The good news is that it doesn't involve a change in Blu-ray optics, the technology used is called the Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation evaluation index (i-MLSE).

The first of the 2 key characteristics is that i-MLSE has a strong correlation with the error rate even in read/write at 33.4 GB using PRML.

According to Sony "i-MLSE exhibits the same relationship to signal quality as conventional jitter."  So it will be relatively simple to estimate the read error rate from the i-MLSE,  just as can be done now with jitter.

Sony plans to propose widespread adoption of i-MLSE via the Blu-ray Disc Association & other avenues.

It's not clear yet what this means for existing Blu-ray players, but probably a firmware upgrade will do the job.