File based hybrid broadcasting system for higher quality 3D content

In South Korea, Broadcast companies have begun a trial 3D broadcasting service by delivering dual streams, such as a left view sequence with MPEG-2 video and a right one with MPEG-4 AVC video, within the 19.4 Mbps terrestrial bandwidth. However, this limitation of transmission bandwidth in the terrestrial broadcasting system may cause quality degradation compared to the current 2D broadcasting service. Recently, the Advanced Television System Committee (ATSC) has released a new service model called non-real-time (NRT) technology, which provides file download functionality over a terrestrial broadcasting system. And electronic manufactures have developed smart TV which enables to receive RF channel and IP protocol. In order to operate a full quality 3D service, this paper proposes an NRT-based hybrid broadcasting system in which one of two view sequences is transmitted as a real-time broadcasting program, and the other is transmitted prior to a real-time broadcasting program and is stored as a file. This system uses a method of referential relation and synchronization between MPEG-2 transport stream (TS) and the file downloaded by ATSC NRT or IP. Therefore, the proposed hybrid broadcasting system can provide stable, high quality 3D content while maintaining a backward compatibility with the current 2D broadcasting system, despite the terrestrial bandwidth limitation.