Keane's 3D Web broadcast makes history

Multi-million selling British band Keane are set to enter the history books by making the first live broadcast over the Internet in 3D, reports Times Online.

The band will play four tracks from their latest album, Perfect Symmetry, which viewers will be able to see in 3D on their monitor screens by wearing anaglyph glasses, with red and blue frames, which will be given away with their latest single, 'Better than this', released this week.

The desire to bring 3D technology to the home, considered the Holy Grail for television manufacturers and film producers, has stepped up in the past couple of years, with Sky pouring money into research and development of the format.

European telecoms watchdog, ComReg, has begun a public consultation that will run until May, on how the radio spectrum, freed up by the move to digital television broadcasting, should be used, states Irish Times.com.

Across Europe, broadcasters and technology companies are lining up on opposite sides of the debate, claiming both the economy and society would benefit most if they controlled the spectrum freed up by the digital dividend.

The dividend occurs because digital terrestrial television technology uses spectrum more efficiently, allowing more services in the same amount of space. In Ireland, a large chunk of the 800MHz spectrum being made available has been reserved for digital television by the Broadcasting Amendment Act 2007.

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and NHK Science and Technical Research Laboratories (STRL) are winners of the first-ever NAB Technology Innovation Awards, says Broadcast Engineering.

NICT, a Japanese national telecoms research organisation, will demonstrate some of the technologies being developed in its labs such as holographic television, 3D displays without special glasses, 3D TV programming being transmitted via broadband from Japan, and a multisensory interaction system that explores the human interface to communications media.

NHK STRL is the research and development arm of Japan's public broadcaster NHK. Since its establishment in 1930, NHK Labs has created new broadcasting systems and devices in pursuit of its mission to research and develop next-generation broadcasting systems.