2D (not 3D) Glasses

We’ve all heard about 3D glasses.  There are so many varieties that Rainbow Symphony offers so-called “Ultimate 3D Glasses” (shown here).  They work with many, but by no means all, forms of 3D.  Here’s a link to their site: http://www.rainbowsymphony.com/ultimate-3d-glasses.html

But, since January 11, I’ve been writing about 2D glasses, rather than 3D.  I’ve decided to consolidate my posts on the subject into one.

It began with a story in the UK Telegraph on January 11.  The story was headlined “Do 3D films make you sick?” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/6952352/Do-3D-films-make-you-sick.html

It was by no means a condemnation of 3D, and it clearly noted it was referring to a minority of viewers, but it stated that “a significant minority of the population cannot sit through a 3D film without experiencing discomfort.”  Those are viewers in cinemas, where issues of visual accommodation-vergence conflict are minimal (see my post “3DTV: Home and the Range” about the more significant issues in homes: http://schubincafe.com/blog/2009/11/3dtv-home-and-the-range/).

So I posted the following about the Telegraph article that day:

“That’s a problem worth noting.  Shutting one eye [without glasses] won’t help; the other will still see a double image.  And the same individuals could have a problem when put in front of someone else’s 3D TV.

“There is an obvious solution: glasses that send the same single view to both eyes.”

The next day, the New York Daily News ran a similar story, indicating that the problem is not unique to the UK.  It was headlined “Little too reel-istic: Mega 3-D hit ‘Avatar’ gets great reviews but gives some viewers motion sickness.”  It, too, referred to a significant minority experiencing adverse reactions — sometimes so adverse that they had to stop viewing the movie: http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2010/01/12/2010-01-12_little_too_reelistic_mega_3d_hit_avatar_giving_some_motion_sickness.html

Then, on January 15, cnet.com writer Rafe Needleman wrote of being stereo-blind and watching Avatar in a near-empty auditorium showing the movie in a non-3D version.  He added, “While I find viewing 3D imagery uncomfortable, Daniel Terdiman, another person at CNET who can’t see 3D, saw the 3D version of Avatar and wore the 3D glasses. It looked fine to him, just not 3D.” http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-10435478-250.html

So it might seem this is a non-issue.  Those who can’t see 3D but aren’t bothered by it put on 3D glasses, and those who do have a problem with 3D watch a 2D version.

Unfortunately, the latter might not be an option.  On January 18, the Los Angeles Times reported that China was pulling the 2D version of Avatar from theaters, allowing only the 3D version to continue to be shown: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2010/01/avatar-pulled-from-2d-screens-by-chinese-government.html

It’s not necessary to go to China to have the problem.  In my neighborhood multiplex in New York City, Avatar is available in plain 3D or IMAX 3D, but it’s not available in a non-3D version.

When all of the TVs in a sports bar show a game in 3D, as was the case when Sky carried the 3D version of Arsenal vs. Manchester United to the Railway Tavern pub in Central London on January 31, what happens to the 3D-sickness prone?  Do they chalk their feelings up to too much ale and bangers?  Naturally Sky’s story about the event, where this photo appeared, doesn’t mention the issue: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Technology/Live-3D-Sport-In-Pubs-Manchester-Uniteds-3-1-Win-Over-Arsenal-Kicks-Off-New-Era-Of-Broadcasting/Article/201001415539347?lpos=Technology_First_Home_Page_Feat

In fact, if things work out as consumer-electronics manufacturers wish, it won’t be necessary to leave one’s home to have the problem.  The various mechanisms proposed for the distribution of 3D to the home usually offer a way to display just the left eye’s view as a 2D version.  But that works only if everyone wants to see the non-3D version.

If three people in a family of four want to watch a movie at home in 3D, and the fourth finds that sickening, do they banish that relative?  If one relative at Thanksgiving or neighbor at a Super Bowl party can’t see 3D, does the host withdraw the depth effect from all the others?

