Recently, a reader posted a question to this column’s Jan. 18 translation on 3D-TV and bandwidth.

“If HDTV is 6x the bandwidth for satellite transport via MPEG-2,” wrote the optimistically-named ‘3D 2010,’ “what is the rule-of-thumb bandwidth necessary for HD 3D?”

First, a distinction: That “6x” number signifies the uncompressed bit rate for HDTV. This matters especially to that link between the set-top and the TV, known as HDMI, which also talks in uncompressed digital.

Another baseline: Let’s say 3D-TV is a feature layer on top of a 720P or 1080i HDTV (because it is), and that it expects incoming pictures to be delivered at 60 frames per second.

To send a true, full-resolution, stereoscopic image to that 1080i or 720p HD display would indeed use twice as many bits, over the uncompressed (HDMI) interface. Why: Because the TV expects 60 frames per second, yet you’re sending two images – one for each eye.

So, to keep it at the same resolution and frame rate, uncompressed, it’d take two times as many bits to do 3D-TV. If there’s a rule of thumb, 3D-2010, that’s pretty close.

However. That third dimension in 3D is depth. For your brain to perceive depth, extra processing is required – which makes resolution anomalies in the original two dimensions less perceptible.

In other words, your brain is so busy extrapolating depth, it likely doesn’t notice the lower resolution on the streams representing each eye.

That’s why you hear people on the bandwidth side of the chain use terminology like “frame compatibility,” and you hear makers of 3D-TVs (and some content owners) use terms like “full resolution 3D.”

Frame compatibility crams the left and right eye images into one frame, each at a lower resolution. It fits into the same space as 2D, needs no special transport handling, and theoretically can’t be resolved as lower resolution to the human eye — because the addition of depth perception blunts a hyper-critical focus on each frame’s resolution.

Here’s how 3D-TV will likely emerge as a cable service, at least in the beginning:  On-demand, through the VOD or switched digital video (SDV) passageways, to a set-top outfitted with any updated requirements for 3D-TV.

Like so: You want 3D, Customer Bob? Here’s a new box. Here’s the menu of 3D titles. Knock yourself out.

Longer term, watch for two developments: Another extension of video compression, called Multi-View Coding (MVC), to further squish HD and 3D signals down into a more transport-friendly size, and faster versions of what HDMI does to move uncompressed 3D signals between set-tops and 3D-TVs, at 60 frames per second.

Speaking of 3D-TV, the darling of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show: It all seems very … 2004. That was the year anyone trekking around the Las Vegas Convention Center saw something new and shiny and everywhere. It was called HDTV.

At the time, and from the perspective of anyone in the bandwidth business, big questions loomed around the bandwidth-gobbling implications of high definition television.

Refresher: HDTV images contain 6x the picture information of standard definition digital TV. Even with compression (MPEG-2), 6x the picture info meant that only two, maybe three HDTV video streams could shimmy into the same channel width (6 MHz) that carried 10 to 12 standard-def streams.

It was (and is) a big deal. Cable responded, with analog spectrum reclamation, switched digital video, and 1 GHz upgrades. (Whew.)

Now here comes 3D-TV – which is essentially two HDTV streams, one for each eye. Double the bandwidth. Right?

Kind of. This week’s translation isolates just the transport part of 3DTV – because heaven knows there’s lots of moving parts in this next chapter

The buzz at CES, from a transport perspective, emerged in lingo like “frame compatibility” vs. “full-resolution.”

Here’s what that means: In order to get 3D signals over the plant, in a bandwidth-friendly way, it’s necessary to wriggle both “frames” – the images for each eye – into one frame. People tend to call this “over/under,” or “side-by-side.”

In all cases, it describes how the frames are jammed onto the conveyor belt, so to speak – one frame over another, or one frame next to the other.

To the network, “frame compatibility” makes a 3D signal look like 2D. The 3DTV knows what to do with each kind of incoming 3D frame, to pop it back out on the screen in 3D.

Either way, it’s another simulcast, on top of SD and HD.

The drawback, from a purist perspective, is that the encoding into side-by-side or over/under necessarily means that each frame offers less than “full resolution” to each eye.

Blu-Ray, an optical media, does offer full-rez to each eye, which is why you’ll see a big push, later this year, for 3D Blu-Ray players and titles. (Think Avatar in your living room.)

The good news is that the frame compatibility exists, and that 3D-TV manufacturers already support decoding of all types, which means there won’t be a “format war” – at least not on this part of the 3D food chain.

Nothing like a few years of bankruptcy drought to color the imaginations of the resource-challenged! In this season’s techie-wish roundup, Charter Engineering takes the candycane.

Let’s start with Doug Ike, VP of advanced video and applications for the MSO, who wants “a fully-featured, tru2way-based guide — that fits in a DCT-2000.” (Good luck with that.)

Also on Ike’s wish list: A magic bandwidth wand. “Wave it over any congested plant and presto! Gobs more bandwidth.” (“Of course,” he adds dryly, “our product team has the magic bandwidth gobbling wand.”)

Marwan Fawaz, Charter’s CTO, seeks not just EBIF-based applications, but 3D EBIF apps. (Ditto for longtime 3DTV observer, EBIF evangelist and Starz  senior director of advanced services Rebecca Rusk Lim, who hankers for a 3DTV with rhinestone-encrusted shutter glasses.)

Bob Blackburn, senior director of digital engineering for Charter, seeks an iphone app that “uses the internal GPS, cross-referenced to an extensive cartographic database, resulting in precise directions to the nearest Guinness dispensary.”  Brilliant!

