3D Blu-ray movies

Here’s a selected list of 3D blu-ray movies released as of July 2011:

Future releases:

Avatar (Will be a Panasonic exclusive for a limited time)
How to Train Your Dragon
Toy Story 3
Shrek (1,2 & 3)
Shrek Forever After

Click HERE to see the whole list of 3D blu-ray movies releases.

A little bit of history about 3D blu-ray movies…

With the upcoming rise of 3D movies in digital movie theaters, the TV manufacturers are trying to catch on with their home theater offerings.

For that matter, they decided to release a new standard version of the Blu-ray optical disc format with stereoscopic capabilities, hence the 3D blu-ray format.

The Blu-Ray Disc Association, which includes Apple Inc. & Sony as board members among others, announced the final specifications on 17th December of 2009.

This new version uses a new codec derived from AVC. It compress the left and right views in full HD (1080p) into a single feed so then it can be split when viewed into a 3D HDTV.

The thing is, this needs a bigger bandwidth to transfer the digital data stream. HDMI 1.3 doesn’t cut anymore. So they also decided to solve this with a new version: HDMI 1.4

The problem is that HDMI 1.4 needs a whole new equipment to support it: if your TV has the old HDMI input, then you will have to buy a new HDTV that supports it to be able to play 3D blu-ray movies.

Samsung has released a few models of LED HDTVs with full HDMI 1.4 compatibility, also Sony, Panasonic, Sharp and LG among others.

Sony PS3 can play 3D blu-ray movies with the latest firmware update

Now, the good thing is that Sony’s Playstation 3 video game console can read 3D blu-ray movies out of the box, it’s compatible with the new specs. (it can also play stereoscopic games). So if you already have a PS3 game console, you are covered in that part, no need to buy a new blu ray player to play 3D blu ray movies.