Anil Ambani to enter business of transforming 2-D films into 3-D - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Business mogul Anil Ambani's Reliance MediaWorks is reportedly in talks with In-Three, a Los Angeles-based specialist in 2-D to 3-D conversion. According to The Times, Ambani is poised to enter this booming business with classics such as Casablanca to be given the full stereoscopic treatment. Ambani, who dominates the Indian film market, is also a leading Hollywood financier. He will soon unveil a giant outsourcing centre in Mumbai that will be dedicated to the process of "dimensionalisation". The 25-million-pound facility reportedly has 1,000 Indian technicians, who will be guided by a handful of American experts. In-Three has already given industry insiders a taste of what may be in store, holding private screenings of 3-D snippets of classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, 12 Angry Men and Casablanca. India is in the picture largely because of its cheap labour: it takes 300 people three months to convert a film into 3-D, and on the subcontinent wages are half of what they are in America. The new technology works by combining two images; one for the left eye and another, from a slightly different perspective, for the right. Reliance will use the original film as the left-eye image. It will then digitally manipulate it to produce the right-eye version. The process currently costs between three million dollars and 15 million dollars a film. Ambani hopes that the sheer scale of his venture will allow him to lower prices and accelerate turnaround times. He is betting that viewers will soon start watching 3-D films at home on special Blu-ray disks - players for which are just starting to be released - and a new generation of 3-D television channels.