Just how big is the “significant minority”?  In November, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) issued a report, “Eyes Wide Open: 3D Tipping Points Loom.”  Page 17 lists, as the top two factors that could limit 3D adoption, that “Approximately 20% of the people who attended a 3D movie did not like it, citing eye fatigue, the eyeglasses and other issues,” and “About 5% of people are ’stereoblind’ and cannot see in relief.”  The full report may be downloaded here: http://www.pwc.com/en_GX/gx/entertainment-media/pdf/Eye_Wide_Open_3D_Tipping_Points.pdf

I should note here, as I did in my “Home and the Range” post, that not all stereoblindness and 3D discomfort is necessarily permanent.  In addition to just the training effects of viewing 3D, some professionals specialize in treatment.  Here’s the 3D treatment page of the College of Optometrists in Vision Development: http://www.covd.org/Home/3DStereoVision/tabid/258/Default.aspx

If, however, training and treatment don’t help, and non-3D versions aren’t available, a solution is 2D glasses.  The principle behind 2D glasses is relatively simple.  Just send the same eye’s view to both eyes.  In practice, it’s not necessarily all that easy.

In systems sending views alternately to each eye, a 2D-glasses viewer would see pictures only half the time (and, in the case of active-shutter glasses, might have to pay a lot for the privilege).  In systems that require the visual system to reconstruct color from the two eyes’ views, a 2D-glasses viewer would not get full color.

In systems using simple, linearly polarized simultaneous views, however, a 2D-glasses viewer would get color images all of the time.  The only requirement is that both lenses be polarized the same way, instead of at 90-degree angles to each other.

There’s actually a very old precedent for this idea — and for the idea of different family members getting different experiences from the same TV set.  It is DuMont’s 1954 Duoscopic TV.  The device combined the images from two picture tubes via polarizing filters.  The two tubes could be displaying different shows.  Family members were to wear polarized glasses — 2D polarized glasses — for the show they wanted to see and to listen via earphones.  When Popular Science wrote up the system in March 1954, they pictured even the family dog wearing glasses.

The rest of this picture and the Popular Science article are available at the excellent web site of the even-more excellent Early Television Museum near Columbus, Ohio, well worth a visit, especially during their annual convention: http://www.earlytelevision.org/dumont_duoscopic.html

This Thing Called 3D

It has been a heck of a month for 3D announcements.  Comcast carried The Final Destination in 3D on the day of its DVD release. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) seemed all about 3D.  The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) issued a report on 3D TV.  The program recently posted for next month’s Hollywood Post Alliance (HPA) Tech Retreat includes not only a 3D-in-the-Home “supersession” but also other presentations on such issues as 3D gaming, 3D projection, 3D vision, and, from Adobe, 3D video stabilization.  Electronic Engineering Times (EET) ran a story on January 21 about an agreement between France’s CEA-Leti and U.S. firm R3Logic “to develop 3D design methodologies for consumer and wireless applications.”  And Computerworld on January 27 talked about 3D video graphics chips moving from games to medical imaging.

What does it all mean?  That’s the sort of question one might ask after reading the front page of a newspaper, one carrying perhaps a dozen stories on different topics, because the 3D discussed in the above paragraph also covers multiple topics, not all of them associated with depth perception.

The EET story about 3D design for consumer applications, for example, was referring to layered circuits that might not have anything to do with images.  Adobe’s 3D image stabilization presentation at the HPA Tech Retreat clearly has something to do with video, but, in this case, the three dimensions are height, width, and time.  The 3D video-graphics chips in the Computerworld story do deal with the manipulation of objects in three-dimensional space, but the images of those objects are typically presented on flat screens that offer the same view even if one eye is shut.

The remaining stories in the first paragraph do have something to do with presenting some sort of view of our three-dimensional world beyond that offered by typical two-dimensional video imagery, but they cover an extraordinary range of possibilities.  Perhaps it’s best to start with a closer look at our world.

We often discuss a human’s five senses, one of which we call feeling, but we can feel shape, texture, hardness, moisture, temperature, pain, hunger, thirst, and dizziness (among other things).  Are those all the same sense?  How do you feel about that question?

Setting aside TacTV, ScenTV, PalaTV, and even sound, our visible world still offers far more than any television system ever demonstrated.  We can look around in every direction, including up and down.  One of the presentations at the HPA Tech Retreat will be about “immersive-media” research at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute, where there has been work on displaying imagery on a dome and on capturing stereoscopic images in a semi-circle, but neither of those fully covers our ability to look in any direction.

