Avatar Blu-ray 3D *Finally* Makes Its Way Hitting Shelves This October

[admin]

The wait is over. The retail Blu-ray 3D version of Avatar is finally combing to a store near you, with Fox announcing an October 16 release date for the 3D Collector's edition (October 15 globally).

This isn't the first time Avatar has been "released" on Blu-ray 3D though, but for the last couple of years, it's only been available as a bonus gift for those that purchased Panasonic 3D products. The exclusivity deal was signed by Panasonic and Fox way back in 2010, but Panasonic later chose to extend the deal until February 2012. Eager fans of both Avatar and 3D, that did not buy Panasonic were "forced" to pay up for overpriced rare copies on sites like eBay, paying as much as $300 at first (and just under $150 during the last few months).

But patient fans can now grab the retail 3D version for only $39.99, much less if you find a store that doesn't charge you the full retail price ($27.99 @ Amazon at the time of writing).

Scant details are available at the moment, but early word suggest that only the theatrical version would be made available (or at the very least, the theatrical version would be present - but if you've been a good little boy or girl, you might get the extended version too - maybe that's why it took so long for the set to be released after the exclusivity deal ended). The only other piece of information available is the cover art.

Will this be the shot in the arm 3D and Blu-ray 3D needs to fully become mainstream, or will it be too little, too late for the format?

[drfsupercenter]

If it was watchable in 3D without needing to shell out cash for a new TV, then it might help the format.

With most HDTVs doing 120fps and better, there's no reason why you can't display proper (as in, polarized) 3D on them. It's just because the TV companies want to to buy new equipment that they don't allow it.

I might pick this up anyway, just because using WinDVD I can force it to display in "old" 3D (the red-and-blue kind)... would still be nice if I could watch it using those 3D glasses I got from a theater though.

(Notice how YouTube's 3D mode includes everything BUT polarized? And it specifically says movie theater glasses won't work? Very conspiracy-theory if you ask me)

[admin]

The problem with TVs is that while they can display 120 Hz/FPS, they can't accept that as an input (it uses frame doubling or even tripling based on standard 60Hz or 24p input). So while the hardware changes between 2D and 3D TVs aren't that significant in the grand scheme of things, there are still hardware changes that needs to be made. Otherwise, the TV has to accept a 60 FPS input, 30 for each eye, which would then make it virtually unwatchable.

The theater glasses are passive (polarized) ones, so you'll need a passive 3D TV like the one LG offers. This one actually does have significant hardware changes, so much so that the first generation of these TVs can only offer half resolution 3D due to the hardware limitations. These TVs offer the best (well, most headache free) 3D and are the closest to the cinema kind as these use the same glasses (in other words, all the work is done by the display, not the glasses - with active shutter glasses, the work is evenly shared between the TV, which alternatively displays left/right images, and the glasses, which shutters your right/left eye depending on what's on screen).

YouTube 3D should work on passive sets, as these mostly accept standard input types such as side-by-side and interlaced. It's then up to the TV to decode that and pair it with the glasses. So if you set the YouTube 3D mode to side-by-side, for example, and view it on for example the LG passive 3D set, and it should work.

[drfsupercenter]

Isn't 3D always half the resolution? If you look at the Blu-Rays, it's a single 1080p video file that has both left and right, both are half-width.

But what I meant is that YouTube 3D doesn't work on a computer with polarized lenses. Pretty much any LCD monitor can do 60 or 75Hz, and what would be wrong with 30fps in each eye? That's what regular NTSC is, I don't see a problem with it.

I think it still just has to do with the fact that the TV companies want you to buy their expensive equipment. They have 3D capable monitors, which cost a ton more than regular ones.

[admin]

Blu-ray 3D is encoded using MVC in full 1080p. This article explains the various 3D encoding methods well, as you can see, Blu-ray 3D is outputted using frame packing at 1920x2205/24p:

How 3D content works: Blu-ray vs. broadcast | Crave - CNET

But it depends on the display type as to whether the full 1080 lines can be resolved or not. With active glasses, each half frame that you're seeing with each eye is 1080p. With LG's passive system, each eye is only seeing 540 lines at any one time, but refreshed quickly enough in the hope that it fools the brain into processing a full 1080p image.

YouTube 3D would obviously work differently, the link above shows the side by side method, and that's one of the YouTube 3D viewing options.

Even though NTSC is 29.97 FPS, your TV is displaying it at 60 Hz or faster. It would be unwatchable if your TV was showing 30 Hz, which is why each eye needs to see at least 60 Hz with 3D.

[drfsupercenter]

Yeah, what I'm referring to is side by side.

If you take the Tron Legacy 3D Blu-Ray and "obtain" un-encrypted stream files, open them up in something, it's a 1920x1080 file with the left and right, each having half horizontal resolution.

That's what I was assuming all 3D Blu-Rays are?

[admin]

The Blu-ray 3D standard uses MVC (which stores the full 1080p frame for each eye), with the Blu-ray 3D player outputting to the 3D TV (via HDMI) using frame-packing. Technically, the right player can take the MVC encoding and output to any one of the different 3D formats (including red/blue anaglyph, which PowerDVD/WinDVD can do), but the Blu-ray 3D standard calls for frame-packed output via HDMI as this will provide 1080p to both eyes (as opposed to half-width SbS or half-height Top and Bottom).

That you're seeing SbS probably means your player is doing it, that it has been converted to that format from the original Blu-ray, or the original Blu-ray was a bootlegged version that simply encoded the film as SbS (they're known to exist).