Can all blu-ray drives play/write 3D movies or just the '3D Capable' ones ?

[ahmadka]

Hi guys .. I have a question to ask ... I want to buy an internal Blu-ray writer for my desktop, but some writers have '3D Capable' mentioned on them ... Does this mean the other blu-ray writers are NOT capable of playing back and burning 3D blu-rays ? Or is it just a marketing gimmick ?

Personally I think there's no hardware difference, and that mentioning '3D' is because the blu-ray player coming with the drive is capable of playing back 3D blu-rays ..

For example this is supposedly a '3D Capable' blu-ray writer ...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106346

... while this one doesn't mention '3D' anywhere:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136226

Whats the technical conclusion behind this guys ?

[Cornucopia]

Let's separate hardware from applications...

A Blu-ray reader is hardware. A Blu-ray writer/burner is hardware.
A Blu-ray player is an application connected to reader hardware. A Blu-ray recorder is an application connected to writer/burner hardware.

ALL Blu-ray readers & writers/burners can do both 2D and 3D. It is the application that determines whether 3D is applicable or not. There is nothing special about the layout of 3D Blu-ray files as opposed to 2D; the SSIF files are just hard links to the separate M2TS files, and readers/burners understand hard links as that is fully supported under UDF 2.60.

3D Blu-ray player (software) applications are: PowerDVD, Corel WinDVD, TotalMediaTheatre, Roxio Cineplayer. Hardware applications are "3D" settops.
3D Blu-ray recorder or "authoring" (software) applications are: NetBlender, Sony BluPrint, Sonic Scenarist, Easy3d, Sony Vegas, Roxio Creator/Pro, possibly others.
Currently, there are no hardware/settop 3D recorders...

Now, there may be particular speed, interface, buffer, or other requirements by a particular 3D-capable burning software application that limits your choices to particular models, but you should be able to find that out by looking at the options & requirements of that software.

The rest is just marketing.

Scott

[[_chef_]]

You should have used SEARCH before asking....

[Cornucopia]

Actually, I'm not sure that's something that would have been made clear through a simple search. Sometimes the knowledge needs to be a little bit "distilled" first. Like a good whiskey.

Scott