Harry Friedman, executive producer of “Wheel” and “Jeopardy!,” introduced the clip.

“One of the biggest challenges is keeping a game show fresh — by changing the show without changing the game,” he said. “We do that with enhanced production value, such as set design. We typically do dimensionalized sets, which are made for 3D.”

He added that there is no set time that this could be rolled out. But we could see some novelty in game shows using 3D on passive 3D tv sets.

“The agency wants proposals that start from scratch, using a fundamentally new model for obtaining video footage. The 3-D surveillance should be able to monitor moving targets with high resolution, from different ranges, and without the need for users to do much legwork, like scanning or refocusing on a target. Darpa anticipates that 3-D surveillance would boost field of vision and depth of vision “by over 100X” compared to existing systems.”

The advantage of 3D surveillance versus current technology is the ability to track movement much easier in an image with depth.  It will be interesting to see how they tackle a lot of the challenges of shooting live action in 3D and how they handle viewing of the images

SUNNYVALE, Calif. –(Business Wire)– Dec 23, 2009 HDMI Licensing, LLC, the agent responsible for licensing the High-Definition Multimedia Interface® (HDMI®) specification, today announced, on behalf of the HDMI Founders, the following regarding 3D formats and the HDMI Specification Version 1.4:

1. In order to respond to recent input from the industry, the HDMI Consortium will meet in late January 2010 to add an additional 3D format (tentatively named “Top/Bottom”) to the HDMI specification, supporting the use of this format over HDMI.

a. The exact date for this announcement is undetermined. The Consortium has committed to resolving this issue in January 2010 and publishing a document soon thereafter.

2. Legacy set-top boxes (those that are already deployed in the market) are required to comply with the HDMI Specification Version 1.4 requirements for 3D functionality even if only implementing one or more of the 3D formats in Appendix H of the specification.

a. In order to meet the needs of the market, the HDMI Founders have decided to allow legacy set-top boxes to use formats contained in Appendix H without having to implement the HDMI specification’s mandatory 3D formats, provided that they fully comply with the signaling protocol defined in Appendix H. This will continue to be in effect and will be reevaluated once a mandatory 3D broadcast format is defined.

i. However, legacy set-top boxes that do not support the mandatory 3D formats may not claim 3D functionality as defined by the updated HDMI Adopted Trademark and Logo Usage Guidelines.

”As a leading global standard for HD connectivity, the HDMI Consortium takes the market’s needs very seriously,” says Steve Venuti, president of HDMI Licensing, LLC. “3D is a nascent market and thus continues to evolve quickly. We have taken input from leading industry associations and this announcement reflects the HDMI Founders’ commitment to continuously and proactively set the foundation for innovations that will deliver the next generation of content. The addition of the new format will secure the application of 3D for broadcasting, in addition to the existing applications for Blu-ray and gaming.”

For more information about the HDMI specification please visit http://www.hdmi.org.

CMST Research Fellow Andrew Woods, who developed the technology, explained that the 3D video cameras offer significant benefits over existing cameras used in the industry.

“Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicles (ROVs) are equipped with a video camera and lights, and used for subsea inspection in the oil and gas industry. Existing video cameras deliver only a 2D image,” he said.

“The resulting 2D images have limited fidelity making it difficult to accurately determine object size and depth, and are also susceptible to interference from suspended matter in the water.

“Moreover, these issues become a particular problem with more sophisticated ROVs that may be equipped with robotic arms to manipulate the environment.

“Accurately controlling the robotic arm is difficult if the operator has only 2D video to guide their aim, ensuring that even relatively simple tasks are time-consuming and therefore expensive.

“Previous attempts at enabling 3D video camera systems for ROVs have not been successful due to issues of cameras losing critical alignment, and user eye-fatigue.

“Our camera design is capable of addressing all these problems.”

Deep Vision 3D plans to market two products based on this technology, a marine 3D camera (for subsea inspection use in the oil and gas industry) and a hostile environment 3D camera (for use in hostile environments like underground mines and copper smelters).

It seems that interest from major oil and gas companies is obviously already huge. It would also be interesting to see how this technology could be used for other research and battlefield applications, or done on a smaller scale to explore the human body.

More information on the research and funding can be found here.