Perhaps the closest anyone has come is in the latest versions of the University of Illinois CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment), which project stereoscopic computer-graphic information on three walls and the floor and track the viewer’s visual orientation.  Duke University’s DiVE (Duke immersive Virtual Environment) projects on all six faces of a cube and uses both head and hand tracking.  For a viewer being tracked, the sensation is remarkable.   But these rooms offer only what the computers can deliver, not live, real-world images.

As for homes, there’s that report, issued on January 14 by Study Group 6 of the ITU’s Radiocommunications Sector (the people responsible for the global digital video standard Rec. 601).  It provides “a roadmap for future 3D TV implementation.”

According to the report, the most-advanced 3D TV demonstrations at CES 2010 were merely part of “the first generation — ‘plano-stereoscopic television,’” of which more soon.  It is to be followed by systems with “multiple views.”

Those aren’t systems with more camera positions or even a greater field of view, as in Fraunhofer’s panoramic system.  Instead, multi-view 3D systems offer more than just the two views of two eyes, allowing a viewer to actually move a little and see around objects.

In his paper on no-glasses 3D (NG3D) presented at the most-recent SMPTE convention, Fox’s Thomas Edwards showed ways to do this.  Above, shown with his permission, is an illustration of a lenticular (lens-based) version.  The lenses and associated views are not to scale (they would be much smaller and there would probably be more views).  As the viewer moves left and right, different views become available, as they do in the real world.

At the 2009 NAB show, NHK, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, demonstrated a version of multi-view 3D they called “integral television,” wherein a multi-lens plate allows a camera to capture many views of the same scene, and a similar display system allows them to be seen.  In these screen shots from the NHK system, it’s clear that, as the still camera shooting the integral display moves lower, it sees things differently from its upper position.  It’s also clear that the image quality is not yet up to today’s HDTV, and that’s despite the fact that the images were shot by an ultra-high-definition (”8K”) camera with more than 33 million pixels per color.

Even farther from today’s image quality was a tiny display across the aisle at NAB 2009 at the exhibit of Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology.  Despite the small size of the image, it took a large room of equipment to produce it.  It was a live, motion, color hologram.

NICT isn’t the only organization to have shown live holography, and some might argue that others look a little better.  But there’s no question live holography still needs a lot of work before it is of home-entertainment quality.

Live holography is the third-generation system described in the ITU report, one that can “record the amplitude, frequency, and phase of light waves, to reproduce almost completely human beings’ natural viewing environment.  These kinds of highly advanced systems are technically some 15-20 years away.”

It might be worth noting that, as electronic image capture and display moves towards holographic capability, traditional film-based holography is moving farther into the full-color, moving-image field.  At the 2009 HPA Tech Retreat, RabbitHoles Media demonstrated white-light-illuminated, no-electronics holograms with as many as 1280 full-color full-motion frames built-in.  They may be viewed in the galleries at the RabbitHoles site (one of my favorites is “Batman Dark Knight #1,” made for Six Flags): http://www.rabbitholes.com/entertainment-gallery/

If live, color, motion holography is 3D TV at its imagined future finest, what about 3D TV today?  Reports associated with CES sometimes told of high percentages or numbers of 3D-compatible TVs being sold in the near future.  But what does that mean?  Comcast’s offering of The Final Destination in 3D was compatible with all TVs — sort of.

It was carried as “anaglyph” 3D.  The word, for which English-language references can be found as early as 1651, literally means a three-dimensional carving.  That it is now applied to colored 3D glasses indicates just how long they have been used to deliver appropriate stereoscopic views to appropriate eyes — except for certain problems (not counting the fact that they won’t work with black-&-white TV sets).

The traditional anaglyph color pair is red and cyan.  In research performed at Curtin University of Technology in 2004 on 29 completely different pairs of such glasses, all but one pair (which had been made using an ink-jet printer on a transparency sheet) had superb acceptance of the colors it was supposed to transmit and just as superb rejection of the colors it wasn’t supposed to allow.  Unfortunately, the screens the glasses were meant to look at, whether TV, computer, or projection, weren’t nearly as good.  The wrong images got through, a condition known as ghosting http://cmst.curtin.edu.au/publicat/2004-08.pdf.

