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Thursday
16Jul2009

'Star Trek' DVD and Blu-ray Comes with a Hologram

DateThursday, July 16, 2009 at 4:43PM
Star Trek is one of the biggest hits of the year, and that trend will certainly continue when the J.J. Abrams flick winds up on DVD this November. And to commemorate the event, Star Trek will come complete with a marketing gimmick I can't even fully visualize.

I remember as a kid there were some hologram baseball cards and things like that where if you bent the card just enough and held it at the right angle in the light, you could swear U.L. Washington's toothpick would twirl in his mouth. You maybe don't remember U.L. He played with a toothpick. Anyway, the Star Trek DVD and Blu-ray is a huge step up from that, offering an interactive holographic tour of the U.S.S. Enterprise right there on the packaging.

I won't attempt to explain it. From Variety:

"With the packaging feature dubbed 'augmented reality,' consumers will be able to hold their disc packaging in front of any standard webcam to unlock an interactive hologram on the computer screen, through which they can tour five cabins on the Enterprise, even shooting enemies from the ship's deck."

According to Paramount's Bob Buschi, you control the hologram by holding the DVD packaging. So if you want to change your view of the ship, move your hand. Apparently, you can take the technology for a test drive at Experience-the-Enterprise.com. You'll need a webcam for that, too.

And if a hologram isn't enough of a geek-out for you, the Blu-ray will contain a feature through which you can get real time updates from space, the final frontier, courtesy of NASA.

AuthorColin Boyd | | in , , , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | Comment2 Comments |

Reader Comments (2)

WOW, if you haven't tried this out already you've got to do it now. I was skeptical at first becuase marketing gimmicks like this are most likely very stupid and cheesy, but this honestly blew me away. I know I'm really hyping it up, but honestly it's probably one of the coolest things I've seen in a while.

This type of webcam hologram technology could have a ton of applications, I'm really surprised it hasn't been used more often. Try this out and tell me that websites like ebay, amazon, or any kind of online merchindising couldn't benifiting in huge ways by giving customers 360 3d views of products on their computer screens. This seems very fitting coming out of a Star Trek product, awesome.

Friday, July 17, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterEG3

Ok this is a little old but starting to hit mainstream. The camera works with a program to read the orientation of the DVD and overlay a 3D model in this case on top of the DVD case taht moves in perfect 1 to 1 with it. It would be like using a wiimote to manipulate the model only instead its the DVD box. Its still a little processor heavy to use but it's getting better.

This link will show you an iphone game using augmented reality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNu4CluFOcw

Friday, July 17, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterOrinn

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