Blu-ray brains create 3D taskforce

The Blu-Ray Disc Association (BDA) has created a taskforce to ease the “integration of 3D technology into the Blu-ray Disc format”. Its ultimate aim is to define a standard for stereoscopic 3D content on a Blu-ray Disc, but nothing’s yet been mentioned about how this will be achieved or when such a standard could come into …

[Adam Foxton]

Wouldn't it make more sense

to simply record the two images as two image streams? They're definately not pressed for storage space and it would mean that the consumer could use their preferred medium. So you could use Anaglyph, I could use my HMD, Tim in Accounting could use shutter glasses and Joe Bloggs over there could use his £KLots autostereoscopic display. Given the two video feeds it would be really easy (hence cheap) for the Player to have a lot of built-in playback options.

Plus it'd ensure that the disc was entirely compatible with the older 2D Blu-Ray players- it'd just be two blu-ray movies on the one disc.

[Geoffrey Summerhayes]

Blu-ray and 3D

Anyone else picture them going from discs to spheres? Piss off a bunch of early adopters. Wonder what the player would look like... Mine's the one with the buckyballs in the pocket.

[Dan]

The gimmick that won’t die.

Could the boffins kindly stop wasting their time trying to force me into wearing glasses over my glasses. And just invent “Better than life” or some kind of Holodeck.

[D@v3]

“flexibility and incomparable picture quality”

call me nieve, but i thought that was more due to the content of the disk, than the disk itself?

surely you would get the same “flexibility and incomparable picture quality” on a DVD (or even a cd), maybe even a flash drive/card if the files (videos) were small/short enough.

but maybe im barking up the wrong end of the stick

[David Austin]

title

Having just watched Coraline in 3D (And not the crappy red and blue glasses version of it), I'm all for anything that can emulate that experience in the home cinema environment.

Let's just learn from BluRay/HDDVD, and not have two competing standards.

Or learn from DVD+/DVD-

Or learn from Minidisk/CD....

Or learn from VHS/Betamax...

[Dave]

Glasses?

Why would I want glasses? XScape at Milton Keynes have 3d screens on the ceiling which don't require glasses and they've had them for a year or two. They look just like a plasma screen except the content is 3d. Surely this would be the way to go for home too?

Might be an idea for someone to start selling 3d SLR cameras,compacts, and camcorders so that we have the content ready for this revolution. All they need is to add a second lens a few cm from the first, and modern SLRs control the lens anyway so focusing wouldn't be an issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

@David - XScape at MK

You mean those screens that if you're a degree off-centre just look blurry?

[The Fuzzy Wotnot]

Oh goody!

Another excuse for the next generation of lard arses to plonk down on the couch and never get up, save for a trip to the fridge for more coke and ice cream!

It's great having the attention span of a gnat when it comes to TV! Great for getting out of having to watch romcoms with the Missus and real bonus not getting suckered into buying another pile of over-hyped techno-crap that will be outdated 30 secs after you get it out of the box!

[Sooty]

@D@v3

nope, you're not barking up the wrong tree, in fact you can quite easily fit blu-ray quality video/audio on a dvd, however the processing power the player needs to decompress it just isn't "cost effective"

it's the same way that dvd quality video was put onto cd's by most computer users before writable dvd's became common

[Dave]

@Dave

I understand that you need slightly more components than just an extra lens... you need movement in the angle between the lenses- just as our eyes go crossed if we try to look at our noses. Also, the auto-focusing on the two lenses must be synched. This level of control is what has kept the price of 3D cameras up. It certainly adds up to more than the sum of two cameras.

All the big action directors of note (ie the ones from the eighties) Spielberg, Lucas, Cameroon and Jackson are excited by 3D filmaking- perhaps becuase it offers a night out that can't be replicated (pirated, shared etc) in a home environment.

[Adam Foxton]

@Dave

You'd want the option to choose your display medium- glassesless "Autostereoscopic" screens are pretty pricey, whereas shutter glasses or polarisation-based solutions aren't.

Also, autostereoscopic displays can only be half the resolution of the equivalent 2D display. Though IMHO SD 3D content looks better than HD 2D.

[John]

@sooty

You honesty think you can fit high quality 1080P on a DVD? The raw amount of data from 1080P is monstrous and even combined with the highly efficient x264 encoder you aren't going to get that onto a multi-layered dvd without compromise.

"it's the same way that dvd quality video was put onto cd's by most computer users before writable dvd's became common"

Oh please tell me you aren't talking about svcds. Not only were they encoded in mpeg2, but they couldn't hold a 2 hour film. Even taking into account mpeg4 which didn't arrive until quite late, you will not end up with 'dvd' quality.

[Robert Forsyth]

About 104 minutes of Hi-Def on 4.7G DVD

Two picture streams and let the player decide how each gets to each eye.

Not that it is necessary, but you could reuse parts of the left eye image for the right.

You could have a stream of floating objects that can be image/texture mapped, giving a 3D video game look around type mode.