Panasonic proposes 3D Blu-Ray and a collaborated HDMI Standard

Panasonic looks forward to expand and standardize its 3D imagery technology with Blu-ray Disc Association at consumer level. The company has submitted an official proposal to take on the technology wet-dream that has been proven to fail time after time- a visual entertaining home-theater system that required awkward goggle to process its third dimension imagery, straight to your Blu-ray player with a collaborated HDMI standard.

Panasonic has demonstrated the 3D Blu-ray system back in CEATEC this year, It was done with its 3D Full-HD Plasma Theater System which consists of an 103-inch Plasma display, a special 3D glass, an advanced video coding (MPEG-4 AVC) H.264 format for dual channel encoding and a Blu-ray player capable of decoding images in dual-channel simultaneously.

Not much has changed from its original design, the new standard is said to utilize existing technology with a twist of dual-channel signal to increase data volume. The proposal makes no mention of special 3D glass but for the format to success, Panasonic has put forward the idea of a new type of HDMI standard to carry the signal.

As a consumer, I don't have a problem with 3D gimmick or silly glass, I can choose not to; but introducing a new HDMI standard could potentially complicate the whole Audio Video Ecosystem. Have we not gone though enough drama from HDMI 1.1 to 1.3? It were a lengthy process and reflected a poorly standard incompletion of regulating the protocol. To these date, there are still plenty of HD displays and multimedia player suffering from format incompatibility due to the disorganized standard.

According to Nikkie, the BDA may begin a formal discussion on the standard by the end of the year and a commercial adoption by 2010. The BDA response to the standard as if it's a done deal. Well, 3D or not, Let's hope this HDMI 1.3xyz or 1.4 is backward compatible.