The last decade has seen a revolution in the distribution of motion content: from analogue to digital and then from SDTV to HDTV. Both the delivery and the content creation industries exploited these advances, for the final benefit of consumers. Today, it is widely accepted that the next step is HDTV to 3DTV, as indicated by the new industrial fora that appeared in 2008. It has also been recognised that providing 3D to homes requires an abstraction layer decoupling content generation and reproduction to allow for adaption to heterogeneous displays, viewing conditions and user preferences.

MUSCADE is an Integrated Project (IP), whose objective is to become the driving force in this global development, to provide key innovations, and to secure the IPRs for Europe. It is the logical successor of related projects in FP6 and FP7 Call1 that are developing important 3D technologies, but not claiming to develop the 3DTV system of the future. As MUSCADE partners are involved in these preceding projects, MUSCADE will have access to previously developed technologies, giving it pole position in the global race.

MUSCADE will create major innovations in the fields of production equipment and tools, production, transmission and coding formats allowing technology independent adaptation to any 3D display and transmission of multiview signals while not exceeding double the data rate of monoscopic TV, and robust transmission schemes for 3DTV over all existing and future broadcast channels. The results of the project will be input to the respective standardization bodies including 3D@Home Consortium, SMPTE/TF on 3D@home, ITU-R SG6, ISO/MPEG and DVB/ES on 3D.

MUSCADE will strengthen European industry to maintain its leading role in providing innovative production, coding and transmission technologies, keeping European broadcasting and communications industry at the forefront of R&D efforts in providing their customers with the ability of transmitting the richest content to the end users

MUSCADE is co-funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme -ICT under the theme 'Networked Media and 3D Internet'