Other anaglyph problems are caused by differing levels of light from the two lenses (causing a condition called “eye rivalry”), poor color rendition, and even a difference in eye-lens focusing for red versus blue.  The last issue has been addressed by some glasses with magnification applied to one lens, and different color combinations and strengths have been tried to deal with the others.  A green and magenta pair reduced eye rivalry, and a dark-amber and dark-blue pair, amazingly, seems to improve color rendition, after the eyes have adapted to the dim images.

The attraction of anaglyph 3D is that it can be used (with varying degrees of success) in any system that can deal with color TV, which includes almost all TV sets and the signals that feed them.  It’s also possible to reduce the depth of the 3D sensation to create images that may be considered compatible with ordinary, glasses-free 2D viewing.

In the 1970s, for example, Digital Optical Television Systems used a horizontal-slit iris.  The center of the slit was clear, the left had one color filter, and the right had another.  Anything in focus would pass through the clear center.  Anything out of focus because it was too close would pick up one set of color fringes; anything out of focus because it was too far would pick up the opposite set.  Viewers with glasses got a 3D effect; viewers without them saw minor color fringes, but only on out-of-focus parts of the image.

Colored glasses haven’t been the only way of delivering 3D to ordinary TV sets.  In 1953, when Business Week ran the headline “3-D Invades TV,” stereoscopic broadcasts carried the two eyes’ images side by side.  Viewers wore prismatic glasses to direct their gaze appropriately (and, in one version, hung a filter plate over the screen, polarized in one direction on the left half and in the other on the right).  Above at the left are the 1953 Stereographics glasses and at the right a 2009 Prisma-Chrome pair.

Such side-by-side 3D is compatible with all TV sets, even black-&-white ones, though it does create vertically oriented images.  So other compatible 3D systems have tried splitting the screen horizontally instead of vertically, for wide, over-under images.  As in side-by-side systems, prismatic glasses were initially used, but, to get away from the problem of a single “sweet-spot” distance for viewing, LeaVision tried adjustable-mirror glasses.  Shown below are KMQ prismatic viewers for over-under 3D.

Don’t like colored fringes or double images on a TV screen?  There are still multiple techniques for getting 3D onto existing TV sets.

Some of the latest schemes at CES involve active-shutter glasses.  These have what are, in effect, single-pixel LCD screens in front of each eye.  In one state, the LCD is clear, and the eye sees the TV picture; in the other, the LCD is opaque, and the eye sees nothing.  If alternate-eye views are fed to the TV sequentially, and the glasses synchronously prevent the wrong eye from seeing what it shouldn’t, the result is stereoscopic viewing.  If the rate of change is fast enough, viewers don’t notice flickering.

The new 3D TVs offer direct means for synchronizing the glasses to the images.  But before they were even introduced, boxes were on the market (primarily for games) for controlling the glasses when ordinary (not specifically 3D) displays were used.  So even active-shutter, alternating-view 3D can be compatible with existing TVs.

Hobbyists with more technical savvy can even modify their TVs to be able to use passive polarized glasses, but that’s beyond the realm of most viewers.  So TVs using micro-polarized screens for linearly polarized glasses or switching plates to reverse the direction of circularly polarized images are (for the moment, at least) specialty products.

Then there’s so-called “wiggle-vision,” “wobble stereoscopy” or “flicker vision.”  It comes in many forms.  In the most basic, the two eye views are simply alternated (as in the active-glasses systems but at a much slower rate).  Both eyes see both views and use the mechanism of parallax to provide depth cues.

Unfortunately, both eyes also see a wiggling, wobbling, or flickering image.  Vision III Imaging offers lenses and adaptors that provide a much more subtle version of the effect to achieve what they call “Depth Enhanced Video.”  It has been used on major broadcasts.  You can judge the effect for yourself at this site: http://www.inv3.com/index.html

There are even more TV-compatible 3D systems using inexpensive glasses — or even no glasses at all — and they are compatible with ordinary 2D viewing.  But they’re not truly stereoscopic.

One class uses the Pulfrich effect, named for the professor who wrote it up after it was brought to his attention.  Despite being an acknowledged 3D expert, Carl Pulfrich was blind in one eye and couldn’t experience the effect himself.

