The best quality consumer Stereoscopic 3D option.

Blu-ray 3D is a later specification from Blu-ray Disc Association which defines stereoscopic 3D functionality of Blu-ray discs and players.

Any Blu-ray 3D branded player can play back stereoscopic content encoded and authored on Blu-ray 3D discs. The 3D discs can play back the left eye, also known as the “base eye” on any non 3D Blu-ray players  provided that this option is not deliberately locked out during the authoring process.

The actual Blu-ray 3D media is the same as the discs used for 2D content. Blu-ray 3D discs utilize highly efficient MPEG4 MVC encoding with only 50% data overhead for the dependent eye. Simply put, the base eye is encoded at the same bandwidth used for a traditional 2D title and the dependent eye or the right eye is encoded at 50% bandwidth of the base eye.

The specification also defines stereoscopic subtitles  which float in front of all the depth spaced elements in the scene. The subtitles can be incorporated in a manner similar to DVD subtitles or they can be implemented through BD-J (BD-Java) and rendered as extruded, depth accurate subtitles. BD-J can also be used for sophisticated 3D menus.

All stereoscopic content must be delivered to the authoring facility free of defects as there is no way to repair stereoscopic problems during the encoding. Authoring and testing a Blu-ray 3D title takes somewhat longer than authoring of traditional 2D titles, but it is likely that as manufacturers agree to more standards the complexity of authoring and testing processes will be simplified.

Blu-ray 3D is capable of full resolution HD at 1920×1080 pixel size which is higher definition than the current side-by-side broadcast TV stereoscopic signal in the United States.