The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) announced that it has completed work on its Blu-ray 3D specification.

According to the statement, the Blu-ray 3D specification allows every Blu-ray 3D player and movie to deliver 1080p HD resolution to each eye, thereby maintaining the image quality to which Blu-ray Disc viewers are accustomed. Moreover, the specification is display agnostic, meaning that forthcoming Blu-ray 3D products will deliver the 3D image to any compatible 3D display, regardless of whether that display uses LCD, Plasma or other technology and regardless of what 3D technology the display uses to deliver the image.

The Blu-ray 3D specification is also designed to allow PS3 game consoles to play back Blu-ray 3D content in 3D. Additionally, the specification supports playback of 2D discs in forthcoming 3D players and can enable 2D playback of Blu-ray 3D discs on the installed base of Blu-ray Disc players.

The Blu-ray 3D specification mandates encoding 3D video using the Multiview Video Coding (MVC) codec, an extension to the ITU-T H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) codec (aka MPEG-4 AVC) currently supported by all Blu-ray Disc players. MPEG4-MVC compresses both left and right eye views with a typical 50% overhead compared to equivalent 2D content, and can provide full 1080p resolution backward compatibility with current 2D Blu-ray Disc players. The specification also incorporates enhanced graphic features for 3D. These features enable navigation using 3D graphic menus and displaying 3D subtitles positioned in 3D video.

The completed specification will be available shortly to licensed manufacturers and content providers with Blu-ray 3D products expected to ship sometime in 2010.

For more information visit: www.blu-raydisc.com