In Pulfrich 3D, one eye is darkened.  According to one explanation, the darkened eye is forced towards rod-based (scotopic) vision, which uses a longer chemical process than cone-based (photopic) vision.  The undarkened eye sees what is; the darkened eye sees what just was.  If the motion in the image is appropriately controlled — say the foreground always moving left to right and the background right to left — viewers with one eye darkened get a 3-D effect.

Pulfrich 3D has successfully broadcast such major events as the Tournament of Roses Parade and The Rolling Stones Steel Wheels Tour.  But the choreography is critical.  A spinning carousel is perfect Pulfrich material; a sports event in which players might move in any direction is not.

Then there’s the chromostereoscopic effect.  Our eyes have simple lenses, and simple lenses cannot focus on different colors at the same time.  The muscles focusing our lenses send feedback to the brain, so red can seem to be in front of blue.

Above is a portion of a picture called “Apparatus to Talk to Aliens,” copyright 2005 by Professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka of the Department of Psychology of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan.  It was created to demonstrate chromostereopsis and is used here with permission.  If you have a sensation that the red “petals” are funneling inwards, you are experiencing the chromostereoscopic effect.  You may find the complete picture (and other examples) at this site: http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/scolor2e.html

Chromostereopsis is not a very strong effect, but it can be enhanced with color-shifting glasses.  American Paper Optics (source of the anaglyph and Pulfrich glasses shown earlier) sells ChromaDepth glasses to do just that.  They’ve been used for VH1’s I Love the 80s in 3D.  There’s more information here: http://www.3dglassesonline.com/3d-chromadepth-glasses/

As in the Pulfrich effect, attention must be paid to the choreography of the images.  Reddish colors must be kept in the foreground and blueish in the background, though that’s common in many outdoor scenes.  In fact, at the New Technology Campus at the 2009 International Broadcasting Convention, Canada’s Communications Research Centre demonstrated a 2D-to-3D real-time conversion system based on color alone.

Even ignoring chromostereoscopy and the Pulfrich effect, however, there are clearly many ways to deliver 3D to existing TV sets.  So, when it is reported that some portion of TV sets will be 3D-compatible in the future, why isn’t it 100%?

Someone Will Be There Who Knows the Answer

The Oversight Executive for Motion Intelligence of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence is scheduled to be in the southern California desert next month.  So are the chief technology officers (CTOs) of both Panasonic and Sony.  So is the head of the Visual Space Perception Laboratory at the University of California – Berkeley.  So is one of the developers of Cablecam.  So is the CTO of Cable Television Laboratories.  So is a co-inventor of MP3.  So is the mysterious Mo Henry, whose credit has appeared in movies ranging from Apocalypse Now to Zombieland.

The list could go on and on.  Hundreds of top technical executives will be there. CTOs and VPs of Hollywood studios and television networks will be there.  So will the head of emerging technologies of the European Broadcasting Union.  So will the VP of standards of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) and the director of engineering and standards of the Society of Motion-Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE).  Where will they be?

It’s the 16th annual Hollywood Post Alliance Tech Retreat, February 16-19 at Rancho Las Palmas conference center in Rancho Mirage, California.  But every part of that title can convey a false impression.

HPA, for example, is not yet 16 years old, but the retreat is older.  When the organization that created it, the Association for Imaging Technology and Sound, went belly up, HPA’s founders thought the retreat was too important to die, so they took it over.  After 9/11, when other events went down in attendance, the retreat went up.  It has actually had to turn people away on occasion because it has sold out.

Similarly, “Hollywood” and “Post” are misleading.  The event is not (and has never been) in Hollywood.  Its participants come from all over the world, from New Zealand to Norway, and from Bombay to Buenos Aires.  If someone at the retreat is from NATO, that could be the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the National Association of Theater Owners (both have sent representatives, sometimes at the same retreat); similarly, there have been representatives from MPEG the Moving Picture Experts Group and MPEG the Motion Picture Editors Guild.

There have been chip manufacturers (among them AMD & Intel), software companies (e.g., Adobe & Microsoft), computer manufacturers (such as Apple & IBM), professional & consumer-electronics manufacturers (Panasonic & Sony are regulars) and others, ranging from the company that became the 3D producer 3ality to “Star Wars” effects producers Lucas Digital (Industrial Light & Magic).  Visible World introduced its targeted-commercials system at an HPA Tech Retreat; Best Buy offered retail insights.

