Panasonic has started talking about producing a 3D version of Blu-Ray to be débuted in 2010. Philips have already demoed a 3D TV system that works without the traditional red and green glasses.

Panasonic is working on a Blu-ray Disc capable of storing 2-channel 1080p 3D pictures, along with an HDMI cable to carry the video to a ’suitable’ TV. The best thing about the proposal being made to the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), is that Panasonic is using existing Blu-ray and HDMI technology which will help it – and us – avoid another dumb proprietary HD format spat.

Images are encoded with the 2-channel encoder already part of MPEG-4 and the video for right and left eye each offer Full HD resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels. The discs will also be playable on existing Blu-players and Panasonic thinks the techology will be ready for rollout in 2010.

We may not need the 3D glasses but it’s possible we’ll need a TV with the ability to handle 3-D signals. There’s always a catch. Also, with Blu-ray titles still only trickling onto the market after more than 2 years of its release, how long before we see a lot of decent – yes, decent – 3-D titles?-Martin Lynch