In about 10 years, fans might be able to see Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, or Elvis Presley performing, their holographic images that is. This will be made possible by a holographic video, using the technology being currently developed by the researchers at the Media Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The researchers at MIT have created a spatial light modulator or holographic chip that can support 50 gigapixels a second and can simulate objects in a way that will not require three-dimensional glasses to appreciate them.
"If you're watching an HDTV at 1080p resolution, that's about 100 megapixels per second. It's like 500 HDTVs all on one little chip," said Michael Bove, a principal research scientists at the MIT Media Lab in an interview with ABCNews.
Daniel Smalley, a graduate student at MIT and lead author of the study "Anisotropic leaky-mode modulator for holographic video displays" published on the journal Nature, is building a prototype display using the holographic technology.
The optical chip that serves as the heart of the display is very cheap and costs just $10. The other parts are more expensive than the chip itself and can be sourced easily. One of the components used is the Kinect for the Xbox game console.
According to a report on Bloomberg, the Media Lab is in talks with corporate members that are interested in acquiring the technology. While Bove did not disclose the companies showing interest, Samsung and LG are corporate members of the lab.
"This is a very long-term project, but it's accelerated a lot in this past couple of years. This is not just something that we woke up a few weeks ago and said, 'Let's make holograms,'" Bove explained.
MITnews reported that the late Prof. Stephen Benton of the Media Lab invented a holographic-video display using acousto-optic modulation where sound waves go through a transparent material.
Benton also created Mark-II, a sophisticated display made with the aid of Bove's group, that used acousto-optic modulation with tellurium dioxide but the images produced were not TV quality.
Smalley tweaked the Mark-II setup using another crystal called lithium niobate. The researcher also added waveguides and metal electrodes to produce quality images.
"What's most exciting about [the new chip] is that it's a waveguide-based platform, which is a major departure from every other type of spatial light modulator used for holographic video right now. One of the big advantages here is that you get to use all the tools and techniques of integrated optics," Smalley said.
The new chip will make holographic video presentations a lot cheaper compared to the LCD and other displays used today that normally cost $20,000.
