Posted Mon Dec 21, 2009 at 07:00 AM PST by Mike Attebery
The Blu-ray Disc Association has been wrestling with this one for a while, but now it’s official. The much awaited 3D specification for Blu-ray discs has been decided on. Most of the information to come out of the announcement is what we expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
The codec being used for 3D video is MVC, an extension of the AVC codec that we’re already familiar with. 3D file sizes are about 50% larger on average, which shouldn’t be much of a problem for Blu-ray. Thankfully, multiple versions of the same movie won’t have to go out, since the MVC encoding is fully backwards compatible to a 2D picture.
3D movies will play without any quality loss in full 1080p. Graphical menus will be fully 3D which is to be expected, but the announcement of 3D subtitles raises a few questions. It will be interesting to see exactly how readable the subtitles are and whether they compliment or hinder the 3D effect.
Playstation 3 owners will be happy to hear that 3D playback will be possible on their game consoles. It’s fairly safe to assume that this will be coming in the form of a firmware update in the next few months. There’s no word on other older players getting updates at the moment.
The Blu-ray Disc Association also points out that 3D on Blu-ray is ‘display agnostic’. That is to say that whether you’re watching on an LCD or Plasma, you’re going to get the full 3D experience.
Souce: Blu-ray Disc Association
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