Scientists say they have taken a big step toward displaying live video in three dimensions. It's technology far beyond 3-D movies, and more like the "Star Wars" scene where a ghostly Princess Leia image pleads, "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi."

In that classic movie, the audience sees Leia from behind before a new camera perspective shows her face. Such a wraparound view of a live image was just movie-making wizardry in the 1977 film. But what about now, some three decades later?

Well, researchers from the University of Arizona say the technology is no longer the stuff of science fiction.

In experiments, the technology displayed a new image only every two seconds. That's only about one-sixtieth as fast as the system would need to produce true video.

Cory Christenson, Researcher, University of Arizona, said, "We've reported that we can write these holograms at like one image every two seconds. So we've gotten much faster. We've also achieved color in these materials, we've also achieved full parallax, so you can look at it up to down or left to right. So we've really expanded the material in the past couple of years to be able to achieve these new advancements."

In fact, it's possible a true 3-D video screen might not reach living rooms for another ten years - but you wouldn't need those funny glasses to enjoy it.

Apart from the possibilities for entertainment, it might allow doctors in multiple places around the world to collaborate on live surgery.

Other possibilities could include eye-catching ads at shopping malls and a technique to enable designers of cars or airplanes to make changes more quickly.

The Arizona group is one of maybe half a dozen around the world that are trying to move into 3-D video.

The Arizona group uses a plastic plate that stores and displays an image until another image is "written" electronically on it.

That approach might someday allow for much bigger images.