Panasonic opens first Blu-ray 3D authoring facility
By Richard Lawler 
posted February 1st 2010 8:22PM
posted February 1st 2010 8:22PM
Ahead of the 3D curve as usual, Panasonic is first yet again with its Blu-ray 3D Advanced Authoring Center. A perfect fit with its upcoming product lineup and focus on 3D, the setup promises to deliver movies on discs as soon as this spring. VP Jeannine Patton claims it "leads the industry" in MPEG-4 MVC technology, which it should, since Panasonic was instrumental in creating the 3D Blu-ray specification. We'll wait until a few discs have actually been pressed and reach stores before we decide how good a job it can do of bringing the 3D movie experience home.
Probably pretty good, the problem is will it just be in 3D or both versions one one disc? Not a lot of people (0.2% max) have a 3D capable display, so why buy a 3D disc?
@catdogburger 3D is backwards compatible. Basically the format encodes a 2D image that older players can play but uses the same image + some deltas in another stream to form left & right eye views for 3D.
The main way that owners of older kit may suffer is if the additional bandwidth needed for 3D means less is available for video or audio. Not many discs max out the 50Gb so it may or may not be an issue, especially since most 3D movies are CG which is more compressable anyway.
PHL is going to rake in a fortune. They're the only ones on the market with an MPEG-4 MVC encoder.
Wow, Engadget got all 3D sensitive.
Truth hurts, doesn't it.