De eerste berichten over de blu-ray van Avatar komen langzaam naar buiten:
enThe Blu-ray Disc Association has been wrestling with this one for a while, but now it's official. The much awaited 3D specification for Blu-ray discs has been decided on. Most of the information to come out of the announcement is what we expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
The codec being used for 3D video is MVC, an extension of the AVC codec that we're already familiar with. 3D file sizes are about 50% larger on average, which shouldn't be much of a problem for Blu-ray. Thankfully, multiple versions of the same movie won't have to go out, since the MVC encoding is fully backwards compatible to a 2D picture.
3D movies will play without any quality loss in full 1080p. Graphical menus will be fully 3D which is to be expected, but the announcement of 3D subtitles raises a few questions. It will be interesting to see exactly how readable the subtitles are and whether they compliment or hinder the 3D effect.
Playstation 3 owners will be happy to hear that 3D playback will be possible on their game consoles. It's fairly safe to assume that this will be coming in the form of a firmware update in the next few months. There's no word on other older players getting updates at the moment.
The Blu-ray Disc Association also points out that 3D on Blu-ray is 'display agnostic'. That is to say that whether you're watching on an LCD or Plasma, you're going to get the full 3D experience.
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James Cameron Talks Avatar Blu-ray Plans
Posted December 18, 2009 10:47 AM by Juan Calonge
20th Century Fox In the interviews given to promote Avatar, which opens in theaters today, James Cameron has already given a few tips on the Blu-ray of his latest movie epic. The filmmaker said that the BD will include over ten minutes of deleted scenes, and also that the initial Blu-ray release of 'Avatar' "probably won't be in 3-D", and there will be another edition with 3-D support in late 2010.
Cameron told MTV that the discarded footage gave added background on the native Na'vi people of Pandora. "It's all wonderful stuff, but it was sort of bogging down the middle section of the movie," Cameron said. "So there's plenty for a value-added DVD experience on this film. Of course, we'll have to go punch it all up and get it all mixed and stuff like that." There is also a trial ritual where, to become one of the clan, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) must hunt a local beast.
With regard to whether the Blu-ray release would include 3-D or not, Cameron said: "Probably the initial Blu-ray release of Avatar won't be in 3-D and then a subsequent release will be in 3-D. That's my guess right now. So we will probably put out a disk, you know, in six or eight months, let's call it six months, and then after that we will have a 3-D disc when there are enough sets available."
This will mean that, when released, that BD will utilize the Blu-ray 3D specification (see blu-ray.com, December 17).