I have done my very, very, very best to stay far far away from Election news on JimOnLight. I could not pass this news story up. Don’t worry, it’s not about Obama or McCain – instead, it’s about CNN’s news anchors.
They will be interviewing holograms on live television. It’s a technology that isn’t far off from full-time use (obviously), and if it works right, I bet we’ll be seeing a heckofa lot more of it on CNN and other news agencies. From the USAToday article:
There are plenty of reasons for the gimmicks: This year’s race has been intensely followed, and is expected to draw tens of millions of voters – and viewers – on Nov. 4. Significantly more people are expected to watch Tuesday night’s results than in 2004, when about 64 million viewed election-night results on network and cable TV, according to Nielsen.
USA TODAY got an exclusive peek at the holographic technology, which CNN hopes to unveil prior to the election on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. CNN is still fine-tuning the technology.
“It’s so complicated,” Bohrman says. “The crew is basically shooting someone that isn’t there.”
CNN will have 44 cameras and 20 computers in each remote location to capture 360-degree imaging data of the person being interviewed. Images are processed and projected by computers and cameras in New York. There’ll also be plasma TVs in Chicago and Phoenix that will let the people being interviewed see Blitzer and other CNN correspondents. Bohrman says the network can project two different views from each city so Blitzer can appear to be in the studio with two holograms.
This technology is amazing stuff – used on a small scale already, and in a large scale in some theatres, especially in Canada. Expect to see an article about it soon.
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