Comments on: CNN's human 'hologram' on election night

News network beamed one of its correspondents from Chicago to New York City in a "hologram" during its election night coverage.

[taydigga]

some of you guy's are just plain neurotic know-it-alls!!! "CNN is false advertising..." shut the heck up!! Whatever it was it was cool, you are too into your own head to just enjoy that, we could really care less about what you know.

[assman]

I thought it was freaking awesome when they did this. Applaud CNN for surging ahead in broadcast tech. All the news organizations are copying CNN's innovations. The "magic board" John King uses is used by everyone now, even fox news.

[kdownbeatb]

One small step for CNN.....one GIANT leap for porn.

[brother-ward]

Hey, special effects are great. The only real problem for me is the confusion created in the minds of people who will now insist that what they saw actually was a hologram. As a person who makes a living in technology, I will now be spending time arguing with technically naive users who will want to know why they can't have "holograms" in their offices and classroooms: "But they had one on CNN! I saw it with my own eyes!" Sigh...

[vsn2]

> "But they had one on CNN! I saw it with my own eyes!" Sigh...

True .. anytime you're watching anything on tv, it is not with 'your own eyes', it is constructed on their end into duping you into seeing whatever they want you to see ... weird how people look at tv images and think it is real ...

Live footage of news events ... *maybe* you can say this ... anything in a studio ... nope

[inachu]

It looked more like technology used in the original star wars.

[dudney85]

LOVED IT. It shows how technology is evolving. The more they use it /buy it, the more teh costs drops, the faster it reaches my living room! WAY TO GO CNN!

[kaibelf]

I'll put it to you this way. CNN made a big deal about Will.I.Am appearing via "hologram." Then, there he was, in all his cheesy, glowy, green-screen glory, looking about as real as press-on-nails. After watching him talk through a choppy webcam-from-Iraq-quality feed and look WAY more 2-dimensional than everyone else on the screen, my bf and I looked at each other, and at the same time said "this is retarded."

Then we turned to MSNBC.

[Heebee Jeebies]

IT was cute, but more gimmick than anything else. Why a gimick? Because it didn't have to be done. There is nothing wrong with the old way of doing such reports. It didn't fix a problem, it didn't make the interview or anything else better it was a whiz bang wow gimmick and one that if they insist on using will have me looking else were for the news.

On the brighter side of things they keep doing junk like this, newspapers could make a comeback! :)

Robert

[jerrybrace]

I'm surpised that a tech site like CNET wouldn't know what a hologram is. It's just blue screen + camera angle updates. Wolf saw no one in the studio... Bad blue screen merged in the live feed. This page states that the story has been updated with this info - but it isn't. If it was - this would be a non-story. This is just one expensive step past the daily weather man on the local news.

[sachman1]

Totally cool ...
http://tinyurl.com/5fhj65

[seelang2]

No, this is certainly not a hologram by any stretch of the word.

What DOES make this clever is that rather than a traditional 2D green/blue screen composite technique the setup used a semicircle of cameras in a 'green room' in order to get a 180 degree view of the subject. The data from the green room cameras was then tied in to the studio cameras so that the appropriate subject perspective view would be used for each of the studio cut shots, as was indicated by the previous poster industrialD.

Pretty neat... but then CNN had to make it tacky and gimmicky by adding the blue aura and flickering effects, calling it a 'hologram', and then having the studio anchors use that lame dialog to sound as if the remote correspondent was actually in the studio with them.

Oh, and the Musion technology is still a projection onto a 2d screen and not an actual projection into 3d space.

[ASROSS]

Basically, it was cool and I don't really care how it was done on the interviewee's side (e.g. Yellin's). BUT how it was done on the interviewer's side (e.g. Blitzer's) makes all the difference. As others have pointed out, there will be no real breakthrough until the interviewer sees the interviewee's projection literally standing in front of them (whether in 3d or 2d). Everything else is just video compositing for the viewer at home (though it may be impressive how fast that was done).

Basically, call me when Blitzer see's Yellin with his own eyes and all that we at home see are the pure images captured by the video camera(s) in Blitzer's studio.

[Sam Papelbon]

the 'hologram' interview was tacky, but i did like their '3d capitol'. it was crisp enough to almost look 'real' in the sense that it actually existed in the room, although unrealistically shiny and colorful, etc. like bright glowing red and blue marshmallows floating in the air that you could reach out and poke, and probably burn your fingers on. also the way it moved in sync with the camera as it panned around. it could be a neat replacement for the pictures they superimpose next to their heads during broadcasts. the camera would be free to move, and it would look like an actual panel floating next to the anchor.

or whatever. LETS GO BACK TO TELEGRAPH! no no, jk. i'm under 80.

[mikeburek]

In this video clip, they only used 3 camera angles on her. So there were 32 extra HD cameras just sitting there not adding anything to the "experience." This really sucked.

The same effect is much cooler with the line of scrimmage and the 1st down yard line on football, and also the glowing hockey puck.

And right now we expect that a real hologram would be grainy, not HD, so they could have used just regular cameras. Ha ha.

It's funny that they were standing so far apart. Maybe he thought the "glow" was radioactive. Ha ha.

And lastly, unless she's wearing something outrageous (or not wearing...) seeing the whole person stand there does not add anything that just the normal head shot doesn't. I don't see any newscasters standing on rotating platforms instead of sitting behind a desk.

[craigfis]

Umm, George Lucas did this back in the 70's with Star Wars. The effect we saw on CNN wasn't much different from the R2D2 projection.

[technogeist2k6]

Why did they bother sending her to Chicago in the first place? She just ended up back in the studio with no sense of the occasion where she was broadcasting from.

The closest we've got to holographic projection it the recent PC monitors with lenticular screens. But to that holography is an insult to the intelligence of their viewers.

[rjf19]

So typical of CNN, another "half truth" using buzz words and claiming technology they really don't understand. Simply more confirmation that CNN is not a news channel but a 24x7 Soap Opera. If you want the truth, seek it elsewhere...

[sharmajunior]

I have one problem with this article. Since when did Wikipedia become a credible source?

If it is. Then I am using it for my research papers.

[trziv]

Hologram yes or no, here is how it was done:
http://www.vizrt.com/news/press_releases/article3918.ece

[power2084]

NOT A HOLOGRAM by any definition.
Not even close to being a hologram.

And if you had been in the same room as Wolf Blitzer, you would have seen NOTHING in the spot where what they called a "hologram" was supposed to be standing for.

BLATANT FALSE ADVERTISING, CNN. Not good.