Holograms coming to a TV near you

Holographic TV could be the next major thing for the entertainment industry.

With the Japanese Government putting lots of cash into three-dimensional, virtual-reality television with the aim of having such technology available by 2020, the latest development seems to have come from the big brains at the University of Arizona.

Dr Nasser Peyghambarian, chair of photonics and lasers at the university’s Optical Sciences department, told CNN that scientists have broken a barrier by making the first updatable three-dimensional displays with memory.

This is the first stage for any type of moving holographic technology. The way it works presently is not suitable for 3D images, however.

Boffins have produced displays that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes however they need to change multiple times each second to get to television quality.

The University of Arizona team has been working on advancing hologram technology since 1990. He believes that much of the difficulty in creating a holographic set has now been overcome.

He envisages a 3D set like a screen on the wall that shows 3-D images. All the image writing lasers will be behind the wall or it could be like a horizontal panel on a table with holographic writing underneath it. A bit like the chess set in Star Wars.