOLOR 3D content during Dimension 3 was seriously impressive. I watched a demo reel from an INFICOLOR encoded Blu-ray on a regular 2D TV and, whilst there was a loss in colour quality, it was a very clear 3D image – certainly the best non active / passive 3D viewing method on the market right now.

In my personal opinion (and this probably would not be shared by many), I even preferred it to the active 3D system.

trioviz terra 3d 300x172 VIDEO: Trioviz INFICOLOR – A Stop Gap Between 2D and 3D TV? The benefits are obvious – it's very cheap and requires no hardware investment by the viewer. It can work with games and video content too plus it allows broadcasters and producers to experiment with 3D content while so few (estimated 200,000) 3DTVs have been sold in the UK market. However, that leads on to the disadvantage – there are not many Trioviz INFICOLOR 3D titles on the market right now, a situation Trioviz is addressing through its pursuit of partners such as game studios to convert existing computer games into 3D with the INFICOLOR 3D system.

Trioviz glasses are available in two varieties – the plastic framed durable variety and the cheap disposable variety made by American Fibre Optics. Both feature magenta and green filters which allow for “pleasant and natural colours”.

What is especially interesting is that there are three profiles or 'Forces' which varies the level of compromise between the color accuracy and level of 3D effect.

FORCE 1: provide the best colour perception with subtle and pleasant 3-D experience.

FORCE 2: provide a perfect compromise between colors and 3-D experience.

FORCE 3: provide the best 3-D experience with soft saturated and natural colors.

The Trioviz system is not a 2D to 3D conversion system and the image processing can only work with live action film that has already been produced in stereo 3D. A 90 minutes movie needs about two weeks to be processed.

It is difficult to judge whether there wil be a future in the Trioviz INFICOLOR 3D system when most new high end TVs will feature inbuilt 3D playback capability but the medium future should be bright, especially in emerging markets.