“Tech” is also a bit misleading.  There’s no question that the bulk of the presenters and attendees will be CTO, director of engineering, or similar, but there are also directors, economists (Ernst & Young will be at next month’s event), lawyers, venture capitalists, and others who might not know one end of a battery from the other.  The National Security Agency and the Department of Defense regularly send representatives.  So does Johns Hopkins University and other academic institutions.

Finally, “Retreat” might be misleading.  It’s held in a resort area, but the technology events start at 7:30 in the morning and sometimes don’t end until very late.  The technology demo area, open at strange hours by mutual agreement, sometimes has visitors at midnight.

It’s not all technology.  The retreat’s softball tournament was shot in slow motion HD by Fox one year.  Though the technologists are not necessarily athletes, they throw themselves into the games with passion, sometimes resulting in bodily harm.  One year, an injured player was taken to the hospital in an ambulance; he checked himself out early the next morning so as not to miss the breakfast roundtables.

Aside from the game and meals, the event has multiple components.  There are pre-retreat seminars (this year on audio loudness and high-dynamic-range imaging), a supersession (this year on 3D in the home), and a main program run with Swiss-timekeeping precision, cutting off presenters in mid-sentence even if they’re about to reveal the secret of life.

Secrets are sometimes revealed at the retreat; the atmosphere of relaxed cooperation lends itself to such revelation. One year a Panasonic engineer pitched in to get a Sony projector looking its best.  Another year, companies moved with lightning speed to install 3-D facilities at a nearby cinema for a supersession.

Then there are the technology demonstrations.  Dolby’s surround-sound headphones, Panasonic’s Varicam, and Sony’s HDCAM SR were all introduced at Tech Retreats.  Lucas Digital showed the camera-attitude sensor used in Star Wars Episode 3. SquareHead Technology’s first U.S. demonstration of its pencil-beam microphone array was at a Tech Retreat.  Earlier this year, JVC sent out a press release about its 2D-to-3D conversion technology; last year it was demonstrated at the Tech Retreat.  And the first demo session comes with drinks.

Then there are the breakfast roundtables, unregulated sessions at which anything goes.  They’re so intense that they’ve been featured repeatedly on local newscasts.  And there are quizzes for such prizes as statuettes of the patron saint of television or teddy-bear remote controls.  Once participants were asked to derive the NTSC color-subcarrier frequency from scratch.  Another time they were asked to come up with the first opera commissioned for television (long before Amahl and the Night Visitors).  They did.

That’s the best thing about the retreat.  No matter what question anyone has, someone will be there who knows the answer.  Every aspect of motion-image and related technologies seems to be covered, from ballet to ballistics and from surround sound to surveillance.

Consider just one day of the 2010 event.  Wednesday, February 17, will begin with breakfast roundtables on subjects ranging from asset management to visual fatigue, each moderated by an expert.  They will be followed by a technology-year in review, highlights of the recent Consumer Electronics Show, and a TV with a screen as relatively wider than HDTV as HDTV is wider than older TV.  That presentation will also cover issues of subtitling in 3-D.  And that’s all before the first refreshment break.

Next is a panel on mobile TV, a presentation on online gaming, and a panel on the future of packaged media in stores and in kiosks and vending machines.  After lunch comes a presentation on the continuing evolution of cable services and the future of entertainment and information, followed by a broadcasters panel addressing both traditional and Internet delivery mechanisms.

After another refreshment break comes another panel, this time with telephone company and retail perspectives, among others.  With so many ways of delivering content, how might a viewer synchronize a broadcast with Internet and disk-based material?  A presentation on fingerprint technology will address just that issue.  But the day’s not over yet.

What about immersive media?  Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute will offer their latest developments for production and projection.  Then Ernst & Young will reveal the results of their surveys on the “Direction of the Digital World.”  Finally, in the main program that day, the audience will be polled about their views of what just took place.  But that’s not the end, either.  Demos and a dinner serving roasted technologist follow.

I mentioned in a previous post that the International Broadcasting Convention is my favorite trade show, and it is.  But the HPA Tech Retreat is not a trade show.  It’s not like anything else.

Some participants say that if there’s only one event you attend all year it should be the HPA Tech Retreat.  Come and find out why.

I hope to see you there.  You can find more info on the HPA web site:

http://www.hpaonline.com/