He also hinted that Sony’s PlayStation 3 was the only current player that could “possibly” run 3D Blu-ray content “with a firmware upgrade” thanks to its discrete Nvidia GPU, which is based on the GeForce 7800 architecture.
Despite the new standard demanding that movie aficionados fork out for a new player and 120Hz TV, Berraondo said that sufficiently powerful players will offer “very good value for money” when running on Nvidia’s low-end Fermi GPUs.
Have read about the 3D technology months back as the next best thing to happen to home viewing. 3D was fast becoming popular especially with most blockbusters having a version on IMAX 3D while many consumer electronic makers are joining the bandwagon working on new generation BD players and 3D HD displays to support this. Panasonic was, I think, the first to demonstrate 3D HD at the 2009 CES on a 100-inch TV. If the market embraced immersive audio from multichannel surround formats, it's now time for immersive video.
The article was a bit kind to say that current PS3 can still work, but actually will have difficulty as it would be operating at maximum processing. With the heat on PS3 players as it is, you can expect them to even heat-up faster on 3D playback. The saddest part is your new LCD TV that does not have 120hz refresh rate will not work at all. And virtually all standalone BD players in the market can't play it. Those using HTPC are lucky as they only need to upgrade their video cards. And their non-120hz montor or TV.
The principle behind stereoscopic playback on HD as I understood it, is that you will need twice the bandwidth and twice the processing power because there will be almost two distinct HD materials played, one for each eye, to achieve the 3D effect using those special 3D glasses, not the green and red anaglyphs. Even the 50GB capacity of blu-ray discs will soon be maxed out just to contain the main feature That could mean 2-BD disc titles will soon be out containing 3D HD content.