Panasonic Moves Forward with 3D Blu-ray Plans

Panasonic has recently opened new 3D labs at the Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory in California in order to establish and develop their version of 3D Blu-ray, which they are calling "3D Full HD" (3D FHD). There, they will work directly with Hollywood studios to develop 3D Blu-ray titles, as well as develop consumer products to support those titles. The company plans to develop a 3D Plasma display, a 3D-ready digital cinema projector, and a 3D-ready MPEG-4 decoder for consumer applications. For evaluation purposes, they will install a 380-inch screen at their facility, which is assumed to replace the existing screen in their evaluation room (which is a really nice set-up). Eisuke Tsuyuzaki, Managing Director of Panasonic Hollywood Laborator, commented, "Panasonic recognizes that for 3D FHD to succeed, just like Blu-ray, collaboration on research, development and production with studios and content providers is absolutely essential. The creation of the new PHL Authoring Center will enable Hollywood to start trial production and ultimately create commercially available 3D FHD titles to realize a new window into reality, and elevate the level of High Definition entertainment that consumers can enjoy in their own homes."
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hc666  » Feb 09, 2009
Go Panny go! This will be interesting.

DrXym  » Feb 09, 2009
Oh yippee, another format war! At least its for something nobody cares about for at least a few years yet. Let's hope all the competing factions get a clue before they run each other into the ground and confuse the hell out of consumers in the process.

sjy1969  » Feb 09, 2009
I have a bad feeling about this. It smacks of too much too soon. How about they let Blu-ray bed in properly before launching another tech that *could* render much of our existing gear rendundant? Particularly in the current economic climate. That's before we even get to disagreements over standards and possible format wars...

vanishingpoint  » Feb 09, 2009
I was just wondering...is this the 3D you see at the movies where every once in a while an images appears to jump off the screen at you? Or is this something far more involved, where every object on the screen is 3D at all times? Either way, I think this is the last thing we need at this point.

sonnyworld85  » Feb 09, 2009
I totally agree with sjy1969, they should let Blu-ray settle properly. Once Blu-ray has set in nicely, then we can bring this 3D Blu-ray technology out.

squall_line  » Feb 09, 2009

This sounds more to me like an expansion of Blu-ray Disc technology, not a replacement for it, so I don't see where a format war would come into the picture. To wit, the article states that "they will directly work with Hollywood studios to develop 3D Blu-ray titles". If the data needs of 3D FHD exceed that of current BD-50 discs, then they will likely try to expand on the current BD-300 and BD-500 efforts, which would actually help BD technology mature. However, they will be using BD to support and move forward from 1080p towards 3D, not to move away from BD.

Buggy166  » Feb 09, 2009
its a specific expansion for specific movies. seeing better 3D animated movies would be awsome. I think its a good move in the right direction. blu ray will only be ousted by some sort of a holographic display in the future. Upping the resolution more will be a moot point otherwise.

dobyblue  » Feb 09, 2009
Haha - they're going from a 120" screen to a 380" screen. That's seriously cool - I wish I had a room big enough for one of those...and that 2k projector they use which I'm sure will be getting upgraded too.

dmarvin  » Feb 09, 2009

Sounds like it will make it so a movie like "My Bloody Valentine 3D" or "Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D" will look like the 3D version you saw of it in the theater instead of the red/blue 3D version you got on the DVD's and Blu-rays of "Journey...", "The Polar Express", etc. The huge downside is it looks like you will have to a buy a special display and player/projector to get any of these benefits. I see very few people being willing to do that.

mr.hidef  » Feb 09, 2009

I would put my money on the fact that this will fail, ruining Panasonic's reputation, and wasting TONS of their money, and ultimately delay Blu-ray taking over 50% of the market by confusing the average joe! People can barely afford Blu-ray now......why make it worse by introducing something that WILL NOT BE CHEAP, and cause people to not go with either one.....................way to go Panasonic........duh! (remember Samsung 3-d RPTV's?......another WASTE)

WriteSimply  » Feb 09, 2009
There is no downside. The tech will be backwards compatible while propelling BD tech forward. As far as adoption, it's two pronged: regular people will move to BD eventually but the early adopter (some of the members on this site) will get 3D displays/projector/player.

SellmeyourDVD  » Feb 09, 2009
Can anyone say star wars in 3d?

fettastic  » Feb 09, 2009
If all the studios and CE's move to Panasonic's 3 D technology (they already have James Cameron's Avatar signed on), then all is good. There are other CE's with other ideas about how to do 3D in the home though. Also, if it's not on 120hz 1080p LCD, I don't want it.

Sonny  » Feb 09, 2009
I think it's a good idea with bad timing. I'm not interested enough in 3D to get new TV's for it.

Vlad44  » Feb 09, 2009	Show comment Hide comment
Bad step, panny. Don't touch 3D till you can afford 0.5s< disk eject timing on your current BD player lineup.

Noshame  » Feb 09, 2009
what about do better movies first. Even in 2d...good films and storytelling please...technology should help to tell a story, not to be the story!!!

ryoohki  » Feb 09, 2009
I'am getting terrible headake even with Cinema 3D technology (with 3 sources for the pictures) so i'am not keen to that technology...

jimmybobo  » Feb 09, 2009
I would rather see someone start going past 1080P then go in the 3D direction.

numberonesuperguy  » Feb 09, 2009
The whole point of setting it up in Holywood is that they can encourage Holywood to make more films in 3d. Once they have all this 3d content, then it makes sense to sell 3d equipment into our homes. If there's no 3d films, then no-one would buy a 3d tv! (Stating the obvious really, but needs to be stated sometimes) (oh, and personally, i'd like to see 100Hz+ first -forget 4k res and 3d!)

wallendo  » Feb 09, 2009

It will likely take 5 years to get this technology to market, blu-ray should be well established by then. The key to the success of 3-D at home will be to find a way of encoding the image on the disc in such a way that it will be compatible with multiple types of 3-D display. In other words, create a disk format that encodes both the right and left image and leave it up to each user's display hardware to make it 3-D. This will, however, be a niche product for many years to come.

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