3D TV essential guide Blu-ray 3D
Along with the 3D broadcast service from satellite TV pioneer Sky, you can watch technically superior Full HD 3D available via the 3D Blu-ray standard.
The Blu-ray 3D logo. Players work with 2D and 3D discs.
What do I need to watch 3D Blu-ray movies?
You’ll need a 3D-ready TV, and a 3D Blu-ray player, such as the Sony BDP-S470 or Panasonic DMP-BDT300.
You’ll also need the shutter-style glasses that rapidly blink on and off so each eye sees its own slightly different 1080p image. These should come supplied with the television or Blu-ray player – but extra pairs will be quite pricey (around £100).
A 3D Blu-ray disc is the last piece in the jigsaw, though content at the moment is a bit thin on the ground.
Blu-ray discs recorded in 3D will be able to play on ‘old’ 2D Blu-ray players (in 2D) and ‘old’ 2D discs should playback on the new 3D players.
HDMI 1.4
HDMI 1.4 carries the full HD 3D signal.
The new Blu-ray players and 3D TVs feature upgraded HDMI sockets – the so-called 1.4 standard.
The new 1.4 sockets have been designed to work with the highest quality Blu-ray 3D TV signals, though standard HDMI cables should be more than adequate to carry the signal between TV and player .
For more information on HDMI cable quality check our special report.
How does it work?
It’s the norm for DVD picture quality to look better than broadcast standard-definition TV and likewise Blu-ray discs are marginally superior to broadcast HD TV.
The digital disc format in each case provides more space to store higher resolution images, without the same bandwidth, compression and bit-rate limitations of broadcast signals.
| SD and HD comparison | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Users | Video resolution | Frame rate (frames per second) |
| Standard-definition broadcast | Freeview, Sky, Virgin, analogue TV | 576i | 25fps |
| Standard-definition DVD | Standard DVD discs | 576i | 25fps |
| High-definition broadcast | Sky HD, Freeview HD, Freesat HD, Virgin HD | 1080i | 25fps |
| High-definition DVD | Blu-ray DVD, high-definition games consoles | 1080p | 24fps |
The difference in picture quality between 3D Blu-ray discs and broadcast 3D TV should be no different.
Frame sequential full HD 3D
The Sky system will interlace the alternate lines of the different images to create a 3D picture. 3D Blu-ray discs, on the other hand, do not interlace the different images but display them frame-by-frame, one after another.
This is commonly known as the frame sequential method.
The large 50Gb capacity of Blu-ray discs means they have enough space to store not one, but two streams of full HD 1080 resolution pictures – double what you’d expect to find on a typical 2D Blu-ray disc.
Active shutter glasses synchronise with the TV via an infrared signal and rapidly blink on and off, playing back images to the right eye and left eye at a rate of 50 frames per second.
This means both eyes see a full HD image and, unlike the interlacing Sky method, no resolution is lost.
This should make the Blu-ray images sharper and likely to improve the 3D effect when compared to Sky. At present the same full HD standard cannot be broadcast as it simply takes up too much bandwidth.
Check our dedicated online guide for expert reviews of the latest Blu-ray players.
There will be a limited number of 3D Blu-ray titles available in 2010. We expect to see the first in the spring – though in the short term, industry watchers admit there will be a gap between the televisions, Blu-ray players and amount of content available.
