Panasonic pitches 3D Blu-ray standard

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the high definition water now Blu-ray has safely dispatched HD DVD, Panasonic is looking to make things a bit more confusing again by proposing a new 3D Blu-ray standard.

The eyes have it

Now, obviously there's nothing more futuristic than 3D telly – flying cars and Hoverboards excepted – and Panasonic reckons it can make it happen. If talks with the BDA (Blu-ray Disc Association, which looks after the standard) start before the end of the year then it could be in the shops by 2010.

Panasonic's proposal comes in two parts: one address storing the extra 3D data on the disc and the other looks at modifying HDMI so it can transfer the images to a suitable screen.

Pay attention, here comes the science

The proposal is quite clever, because it implements current technology standards to work – so no extra development is necessary. Image encoding, for example, uses the existing two channel capability of MPEG-4 AVC to store the extra data. What's even cleverer still, is that as it only stores the data that's different from channel one, it only takes up around one and half times as much space – not double as you'd expect.

To get the data out and onto your telly, Panasonic is proposing modifying the HDMI standard so alternating left and right images are sent in sequence, but flagged so the display knows what to do with them.

At the moment, though, it looks like the system will still need LCD glasses, which can shut off each eye at the correct time so it only sees the right frame, to work. Still, it's a step in the right direction.

(via Tech-On!)