Tom Gorman, VP of field operations for Charter, seeks a pair of “RF goggles,” to see how much signal is on the plant at any given location.

Also on Gorman’s wish list: A “customer attitude leakage detector.” As a tech rolls up to a home, the gizmo glows in accordance with the customer’s demeanor, ranging from “happy go lucky” to “potential hostage taker.”

Marv Nelson, VP of professional development for SCTE, wants a “small, USB-type dongle that identifies me as a cable customer and allows full access to all of my accounts and services when I’m outside my service area.”

Tops on the list for gadget connoisseur Mike Hayashi, EVP of advanced engineering and technology for Time Warner Cable, is a wireless Skype camera. Intent: An alternative to walking around, talking into his Macbook — in a multi-level house. With a medium-sized dog underfoot.

Also: “Anything that’s better than an iPhone (I tried Android, etc….they all kind of suck.”) And: Standardized power adaptors for all chargers (“and I’m not talking about a giant octopus.”) Lastly: A two-car lift for his garage.

Arthur Orduna, CTO of Canoe Ventures, stepped up to wanting a way to break free of compulsive Blackberry dipping. “I want a couple of free sessions to a self-help group to break this insidious habit,” he said, dipping into his Blackberry.

For Bob Zitter, CTO of HBO: “I wish I had an eReader that would be permissible to use when the airplane is waiting on the runway or flying under 10,000 feet.”

Ray Starbird, CEO of Northpoint Media and former Cox director of strategy, just wants Google Voice on his iPhone, for heaven’s sake. “The two together could be as delicious as chocolate and peanut butter … and if AT&T is concerned now, wait ‘til Google assimilates Gizmo5 and adds real phone lines and number portability into Google Voice.”

For interactive TV maven Tracy Swedlow: A digital assistant that cleans her house. (Yes, please!)

May all your wishes find you. Merry, merry!

The clutter of language continues to grow, as another major distribution passageway shoulders up against its predecessors for attention.

That’d be IP (Internet Protocol) video transport. The lane that serves anything that wants an Internet connection, and soon enough a broadband Internet connection.

Like any other new way of moving video – after all, we are 61 years into this trajectory – there are three main obstacles any cable operator faces, when crafting video into a service.

One is the billing system. Another is the guide, or, in today’s parlance, the “user interface.”

Third is the security. In the current chapter – linear digital TV, in standard and high definition – people tend to call this “CA,” for “conditional access. On the condition that your cable video account is in good standing, you may access the video.

In the looming IP video chapter, these activities are largely bundled under the term “DRM,” for “Digital Rights Management.”

So the surface-level explanation of the difference between CA and DRM is this: CA is today, DRM is tomorrow.

But that would ignore the storied history of signal protection in cable, which has many, many chapters. Way back in the days of analog TV, there was mid-band tuning, negative traps, positive traps, sync suppression, interdiction, and addressable scrambling. And that’s a partial list.

Then came digital, which added “encryption” — the digital version of scrambling.

And now, DRM.

Here’s what changes: DRM (surprise, surprise) is software-based, meaning it doesn’t require a dedicated security chip inside the display device.  CA, by contrast, is a core purpose of digital set-top boxes and CableCards.

The very stuff we call “CA” today morphs to “entitlements,” in the IP video world.  If your accounts are in good standing, you’re entitled to view a title on whichever screens. Not just the TV.

To that end, CA ties to transport, while DRM attaches itself to the “asset” – the thing you want to watch.

DRM is but one example of transitional tech language, and there’s a flood of it coming. We’ll keep the translation machine tuned…

In the feast of language that’s coming at us from the web video community, it’s good to have digestive aids.

Put another way: If you, too, recall a moment in the recent past where you nodded knowingly at terms like “flash,” “HTML 5.0,” and “Silverlight,” all the while feeling like a dummy but not wanting to show it, run–don’t walk–to the October issue of MIT’s “Technology Review.” ( <http://www.technologyreview.com> )

The Alka Seltzers of the web video feast, so to speak: “OurTube,” by writer David Talbot, and “An Operating System for the Cloud,” by  G. Pascal Zachary.

Talbot’s piece, “OurTube,” describes the “chaos of competing formats” in Internet video, and wonders why one can’t right-click to save, then manipulate, web video.  Along the way, he illuminates the landscape and trajectory of the major players (pun intended) behind YouTube, Apple video, Wikimedia, Hulu.com, and their ilk. (Comcast’s Fancast qualifies here, but isn’t mentioned.)

Example nuance: HTML 5.0 – the newest version of Hypertext Markup Language – includes an “open-source” player in its browser, “no plug-ins required.” Adobe’s Flash bundles video with a plug-in player, which disallows direct access to the video.

(Plug-ins. Bad. Got it.)

The operating system for the cloud, in Zachary’ piece, is Google’s “Chrome,” due out in 2010. Beyond the obvious and instant threat of something like Chrome to something like Microsoft Windows is the tectonic plate shift to applications that are indifferent to operating systems. More important than the OS these days, Zachary explains, is the preservation of look and feel, across devices. (Think Facebook.)

A further example: Adobe’s Flash, which started in life as a way to add animation to text-based web pages, and is growing up to be a contender in displaying video “cross platform,” as cable people say. It announced its plans at the 2009 NAB show; Comcast is a partner.

Also big: Putting applications “in the cloud” (higher up in the network), vs. on the end device. Not a new idea, but hugely relevant to anyone (hint, hint) who built the broadband lanes between the cloud and the gadgets.

Note: Neither piece mentioned service providers of any flavor. Regardless, if your life or work involves video, these terms (and their nuances) are either already in your field of view, or will be soon. Best jump in.