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February 7, 1996
Web posted at: 11:00 p.m. EST
From Correspondent David George
IPSWICH, England (CNN) -- Virtually every home in the industrialized world has two electronic miracles: a television set and a telephone. But despite repeated tries over the years, the two have never been combined in a product that really caught on with consumers. The problem has been poor picture quality. Now, a British company is attempting to develop a picture phone with a display far better than anything on the market today.
Picture phones have been around for 30 years. They were introduced at the 1964 World's Fair. But the picture phone's image has always come up short, compared to television and movies. But BT Labs of Britain is about to go one better with a three-dimensional picture phone.
Their design uses multiple images, up to 20, blended together to create the 3-D illusion. The secret is in the glass that covers the screen. "This is an array of lenses known as a lenticular sheet," says research engineer Michael Jewell with BT Labs.
"The system uses a number of interleaved images and when the lenticular sheet is laid across the front of those images, it recombines those images so that each eye sees a different image," he says.
The BT system uses liquid crystal panels like the ones found on portable computers. The company admits that there are still some problems with the panels' ability to display 3-D pictures, and they're not ready for market, yet. "But hopefully, by working with panel manufacturers, we can come up with something which is much better in a few years time," Jewell says.
Picture phone promotions have always had something of a "blue sky" feel about them, promising more than the technology could deliver. Four years ago, GTE demonstrated a so-called "video dial tone" system in California that had people talking to each other over their TV sets.
But the sets were linked by fiberoptic cable, something not available in most homes. Jewell says that the 3-D picture phone will work on either fiberoptic phone lines or conventional ones. "It needs the Integrated Services Digital Network to run. But that can use the copper wires that you have in your home at the moment. Obviously, the higher bandwidth you use, if you go over to optical fiber, you can get a much better image," Jewell says.
BT Labs calls 3-D a "natural extension" of video telephone technology.
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