3D Vision Blog

Nintendo’s new 3DS portable console featuring an autostereoscopic 3D display and a 3D camera is now officially available in Europe and North America, after the earlier launch in Japan at the end of last month. And if you are among the first to get your hands on your brand new 3D console, you are welcome to share your feedback and experience with the 3D functionality it offers, things like how the games look like in 3D mode, how well does the 3D strength adjustment slider works, what do you think about the camera etc. I’ll try to get a press sample to do a review of the 3DS, but can’t promise anything as I do not plan to buy the console… don’t have the time to play on it and it will be pretty pointless to buy one just for a review ;)

If you still haven’t noticed, Acer is among the top companies pushing products supporting 3D technology lately, aside from all the top CE brands such as LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony etc. of course. Earlier this month the company has announced the successor of their popular 3D Vision-ready Acer H5360 projector with 720p native resolution – the Acer H5360BD. The main difference between the two is that the new Acer H5360BD 3D DLP projector comes with support for the new HDMI 1.4a interface – an industry wide standard supporting stereo 3D. This is a very good news for everyone looking for an affordable widescreen HD projector that supports 3D, and that can not only be used with 3D content coming from PC, but also from consumer electronic devices such as standalone Blu-ray 3D players or game consoles like the PlayStation 3. The Acer H5360BD projector has a native resolution of 720p (1280×720) and 16:9 aspect ratio, 2500 ANSI Lumens maximum brightness and 3200:1 contrast ratio, together with up to 4000 hours of lamp life.

So far everything sounds great, but there is something very important that you should be aware regarding the new Acer H5360BD and this particular thing is the major difference between this model and the older one, aside from the addition of HDMI 1.4a support. That difference is the fact that the new Acer H5360BD projector is not 3D Vision ready, meaning that you will not be able to officially use the 3D Vision shutter glasses with it like you can with the previous Acer H5360 model. This particular thing is related to the addition of HDMI 1.4a, and as this projector features this interface for stereo 3D data transmission, although you are not able to use it with 3D Vision, you can use it with the 3DTV Play play software. Using 3DTV Play with the projector would still require to you use a pair of DLP Link glasses to actually see the projected stereo 3D image, as again the 3D Vision glasses are not going to be officially compatible with it. So when using the Acer H5360BD projector with your PC as a source of 3D content, along with the 3DTV Play software, you would be pretty much be using it like you would with a 3D HDTV that also requires its own shutter glasses and in the case with 3D DLP projectors you need a pair of glasses supporting DLP Link (no matter what the brand is). And since the projector is 720p, you would be able to get it to run with 60Hz per eye when in 3D mode, something that is supported at that resolution over the HDMI 1.4a interface, so no worries about the framerate for gaming.

The HDMI 1.4a support that the Acer H5360BD supports should also ensure compatibility with AMD’s HD3D technology, at least in theory, no guarantees about that unless this is tested. Nvidia has already confirmed that the projector is already supported in the latest 3DTV Play Update Utility v1.0.0.18, so that is for sure. Have in mind that the Acer H5360BD projector should be starting to be available on the market sometime in April with a price probably slightly higher than the current price of the previous model Acer H5360, positioning it as probably the most affordable 3D projector to feature HDMI 1.4a support on the market.

Syabas Technology, the maker of the popular brand of standalone multimedia players Popcorn Hour, announced that they have already released a free firmware update for their Popcorn Hour C-200 player that supports the new Matroska 3D format as well as adds playback of 3D video files in Side by Side and Top and Bottom format on HDMI 1.4 capable 3D HDTVs. The actual firmware for the C-200 player with 3D support has been released on March 11th and is version 02-04-110308-21-POP-408-000 and you can already download it, and Syabas are also promising to bring 3D support in an upcoming firmware update for their Popcorn Hour A-200/A-210 and PopBox players soon. The actual anouncement for the upcoming 3D support we got back in May last year, so this is not something unexpected, it just took a bit more time to happen than we expected it to. It is also to be expected that other similar devices based on the platform provided by Syabas Technology may soon start getting 3D capabilities as well…

Syabas Technology has been a strong early adopter of the Matroska technology, and it is no wonder that the company is the first to offer hardware/software support of the Stereoscopic 3D Matroska files. Besides the .mk3d (.mkv with 3D video) format support, the C-200 player should be able to provide 3D output to HDMI 1.4 3D HDTVs for the playback of stereoscopic 3D videos in side-by-side and top-and-bottom formats and the files must contain in their names either “.3DSBS.*” or “.3DTAB.*” to be automatically recognized as a type of input. The new firmware is tested and confirmed working with 3D video files in MKV, AVI and TS (MPEG) file containers, again only Side-by-Side and Top-and-Bottom input formats are being supported at the moment, but others may be added in the future as well. The new 3D-capable firmware also has supports a 3D indicator in the NMJ UI, so you will have an indicator for the playback 3D files.

- To download the latest firmware for Popcorn Hour C-200 with 3D support…