Ask S&V

Q There are two-dozen or so Ultra HD Blu-rays available for purchase, with many more hopefully to come. However, none of the UHD Blu-ray releases are available in 3D, even if the theatrical version was in 3D. Do you know if there are future plans for 3D Ultra HD Blu-rays, or has the home video industry decided to kill off 3D for good? I am aware that not many people care about 3D, though some (myself included) do, so it would be good to know what to expect in the future. —Tomasz Ciecwierz / Warsaw, Poland

A The Ultra HD Blu-ray specification brings plenty of improvements over the old Blu-ray standard: a 4X increase in picture resolution, high dynamic range, wide color gamut with increased color bit depth, and even high-frame-rate (60 fps) video. It also carries over support for the object-based Dolby Atmos and DTS:X soundtrack formats that have been used for several recent high profile Blu-ray releases.

What the new spec doesn’t support is 3D. There are a number of reasons for this. The main one is that the current Ultra HDTV specification doesn’t support 3D at 2160p resolution, though it’s possible that 3D capability could be added in the future. Another issue is that the 3D movies coming out of Hollywood (such as Mad Max:Fury Roadp are mastered in 2K rather than 4K due to current technical limitations in the post-production process. Finally, with consumer enthusiasm (and, consequently, TV maker support) for home 3D viewing on the wane, there’s little impetus for the home video industry to push for 3D video support in Ultra HD Blu-ray.

While this all may come as bad news for a 3D fan like yourself, new Ultra HD Blu-ray players like Samsung’s UBD-K8500 can play 3D Blu-ray Discs, so backward-compatibility is built in. Also, with 3D theatrical releases still going strong, you should take comfort in knowing there will continue to be 3D releases on regular Blu-ray, though the range of new TVs equipped to support it is likely to be limited to higher-end models from select manufacturers. (Both Vizio and Samsung neglected to include 3D support in their 2016 TVs.)