[LINK] Holographic TV and the NBN

[Richard Chirgwin]

David

At the moment, we're barely scratching the surface, in terms of the 
theoretical capacity available on fibre. Here's just two observations:

1. The current fibre transmission lab record is about 100 
Petabits-kilometer (ie, the system holding the record would only support 
10 petabits over 10 km). So we're nowhere near deploying the fastest 
possible fibre at 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps.

2. Today's FTTP schemes only propose using a single wavelength. There's 
no reason, if a future demanded it, that we could not use multiple 
wavelengths, even to the home.

So I don't fear that the NBN doesn't sufficiently future-proof the 
network, at least in my lifetime.

Cheers,
RC

On 26/04/12 9:24 AM, David Boxall wrote:
> Like the iconic "Electricity in the kitchen? Whatever for?", our uses
> for the NBN will be things that we've never thought of. Evidently, even
> some of the things we _have_ though of are beyond the proposed capacity
> of the NBN. Will development of fibre potentially meet the challenge? Do
> we need to be thinking of the upgrade path, beyond the point of
> universal fibre?
>
>   From
> <https://theconversation.edu.au/beyond-tupac-the-future-of-hologram-technology-6644>
> ...
>> Perhaps one of the most exciting developments in the hologram space is the progress of holographic TV, initiated by Stephen Benton at MIT.
>>
>> Real-time, moving holograms are currently being researched by the Object-Based Image Group at MIT. The group is developing real-time rendering methods to generate diffraction patterns from 3D scenes with the aim of developing holographic TV as a consumer device within a few years.
>>
>> They’ve made some progress too: just recently the team managed a successful, real-time transmission of holographic video from a Microsoft Kinect motion-sensor camera (which is normally used with the XBox 360 videogame console) to their holo-video display...
>   From
> <http://theconversation.edu.au/tupacs-rise-from-the-dead-was-sadly-not-holography-6641>
> ...
>> A 3D TV gives the illusion of depth, but lacks “parallax” – an apparent difference in an object’s position when seen from alternate viewpoints.
>>
>> If one of the Na'vi from James Cameron’s film Avatar is facing you on TV, looking at your 3D TV side-on won’t let you look in its pointy ears, and lying on the floor in front of the TV won’t give you a view up its blue nose.
>>
>> Everyone sees the same thing, no matter which angle they look from. In a hologram, as in real life, what you see depends on where you look from.
>>
>> Most people have never seen one of these “transmission” holograms because a bright laser is needed to view them. The 3D views produced are much more convincing than “reflection” holograms: the rainbow-coloured artworks in some museums, or the limited-depth hologram on your credit card.
>>
>> Real transmission holograms aren’t hard to produce – my third-year physics students make them in an afternoon – but they are resolutely stuck in the technology of the mid-20th century.
>>
>> Holograms are perhaps the last piece of advanced technology that works best on film; they can be made only on extremely fine-grained black-and-white film but, surprisingly, can store full colour information.
>>
>> Digital camera pixels are ten times too large to record holograms: holo-cameras need a resolution of gigapixels. Even the iPad’s new “high-resolution” display is far too coarse to reconstruct a hologram. As a result, holography remains stuck in the pre-digital doldrums.
>>
>> It needs another ten years to become a mainstream technology. MIT’s Media Lab has a holographic TV prototype with true parallax and depth (and, of course, no clunky glasses). But it is closer to TV circa 1930 than it is to R2D2’s Princess Leia, delivering coarse, jerky images in laser monochrome.
> ...
>> Nevertheless, I have little doubt we will get there. The computing power required for live holo-video is still formidable, but a decade ago it was simply inconceivable.
>>
>> The real impact of ubiquitous digital holography will be on broadband networks. A single holographic videocall on a one-square-metre portal would require a raw data rate of about 200 terabits per second – two million times the maximum speed the NBN will provide.
>>
>> And yet Malcolm Turnbull decries the NBN for providing “gigabit fixed line speeds for which [we] can’t yet envisage a use”.
>>
>> Physicists envisaged holographic video almost immediately after the pioneers of modern holography, Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks, made their first 3D holograms, in 1964. There’s little doubt that as bandwidth expands, technologies such as holography will be there to make great use of it.
>>