James Cameron caused quite a stir when he said to the Wall Street Journal that
Avatar would come out on Blu-ray in April in a "barebones" release and then in November in a 3D edition. On Thursday night, a spokesman for 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment notified the WSJ: "3D is in the conceptual stage and
Avatar will not be out on 3D Blu-ray in November."
Of course, when putting in context the claim that "3D is in the conceptual stage," the following known facts are worth considering:
- In December, the Blu-ray Disc Association (of which Fox is a board member) announced that it had finalized the Blu-ray 3D specification.
- The 3D part of the HDMI 1.4 specification has already been adopted and made public.
- At CES, 3D Blu-ray players were announced by Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba. Most of them have also announced 3D displays.
- This year, the PS3 is reportedly getting a firmware upgrade enabling 3D Blu-ray playback.
- Blu-ray 3D authoring is already operational at Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory
- Disney, Dreamworks and Sony have already announced they will release 3D titles during 2010.