The BBC is beta testing new holographic TV technology that will allow viewers a truly immersive experience when watching television.
According to the BBC, the technology is similar to that seen in the “Star Wars” movie where Princess Leia sends a message to Obi Wan Kenobi, via R2-D2.
Mirror.co.uk reports:
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The team admitted that they had seen the phenomenon of a holographic image created by people using their mobile phones, but they wanted to extend the scale and go one step bigger.
Cyrus Saihan, Head of Digital Partnerships for the BBC said: “We had seen that people had created small ‘holographic’ displays using mobile phones and so it occurred to us that making a super-sized version of these low-cost displays would give us a way to see how ‘holograms’ might work on a larger scale, something comparable to the size of a living room TV.
“To make our ‘holographic’ TV, we took a 46” TV that we had in the office and then asked a local plastics cutter to make a simple acrylic pyramid shape based on some sketches that we had done.
“By placing this acrylic pyramid on our flat screen TV, we were able to try out a modern-day version of an old Victorian theatre technique and create the illusion of floating ‘holographic’ like images.”
The team then used archive footage from the BBC to view images in stunning 3D.
However, don’t expect to see a holographic TV in the shops any time soon.
On his BBC blog , Cyrus said: “There are limitations with our experimental device: as mentioned above, only certain types of footage will work, you need a fairly low level of light in the room to get the maximum impact and the viewing angles are narrow.
“The physics of the light reflecting off the pyramid and the TV’s screen size also means that there will always be a practical limit to the size of a display such as this.”
