USB 3.0 webcam streams 1080p video
World's first for SuperSpeed USB
Canadian advanced imaging firm Point Grey (PG) has demoed what it has claimed is the world’s first USB 3.0-connected webcam able to stream full HD video.
Point Grey's prototype webcam streamed 1080p video over a USB 3.0 connection
Displayed at the ongoing IDF event in San Francisco, PG’s webcam streamed uncompressed 1920 x 1080p video - through a Fresco Logic USB 3.0 host controller running on an ASUS P7P55D platform – onto a nearby screen at 60fps.
The webcam used a 3Mp Sony image sensor
The prototype camera consists of a 3Mp Sony IMX036 image sensor, which apparently features “high sensitivity, superior colour fidelity, low power and no smear”.
USB 3.0 – aka SuperSpeed USB - uses new ports to deliver a bandwidth of up to 5Gb/s - ten times that of USB 2.0. But they're designed to be backwards compatible with full-size USB 1.1 and 2.0 ports.
Production plans haven't been confirmed
PG hasn’t announced any plans to produce the USB 3.0 webcam on a commercial scale. ®
COMMENTS
@AC & Radio
This camera will do 22fps at 1080P, with encoding in the camera
http://www.arecontvision.com/uploads/product_images/9Arecont_Vision_AV3105_0709pdf.pdf
Without a lens it'll set you back a mere £700.
Seeing as this company has increased the resolution and frame rate significantly in a year, I'm sure they'll manage real-time by next year.
Linux drivers
Seeing that at the present time the only OS that supports USB 3.0 is GNU/Linux (just incase RMS is reading this) are we going to see Linux drivers for this webcam?
High-def porn not better
"but it'll make people's amateur porn look a whole lot better."
Actually it may not. I haven't investigated this personally.. yeah... but reportedly, the non-amateur porn industry has had troubles with HD-DVD and now BluRay, because at lower definition a shoot might look fine, while at full definition blemishes, scars from when implants were put in, razor burn, stains, etc. all show up making it really seem seedy. This wouldn't apply for amaeur, but if it's one of those "classy" porns that's supposed to take place somewhere.. it's hard at high-def to make a set look like any particular location instead of looking like a set with a bunch of props stuck on it too.
Anyway... nice proof of concept. I suppose it must be uncompressed video (otherwise, with MPEG-2 compression, a 1920x1080 video will run just fine over USB2, as evidenced by the numerous ATSC capture sticks on the market.)
Computer Vision Applications
I'm doing research on computer vision and we have a few point grey cameras. They're not really aimed at consumers, and are definitely not "webcams". Vision researchers like to get uncompressed raw data from the camera at as high a resolution as possible. Good luck to anyone trying to do any significant processing at those kind of rates though...
One thing it could be useful for is industrial measurement stuff - say you've got parts shooting through on a production line that need measuring. By tracking the parts through the image you might only need to process a small region of the image, but the very high resolution would mean you can maintain high accuracy with a large field-of-view.
