Electronista: The HDMI organization has made the 3D portion of its 1.4 available spec for public download.

HDMI spec v1.4 was completed in June 2009, but was only available to companies that had signed an HDMI Adopter Agreement.

The announcement on Wednesday makes the new standards accessible to all other content producers and manufacturers. The group also stated that an update to the specification, dubbed 1.4a, will be released in the near future, possibly to address a mandatory 3D broadcast format.

The group had announced in December 2009 that HDMI v1.4 would add support for 3D content without the broadcast component. HDMI v1.4 establishes protocols for several 3D display technologies including frame, line, or field alternative methods; side by side display modes, and 2D plus depth methods.

It also includes data for the first time and supplies a 100Mbps Ethernet connection as well as two-way audio signals.

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CNet: Sony has announced that its new line-up of Blu-ray products will go 3D with a firmware update this year.

Sony announced a line-up of 3D home cinema products at CES in January, including the Bravia LX and HX 3D TVs.

The range of products to go 3D includes the BDV-E670W, BDV-E870, and BDV-IZ1000W. We’ve contacted Sony for a full list of which products will get the update, and when.

The big question is whether an update will be available for the PlayStation 3. The 3D Blu-ray spec was only finalised in December, so manufacturers are wasting no time. Other 3D Blu-ray players coming soon include the Samsung BD-C6900 and Panasonic DMP-BDD300.

All well and good, but what are you going to watch? Monsters vs Aliens looks set to be the first 3D Blu-ray release, with Avatar no doubt close behind. James Cameron has hinted that a 2D release will come first, followed by a 3D release towards the end of the year, if there is enough uptake of the technology. Disney is weighing in with A Christmas Carol at the end of the year.

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Wired: Google is quietly rolling out a new minimalist design for its YouTube video-player pages, which it claims will be more appropriate for a wide range of content from the user-uploaded content that has always been a staple to feature-length films.

By muting the “voice” of the old design, YouTube hopes to make videos stand out from everything else on its pages.

The decision was driven in part by the need to create a unified tone on the site — a subtle but important move, considering that people who are viewing videos of destruction from the recent earthquake in Haiti may not be in the mood to watch skateboarding videos.

You can switch your version of YouTube to the new design now, by clicking a special link.

All YouTube users will notice the changes at some point over the next few weeks.

In the new version, search results, playlists or recommended videos follow viewers around the site depending on how they found a given video.

This makes it possible to check out a bunch of search results without using the “back” button on your browser.

YouTube hopes this will increase viewing time by reducing friction.

The stealth strategy behind YouTube’s redesign is to make the site more appropriate for feature-length films — a key aspect of its strategy to court video producers across the whole spectrum, including professional filmmakers and eventually Hollywood studios, as part of its new video rental service.

While the “Filmmakers Wanted” campaign will debut at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, YouTube told us “as we work to iterate and improve our rentals product we will invite a broader set of partners across different industries and geographies in the weeks and months to come.”

“If the user interface was too pronounced, personality-laden, or really even too noisy, it is going to distract, detract and take away from the experience of that video,” said Margaret Stewart, head of design and user experience for YouTube.

“We want the voice that people hear in the design to be the voice of the creator of the video, and not voice of the user interface itself. The palate is more subdued … the container needs to feel like a welcoming home for everything from user-generated content to feature-length films.

It’s an interesting design challenge, but one that we focused a lot on in the past couple of months.” The viewer pages are so stripped down that they no longer feature the “Broadcast Yourself” motto or the site’s familiar five-star rating system, which never made much sense in the first place. In the new system, when you give something a “like” rating, you’re also adding it to your list of favorites.

If you don’t like a video, a more sensible “thumbs down” rating simplifies the process. (Did people ever really dislike a video enough to assign it two stars, but not enough to assign it one?) Also, the comments section is no longer labeled, because “people are smart” and understand that the comments section is the comments section, according to Stewart.

The overall effect of this much cleaner interface will be to help YouTube achieve its goal of directing viewers’ attention to videos, as opposed to other page elements — an important design consideration when people are paying for video, as YouTube and film producers hope they will.

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Engadget: Other than amassing support from seemingly every CE device on the market, DivX’s next step? Online content aggregation.

Announced as a partner with LG during yesterday’s press conference, the company feels it is in a position to give a more TV-like experience to internet video by extending its platform to interested content providers.

The software will allow users to stream not only from the cloud, but also compatible video from their own PCs. Its pitch to OEMs claims IP streaming capability on any hardware, and with it demonstrated ability to cut a deal, expect to see DivX TV on a set-top near you very, very soon.

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Engadget: While 3D is all the rage at CES this year, we learned today from the BDA that one of the biggest sources of 3D content isn’t what it could be.

The first thing that could, should, be better is the limited support for frame rates. Movies have been recorded at 24 frames per second for longer than our parents have been alive, and for about the same amount of time we’ve had to endure frame rate interpolation to make movies play back on our 30Hz TVs — you know, like 3:2 pull-down.

That changed recently with 120hz LCDs and 72Hz plasmas because those numbers share a common denominator with 24 (so the same frame is just shown three or four times).

When choosing an 3D HDTV it is important to understand how the TV displays 24 fps 3D content, don’t just asume it does it without 3:2 pull down. But honestly the worst part is that some 3D cameras can capture 3D at higher frame rates and even if the director wanted to, the new 3D Blu-ray spec doesn’t support it.

The other issue we take with the new spec is that contrary to early reports, it is possible to create a 3D Blu-ray Disc that won’t play on 2D only players. This next one isn’t a big deal, but still disappointing is that even if the creator goes through the trouble to encode the movie in both formats, depending on the HDTV, you may have no choice but to watch it in 3D — say if you lost your glasses or whatever.

Now don’t get us wrong we’re pretty excited about the new 3D technology, but the way we see it is that anything worth doing, is worth doing right the first time.

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CNet: Here at CES 2010, Samsung has announced it will be creating its own app store, but unlike its rivals, who offer applications on mobile phones, the Korean giant intends to supply apps that work across phones, computers, Blu-ray players, home-cinema systems and even TVs.

The Samsung Apps feature — essentially an evolution of the company’s Internet@TV concept — will ship on the vast majority of Samsung tellies with screens 40 inches and above, starting with the 55-inch LED 9000 series.

With these, users will be able to search and download applications even while watching TV. Some apps wil be bundled with the sets, some will become available for download over the sets’ integrated Wi-Fi free of charge from this spring, while paid-for apps will start to arrive in the summer.

Currently, Samsung says the style of applications will be pretty diverse. Some will provide basic information like up-to-date weather, sports fixtures and results, picture viewing through the likes of Picasa, plus services such as BBC iPlayer and Twitter.

Several apps will allow interaction betwen your Samsung mobile phone and your Samsung TV. In one example, the company said consumers would be able to play virtual poker using the television as the table, and their handsets to view cards and control the game.

Crucially, Samsung is making its app store an open platform, which should encourage third-party developers to create a decent number of apps and help ensure the system doesn’t become a relic any time soon. Keep your eyes on CNET UK over the coming weeks when we’ll bring you a more in-depth look at the best of these apps and the TVs they’ll feature on.

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