Following on from the recent announcement that Sony has selected ReadD as its technology partner for 3D TV’s JVC Kenwood as how announced that it will also use ReadD’s systems in future 3D TV’s and imaging systems. No announcements were made about specific products.
Sony and ReadD announced a partnership to use ReadD’s 3D technology in future Sony Bravia TV’s. The ReadD system is currently used in hundreds of cinemas worldwide. Sony will product new LCD TV’s that will work in conjunction with ReadD’s glasses, to bring 3D technology to the home. It has already been announced that the final specification of the Blu-ray 3D standard will work with the Playstation 3 so coupling this with the new Bravia 3D TV’s should be an exciting prospect.
You can now manage your Blockbuster movie rentals via your iPhone. The new app allows you to check store availability, check their complete catalogue and schedule future rentals. In future version you will be able to reserve movies and games as well as movie downloads.
Today the Blu-ray Association announced the final specification for 3D Blu-ray. The specification used a new version of the existing video compression currently used called H264 MVC (MultiView CodDec) this uses two separate transport streams, one for each eye. However this will mean that there will be around a 50% overhead for decoding 3D. The good news is that by decoding just a single stream existing players should be able to play the 3D disks however in plain old 2D. The specification also means that the Playstation 3 will be able to play these disks in full 3D. The new disks can also contain new 3D options for the interface in the disks menu’s which would make for some nice 3D views of scene selection a 3D version similar to Apple’s coverflow for album artwork would be a nice 3D navigation feature. As well as backwards compatibility the new specification is display agnostic meaning that any display can be used, the two video streams once decoded can be displayed by and means which stops Blu-ray 3D being tied to any specific display technology.
Semiconductor company Broadcom has announced two new single chip Blu-ray solution. This is great news for Blu-ray as a single chip solution can help drive down the cost of Blu-ray players, the fewer components the cheaper the player can be (depending on the quality of those components). The first new chip is the BCM7630 which supports Blu-ray optical control and decoding as well as streaming of video from the internet including BD-Live, Netflix 2.0, Pandora Internet Radio, Vudu and CinemaNow. However perhaps more interesting is the announcement of the new BCM7632 chip that has all of the above features but also includes 3D support. It supports stereoscopic 3D at full 1080p resolution. It is anticipated that the BCM7632 will comply with the Blu-ray standard for 3D disks when it’s finalised. We won’t see players with these new chips anytime soon as they are just sampling to manufacturers to design into new players but we could see them in the second half of 2010.
Yes Lord of the Rings will be released on April the 6th 2010, that’s the good news. The not so good news is that it will be the theatrical release. No high definition special edition extended version for you. Most of the extras have been seen before on the various DVD releases. Each movie will also include a digital copy (glad I just upgraded to a 32GB iPhone.
Now I’m not sure about this, yes I love these movies but the extended versions add so much and if it’s an April release why not delay them a little to accommodate the extended versions. Could this be another studio trying to make us all buy multiple copies of the same movie again? I already have the theatrical releases and the extended versions on DVD so I might just skip the initial Blu-ray release and wait for the inevitable extended versions which will probably be announced a few months after these releases as it was with the DVD versions.
Processor and Graphics company (as well as other parts of today’s PC) AMD today announced it will demonstrate 3D Blu-ray at the CES show in Las Vegas in January. AMD is a member of the Blu-ray consortium so the demo should be close to the final release however the group has yet to release the final specification for 3D Blu-ray but it is expected to go on sale in the second half of next year.
Read the release here
Check out our review of the Western Digital My Book Wold Edition World Edition DLNA network storage/streaming device
If yo’re looking for a device for backing up your PC’s and streaming your photo’s, video and music around your house it’s an essential review.
Universal Studios Entertainment has announced that it will introduce combination Blu-ray and DVD disks with the launch of the Bourne trilogy. What sets these disks apart from the current combo disks is that they will be different sides of the same disk; Blu-ray one side and DVD on the other also known as ‘flipper’ disks. Current combination packs include two separate format disks. This was a feature the now defunct HD-DVD format offered and it was developed in response for Blu-ray but no disks where ever released. It’s hopped that these new disks will encourage people with DVD players who have not yet taken the step to HD that they can still invest in DVD’s with an eye to upgrading their player at a later day and not have to reinvest in their collection.